The partnership between Bainbridge Island Fruit Club and the BP Food Resilience Team, an initiative called Grow for Helpline, generated more than 3,000 pounds of food for Helpline House in 2025. Helpline House, the local food pantry, is experiencing a new level of stress generated by federal cuts to food aid and increased usage of its services.

In the past two years, the number of people coming to Helpline House food bank doubled. This spring, Helpline lost 40 percent of their funding to buy meat, dairy, and fruit and all of their funding to buy from local farms.

Major cuts to federal funding are affecting local farms, the Helpline House food bank, and more than 400 local families. But Friends of the Farms has just launched an effort called Shared Harvest to counteract the effect of the cuts.