Volunteers gather seeds for MLSD students

MOSES LAKE — It was very likely the most crowded the commons at Moses Lake High School has been in two months.

“It’s actually enjoyable,” said Dacey Zimmerman as she scooped up some fertilizer and carefully poured it into a plastic bag. “It’s good to get out of the apartment.”

A missionary with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from Southern California, Zimmerman is one of roughly 100 volunteers — including a number of young missionaries from the church’s Yakima mission — who came to MLHS on Saturday morning to spend four hours putting together packs of seeds and fertilizer for Moses Lake School District students and interested district residents.

“We give out 1,600 free meals a day right now, and we’ve also had the opportunity to participate in giving out boxes of food at other times, and the demand has been staggering,” said farmer and Moses Lake School Board President Elliott Goodrich, who helped organize the seed giveaway.

Included in the kits are seeds for peas, beans, sweet corn, carrots, broccoli and potatoes ready for planting. The kits also come with fertilizer and instructions on how to plant and tend a garden.

“This is a way for people to produce some of their own food and improve their own food security while at the same time giving kids a chance to learn something, get them out of the house and doing something productive,” Goodrich said.

It also gave a number of people a chance to get out at a time when the options for that are limited.

“We have some friends who run a potato farm, so I came out here because I want to make a difference,” said Alisha Dorsing, a senior at Royal High School.

Dorsing, who along with her younger brother Trevor, was putting seed bags into each kit said she is definitely missing school.

“It’s been hard to have online learning,” she said. “As long as you stay motivated, my teachers have been really helpful.”

But it’s hard, she continued, to stay motivated when you have to sit in front of a screen for so many hours during the day.

It’s a sentiment her brother, who will finish eighth grade at Royal Intermediate School this spring, agreed with.

“I wish I was in school. I think, compared with the circumstances, it’s going as good as it can be. We’re trying to get through and keep going,” he said.

Goodrich said he came up with the idea to give out seeds for students to start their own gardens last week, and that it took about that long to get the seeds, the packaging and the fertilizer donated and delivered.

“I was driving a tractor last Friday and decided this is what we needed to do, and within half a day had the companies committed,” he said.

According to MLSD spokesperson Claren McLaughlin, seed distributors Crites Moscow, Seminis, Syngenta, Brotherton, Harris-Moran, and Sakata donated the seeds; the seed potatoes were given by the Spokane Hutterian Brethren and the Washington Potato Commission; CHS-Sun Basin provided the fertilizer; and agricultural chemical producer Wilbur-Ellis provided the bags.

McLaughlin said the MLSD was still looking at the best way to distribute the seed packs but said it is likely they will be given out to students during meal distributions sometime this week.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at [email protected].