Sharing Excess Garden Bounty Through Hillside Produce Cooperative

Actress Hynden Walch makes her living telling stories. Perhaps this explains why Walch, who also founded the Hillside Produce Cooperative, in which people share their excess foodstuffs, has not one but multiple origin stories—all of them “at least partly true.”

In Origin Story #1, Walch wants to eliminate waste: The Glassell Park resident is walking around her neighborhood and sees fruit rotting on the ground. “I thought, ‘Are we really that rich that we can just let things rot? What in the world can one person do?’”

In Origin Story #2, money is a motivating factor: “I started [the cooperative] right when the whole world fell apart economically. I developed a gourmet-cooking obsession to ease my pain but couldn’t afford the ingredients. As I walked around, I saw everything I could ever dream of using in my neighbors’ yards. I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if all my neighbors shared their gorgeous, homegrown stuff with me?’” 

Origin Story #3 is about developing community. Walch says she only knew a few of her neighbors when, one night, “a Peeping Tom looked in my window when I was home alone.” Walch called the neighbors she did know and three of them “came to help me immediately,” she recalls.

“I was so grateful—I said, ‘I’m bringing you plums from my tree as a thank you.’ When I dropped off my plums to them, they had all left something out for me to take: a basket of tomatoes, some oranges, and peaches. I said, ‘Well, this was the first delivery of the Hillside Produce Cooperative.’”

Walch e-mailed those same three neighbors her vision of the Hillside Produce Cooperative, in which neighbors share their excess fruit, vegetables, herbs, flowers and other foodstuffs with each other free of cost. She asked them to pass on the idea to potential participants and, by the end of the day, had an overwhelming response.

Almost three years later, the cooperative consists of 450 members, primarily from the Northeast Los Angeles communities of Eagle Rock, Glassell Park, Mt. Washington, Silver Lake, and Los Feliz. Walch, who is writing a book about the cooperative, provides “jumping off places” for those interested in starting similar ventures. Since it began, the Hillside Produce Cooperative has inspired 11 other food exchanges, including one in Ontario, Canada.

The Hillside Produce Cooperative website makes it clear that not every cooperative member gets a monthly bag of produce; only those who participate by bringing, bagging or delivering food get that privilege.

As an example, Walch says that for 50 bags of food, she’d need 15 bagging volunteers and six delivery volunteers. In return for their contribution—whether in the form of turnips or time—Walch says that participants get “a huge bag of perfect, local, organic produce that would cost them $60 at a Farmer’s Market.” The original idea of fruit, produce, herbs and flowers has expanded, explains Walch, and contributions often include things like bread, cookies, honey and eggs.

Walch has developed a schedule to make sure the food exchange goes smoothly. Interested participants must e-mail Walch by noon on the Thursday before the exchange and tell her what they’ll be contributing or whether they’re interested in bagging or delivering. (Note to interested newbies: this month’s exchange is Saturday, May 28, so contact Walch by noon tomorrow, Thursday, May 26, at hillsideproducecoop@gmail.com.)

Walch sends the location and final details to participants by Friday morning. Food contributors may drop off food anytime between 12:01 a.m. and 12 noon on the day of the food exchange, according to the HPC website. Baggers show up at 12:30 p.m. to organize the food into reusable bags, and delivery teams show up at 2:30 p.m. to drop off the bags.

Because of the “staggered system of dropping off,” Walch confesses that she hasn’t seen “hide nor hair” of many members since the co-op began. That’s why one of her favorite memories is the first anniversary of the cooperative at the Verdugo Bar. “Every possible group was there,” she recalls. “People who’d lived on the Hill for years and met for the first time that day.”