Reprinted with permission from The Sebastopol Times
The Grange’s Dena Allen is building food resiliency from the ground up
By Kavya Krishnamurthy
Dena Allen and her sunflowers. (Photo by Kavya Krishnamurthy)
Dena Allen has always known the value of growing one’s own food. “I remember having a garden as a kid with my parents, and as a grown-up, every house we lived in that had a yard, the garden just kept getting bigger and bigger.”
Her current home in Sebastopol, where she lives with her husband, has 14 garden beds, pollinators in front of the house, and a bundle of fruit trees they inherited when they bought the property.
“So my husband, Tor, he’s the potato farmer…The joke is kind of that he grows the potatoes, and I grow everything else. He likes the thrill of digging them up out of the soil. It’s like a treasure hunt.”
She grows rhubarb, tomatoes, winter squash and most toweringly, sunflowers. “I had them last year, and they just kind of seeded themselves!”
Allen’s home garden is large and prolific, producing far more than she and her husband can eat. So she came up with a way to make use of the surplus.
The Produce Exchange
Eight summers ago, Allen and her friend Carol Henderson approached the Grange to ask about trading extra food from home gardens.
“We said, ‘Hey, can we have a produce exchange? You know, there’s a lot of people like us that grow extra things, and sure, we give them away to family and friends and donate them and stuff, but I don’t grow peppers, and maybe somebody else does.’”
The idea was just a seed until the pandemic came. “People were really hungry for socializing, and more people gardened in the summers of 2020 and 2021.” From there, the produce exchange established itself as an institution.
There is a set pattern every year. In February, there is a citrus exchange, where people can bring citrus, greens, winter squash and seeds. The April spring exchange is for plant starts, produce, seeds and herbs. May through October is the regular season for produce exchange.
Allen explained, “We just set up tables in the shade at the Grange, and people trade. Usually there’s something left over, so we can bring it to the Senior Center or the Sebastopol food pantry.”
Upcoming dates for the produce exchange are July 28, August 11 and August 25 from 5 pm to 5:45 pm.
The Virtual Farm
Another project Allen has been working on is called a “virtual farm.” The farm is “virtual” because it’s decentralized—made up of the large gardens of several Grangers that, in theory, could add up to a small farm.
“So far it’s just been mostly social,” Allen said. “We did a couple things where we had a potluck and talked about gardening. Whoever’s house it was, we showed the garden off and talked about what we can do as gardeners to promote more gardening and things like that. We also have taken our own harvest and made a community meal for the Grange a couple times.”
Allen said that the virtual farm could use some more participation, but largely speaking, “It’s just kind of a social concept place to share ideas and whatever else we have.”
Gleaning survey
In the spirit of sharing, some of the virtual farmers came up with an idea for a home garden survey during a conversation at one of the potlucks. Allen explained, “If you look at the county Ag report, the information you get of what’s grown in the county is all commercial stuff. What shows up at the top is everything that makes the most money, which goes like wine, dairy, something like that.”
She was curious about how much produce home gardeners were growing, and because she couldn’t find any data, she and others at the Grange made a Google form to begin collecting information.
“The first couple years, my friend and I took it so seriously. We were weighing everything all summer that we were bringing in from the garden. In just my garden alone, it was over 4,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables.”
The second year of the survey, Laurel Chambers from the County took notice of the project. She offered her support and brought in statisticians who helped optimize the survey questions for analysis of responses.
The 2025 report is available here. It mostly collects data from West County, but for 2026, they are trying to get even more zip codes to participate in the 2026 survey.
In addition to tracking the amount of produce grown in home gardens, the survey also asks for qualitative information on what resources people need to support their home gardening. Based on these answers, the Grange was able to start a list of community resources that includes where to find free seeds, compost and learning opportunities.
The intention isn’t simply to support home gardeners, but to strengthen food resilience for Sebastopol and surrounding communities: “Part of local food security has to do with the food you can grow and eat and share and sell right in your own community that is not disrupted by supply chains or climate change,” Allen said.
“The central thing is food security, community, feeling good.”