Plowshares Meals-On-Wheels
Nourishing Elders & Community for Over 25 Years
by Torrey Douglass
Volunteers gather in the Plowshares 2000+ square foot dining room in south Ukiah, a cavernous, echoing space with industrial kitchen equipment along the back wall and doors to offices along the side. People cluster in small groups, packing food into bags crowded on top of the folding tables, chatting over pastries, counting quarts of milk in their blue plastic crates, and setting up steam tables for a hot food assembly line. There is an unembellished practicality about everything, and the volunteers seem to inhabit that sweet spot where busy and relaxed overlap. This is the center of operations for the Ukiah area Meals-On-Wheels program, and like the room it inhabits, there is more going on than first meets the eye.
Meals-On-Wheels has been operating for 26 years in Ukiah, originally managed by the Senior Center. Today, Meals-On-Wheels is part of Plowshares, a community dining center started in 1983 to provide free meals to hungry community members. The program was initially handed off to Plowshares for a short period in 1997, then permanently in 2002. Program Manager Rhonda De Los Santos came on board at roughly the same time as Meals-On-Wheels, and she now oversees all of the Plowshares programs. Rhonda shares, “I just love feeding our seniors. And I get to meet so many wonderful people.” When remembering the early days of the Meals-On-Wheels program, she reflects, “When I got hired, we had three routes with 15 to 16 people each. The need has grown.”
It definitely has. In May of this year, with the help of a committed group of Redwood Valley volunteers, Meals-On-Wheels added its ninth route. In 2022, the program fed 156 seniors seven meals a week, for a total of over 56,000 meals delivered over the course of the year. This year, they are serving nearly 200 Meals-On-Wheels participants and are on track to provide almost 70,000 meals. Originally the program dropped off a hot meal five days a week, but after acquiring a reach-in freezer in 2018, they began to drop off extra frozen meals on Thursdays and Fridays to see participants through the weekend.
Not surprisingly, the COVID pandemic forced the team to adopt a new approach, one they continue today. Volunteers drive the nine routes twice a week, delivering three meals on Mondays and four on Thursdays for each participant. A driver stays behind the wheel and a runner walks the food up to the front door. Volunteer Coordinator Makayah Tollow quickly learned to refrain from reassigning volunteers to different routes. When he tried shifting volunteers from one route to another, several protested, emphasizing that they’ve been serving the same participants week after week for ten years or more. CEO Michelle Shaw elaborates, “Sometimes we’re the only person our recipients see during the week,” and out of that regular contact, year after year, lasting relationships evolve.
Some of the 100 volunteers who regularly help the program have been coming for decades. They serve as cooks, packers, drivers, and runners. Volunteer Lloyd moved to Ukiah in 2002 when his wife was ill, and he found himself looking for a meaningful way to spend his time after she passed. “It’s a godsend for me. It gets me out of bed in the morning,” Lloyd shares. He’s been volunteering for 20 years, and says after every route he always feels like “I don’t have a problem in the world.”
Margaret, who volunteers as a driver and assembly line worker, has been helping Plowshares for an impressive 35 years. She quips, “We’re like Santa Claus—everybody’s glad to see us!” And it’s easy to understand why. The gifts they bring include bread, green salads, fresh fruit, dessert, and a weekly quart of milk. Frozen meals can feature ground beef and macaroni with a side of garden squash, chicken with mashed potatoes and broccoli, or pork chops with herb roasted potatoes and grilled zucchini. Vegetarian options are available and always include a source of protein. Michelle says they do their best to introduce new recipes into the mix to avoid repetition, but they are limited by the food that is donated.
Those donations primarily come from Ukiah supermarkets like Raley’s, FoodMaxx, Lucky, Costco, Safeway, Walmart, and Ukiah Natural Foods Co-op. The program also partners with Redwood Empire and Fort Bragg food banks, so when a large volume of food is donated—like a pallet of rice, pasta, or canned foods—multiple organizations can take advantage of it while it is still usable. Some ingredients do have to be purchased, but those can be bought through the Redwood Empire Food Bank, which lowers the cost.
Born and raised in Ukiah, Michelle Shaw was hired as the Meals-On-Wheels CEO in 2018. When asked about her least favorite aspect of the role, she admits that she is not fond of the stress that comes from relying on uncertain funding. But for her, the flip side of that coin is also the best part of the job: “Making it all work, regardless.”
86% of the funding comes from private donations, 11% from grants, and the remaining 3% from other sources. They usually do not qualify for federal funding because they are a “no questions asked” program. Besides their annual holiday season appeal, Plowshares hosts two major fundraisers a year—an Empty Bowls event in October and BBQ-On-Wheels in May. For the Empty Bowls event, ticket holders receive a hand-crafted ceramic bowl, made by either local ceramicist Jan Hoyman or the Mendocino College Ceramics Club, along with their dinner of homemade soup and tri-tip dinner for two, with an abundance of sides. The BBQ-On- Wheels offers a choice of tri-tip, chicken, or both, plus potato salad, fresh green salad, bread, and dessert for four people. If you’re still hungry, you can add a family serving of mac and cheese, and, as always, a vegetarian option is available.
Jim and his wife Patty have both volunteered for over 10 years. When asked to explain the longevity of service from so many volunteers, Jim says it is the relationships with the people. He glances down at his phone to check the date before confirming that one of his participants should be getting knee replacement surgery that same morning, and he’ll be visiting him in the hospital later. He even goes so far to say, “It’s not the food they care about, it’s the contact. It’s what makes us human.” In light of the Surgeon General’s statement earlier this year asserting that loneliness is a serious health risk for Americans, Jim concludes, “We are the solution to that.”
When discussing the people they serve, Jim comments that, “Nearly all of them are in difficult situations.” He says healthy boundaries are a must, and volunteers who get easily overwhelmed emotionally don’t last very long. That said, within those healthy boundaries, volunteers can often be found going above and beyond, like the time Craig returned to a participant’s home to fix their table after his shift ended. Volunteers will investigate if a typically responsive participant is not answering their door. More than once they’ve discovered someone stranded from a fall and in need of help. And if they notice anything amiss—things like slurred speech or symptoms of poor treatment—they can reach out to the participant’s emergency contact or refer the situation to staff who can find the resources to help.
Patty worked as a public health nurse for 40 years before she retired. She talks about the difficulties she experienced when trying to deliver to one participant, in particular, a reclusive gentleman who would not open the door to accept food deliveries. Instead he had her come to the kitchen window so he could scrutinize her before cautiously opening it. The gap in the window was narrow, and she wanted to prolong the conversation, so she took one food item out at a time and talked about it before passing it through. During one delivery she pulled out an entire box of Girl Scout cookies and the shy man’s face blossomed into a huge smile. She hears from his neighbors that he has become less isolated and standoffish since joining the program.
Patty leans in like she’s sharing a secret, confiding with a mischievous smile, “The main reason I’m here doesn’t have anything to do with the participants. An older person feels isolated, and here I meet new people, find friends—it’s a huge boost for mental health.” Then she and Jim head back to the steam tables to help finish dishing out the hot meals before they are added to the bags, at which point drivers and runners will leave for their routes. In less than two hours they will be finished, having distributed their bounty for another day.
Patty might downplay the altruistic aspect of her participation with Plowshares, but Makayah holds no illusions about how essential his volunteers are to the program. “What surprised me most when I started working here is how everything is pretty much run by volunteers. We have a small staff, so everything we do would not be possible without them. It’s pretty amazing when you think about it—spending so many hours of their time here when they could be doing anything else.”
It’s a straightforward process—make some meals, then deliver them to low income seniors who need them. Yet the benefits are much more profound than simply filling some bellies. What Meals-On-Wheels provides is nothing less than community resilience, built on a virtuous circle—the volunteers find joy in giving, and that joy inspires more generosity. Through a multitude of friendly interactions and good deeds large and small, the program weaves a safety net for people who would otherwise face increased stress and struggles in their lives. And in the end, everyone involved comes away nourished, in more ways than one.
Plowshares Peace & Justice Center / Meals-On-Wheels
1346 S State St, Ukiah
(707) 462-8582 | PlowsharesFeeds.org
Free hot lunch served Mon - Fri, 11:30am - noon
Saturday & Sunday 3:00pm
Cover photo by Michelle Shaw. Additional photos were provided by Torrey Douglass.