BY C A R L S E G E R S T R O M
HUERTO DE LA FAMILIA STAFF, FROM LEFT: EMILY SESSOMS,
MARISSA ZARATE, ALEXANDRA PEREZ URBINA AND MELANIE HYERS
PHOTO COURTESY OF HUERTO DE LA FAMILIA
A GROWING COMMUNITY
Huerto de la Familia puts fresh meals in people’s hands
O
n a typically gray late-summer day in Eugene,
Marissa Zarate, executive director of Huerto de
la Familia (“The Family Garden”), took Eugene
Weekly on a tour of the organization’s garden
wedged between Churchill High School and Ken-
nedy Middle School.
The garden, which provides plots and materials free of
charge for 40 families, is bursting with tomatillos, chiles
and corn, all ready for harvest.
Huerto, which has been active in the Latino commu-
nity since 1999, has been growing rapidly in recent years
and is planning to provide gardening plots for as many as
110 families next year. The organization was founded to
improve access to fresh food and has expanded to provide
small-business and farming classes targeted at low-income
immigrant families.
Some of your students have brought what they learned
in the class into the field. Can you talk about that?
One of our former students, Ma, wanted to build a kind
of nonprofit with her garden. Her goal was to start a gar-
den plot so she could donate food to people who couldn’t
garden. Her thoughts were helping people with disabilities,
veterans, single moms who couldn’t be in the garden every
day and people who just couldn’t get a space. She’s been
growing food and taking it to places that serve families and
leaving it there to take for free.
It’s taken a lot of volunteer power … she’s gotten a lot
of help to do it. She had a vision, and she went through a
lot of work. She took a 20-week business class, and we
worked with [Oregon State University] last year and they
created a 10-week farm-business curriculum for farmers
we work with.
Who is your target community, and how do you get
a plot?
Marissa Zarate: Our services are geared toward La-
tino families; all of our staff are bilingual and bicultural,
but we’re open to everybody. Not all of the families here
are Latino; we serve low-income families. Our goal is to
help people who don’t have enough money to afford these
products, so instead they can grow them themselves. The
other requirements are that you show up, you tend to your
plot and take care of it the way you’re supposed to.
We don’t ask to see income verification. We don’t want
to put people through those hoops. We see that families are
deciding on their own whether they qualify. We see that
some of our families, when they try to use other services,
get turned away or feel uncomfortable, and we’ve had
families that go to food banks and get turned away because
they don’t look like they need it. Some of our families will
dress up as best as they can because they are nervous to use
the service, and they’re turned away for that. They also feel
really intimidated by the language barrier.
All of the other programs, of course, are working to
make their services more accessible and we work with
FOOD for Lane County a lot, and I know they have a lot of
different ways they are trying to do that. They have some
bilingual staff and one food bank that’s run entirely by
Spanish-speaking staff.
What are some of the challenges families in your
business programs face?
It’s such a challenging program because our families
start at such a disadvantage. That does not mean they feel
crippled by that disadvantage; they’re so entrepreneurial
and ready to go, but some of them didn’t go past fifth grade
and we’re trying to teach them accounting math. It’s really
challenging, but it makes it more important. When some-
thing’s hard, that means it’s even more important for us to
be there to serve these families and help them succeed or
give them the best chance at success.
Most of what we do we’re kind of figuring out as we go,
which means reevaluating what we’re doing, then deciding
how we’re going to tweak it for the next year. Things are al-
ways changing. The farm program curriculum last year was
new. Last year was the first year it was taught by [OSU];
they were coming down to teach it every week. They do-
nated half of the classes and we paid for the other half.
[OSU has] a small farms program and they are trying
to build a lot of community within Latino farmers. They’re
having an event this month for Latino farmers to get to-
gether and meet and talk about some of the challenges they
are facing.
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October 12, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com
Unlike the other areas of the city, west Eugene
doesn’t have any city sponsored gardens. How are you
addressing this issue?
We partner a lot with Beyond Toxics here in Eugene, and
they did some research that shows the lack of green space in
general in west Eugene. They partnered together with us to
see if we could get some garden plots out there in west Eu-
gene. They don’t do gardening, but they feel really passion-
ately about improving green space and food access.
Calapooia High School built a beautiful state of the art
farm, and the students are growing food to go into meals for
the school district. Next to the farm there is space to garden
and they asked us to manage it, so that’s going to be our next
expansion into west Eugene.
That garden is going to have space for 25 families. It’s re-
ally exciting because we have the need there and because we
can do outreach and look for people instead of having them
on a waitlist.
Our goal is to get people for that garden through our six-
week gardening class this winter. Our goal is to have everyone
take the class so they can all start with a baseline of knowl-
edge and then go from there. It’s also going to create some
community among the people who are going to be gardening
there so they have time to form some relationships.
It’s always a special experience where you can start a new
garden together to have the people figure it out together and
get to know each other. It creates that really cohesive cohort
feeling. That worked really well at our Springfield garden at
Willamalane.
What are some of the biggest challenges Huerto faces?
Right now we’re running six spaces with half the staffing
we should have, and we’re about to add more [staff]. Once we
add those Bethel families, we’ll have doubled in size in two
years. So we need double the funding and double the staffing.
We’re doing a fundraising blitz throughout the month of Oc-
tober, trying to get money in the door. We’re doubling in size
and we have to start getting more community support to keep
doing the work we’re doing.
The community is really passionate about showing immi-
grant families that they’re welcome and safe in Lane County.
My goal is to let people know there are places that they’re safe
and about the things we’ve been doing to create a welcoming
community for Latino families. We can’t always just be de-
fending ourselves, we have to promote the things that create
positive interactions and create a positive and caring commu-
nity. I hope people will see the value of what we’re doing.