Slow Food Lake Tahoe

Slow Food Lake Tahoe's mission is to connect our community to the enjoyment of good, clean and fair food by inspiring a self-reliant food culture. We educate the community about growing, preparing, and accessing local and sustainable food. Good, clean and fair food for all.

We host a variety of community projects and events to bring our mission to fruition including Truckee's Food Bank Garden, Community Garden, Grow Your Own classes, Skill Share Classes, Compost Collection, Salmon Buying Club, the Edible Garden Tour, and Community Soup Night.  We also help to support Don't Drop the Top Collection and the Truckee Saturday Farmer's Market. 

Our fundraising primarily goes to support the Food Bank Garden in the Truckee River Regional Park where we support food security and nutrition equality by growing organic and healthy food for our local hunger relief organization, Sierra Community House. In addition, we also encourage self-reliance by providing free high elevation gardening and sustainability education for our volunteers, visiting children's groups, business retreat teams, and the general public with our volunteer days and annual gardening classes.

As our garden and community education programs grow, so do our funding needs. We are hoping to raise enough money for the 2023 season so that we can continue this valuable work. Our yearly operating budget is around $35,000, and we are looking to our community to raise those funds and ensure that the garden is able to continue to provide food and education for those in need during the 2023 season.

Your Donation Makes a Difference

Gardening can be an extremely affordable way to feed people. Gardens also help educate both adults and children about how to grow organic food and why it's important. We have the ardent hope that this garden will continue to be a place of community spirit and collaboration but, we can't do it without your support.  We appreciate you making a valuable difference in our community by donating to such an impactful cause!  Here are just some of the things your donation will fund:

• Growing & Giving from the Food Bank Garden to Sierra Community House's local hunger relief program
• Free Education Days in the Garden for school-age children
• Free Grow-Your-Own Classes
• Free & Low-Cost Skill-Share Workshops
• Scholarship & Low-Income Community Garden Beds
• Collection & Education on Community Compost
• Food donations from the Salmon Buying Club
• Support of the Shane McConkey Foundation's Don't Drop the Top Program
• Funding to support Farmers at the Truckee Saturday Farmer's Market

More About Our Recent Growth

In the 2019 season, we expanded our composting program with the town of Truckee and provided an educational public place for the composting of fruit and vegetable scraps donated by the community and used in the garden beds once composted.  In 2020, after many inquires from the community, we built a Community garden next door with 30+ garden beds (including senior, disabled, and scholarship beds) for people to grow their own food.  We also partnered with The Shane McConkey Foundation through their Don't Drop the Top program to save plastic lids from the landfills and instead turn them into benches for community and garden spaces.  And, we partnered with Pride of Bristol Bay to educate our community about good, clean, fair seafood choices through our new Salmon Buying Club.  Lastly, we partnered with Little Roots Farm who took over the management of the Truckee Saturday Community Farmer's Market.  In 2021, we hired our first employee - a part-time garden assistant to support the growth and sustainability of the garden and compost program.  In 2022, we raised enough funds to hire a well-skilled full time Garden Manager.  This allowed us to abundantly increase our harvest yield and accommodate even more children's and corporate education days in the garden.  It also allowed our BOD to spend more time nourishing the many arms of the organization rather than the day-to-day operations of the garden.

The History Behind the Food Bank Garden

Slow Food Lake Tahoe became the stewards of the garden in 2013, having inherited the space from Project MANA (currently the Sierra Community House), who maintained the garden for over 20 years. Over time, the garden had fallen into disrepair and upon taking it over we set the goal to revitalize and improve the garden and make it a place of education, food production for an under-served population, and a community-minded gathering space. 

As a key component to the Food Bank Garden project, in 2016 we began to donate all harvests from the garden to feed those in need.  In recent years, largely due to the generosity of our volunteers and donors, we have been able to increase our food donations!  We continue to make improvements and grow the garden every year, to expand our yield, feed more families, and educate more people.

Organically Grown Produce - Harvested and Donated Locally

2018 - 268 lbs

2019 - 311 lbs

2020 - 396 lbs

2021 - 388 lbs

2022 - 677 lbs!