The dynamic duo of Carol Appenzeller and John Fossett get energized by food—not necessarily in the eating of it, although that’s probably true as well. But they get energized by thinking about, talking about, and teaching how to make it grow. As the new leaders of our Food Resilience team, they have a new mission to add to their passions: Get Bainbridge Island food ready for emergencies.

John and Carol first started working together on the very popular Veg Club, an online series of classes sponsored by Bainbridge Prepares.

Veg Club

John, a former merchant mariner for a couple of decades, was until his recent retirement a librarian on Bainbridge. In that role, he supported Map Your Neighborhood classes at the Library. He also helped organize a couple of the Bainbridge Prepares’ Day of Preparedness events at City Hall.

In addition, he is a gardener. His family had gardened, canned, and fermented when he was a child and, as an adult, he and his wife continued that tradition.

The Bainbridge Library hosted the BI Master Gardeners Clinics as well as a handful of gardening and composting classes taught by local experts. But John and his colleagues wanted to offer more classes on growing food.

Meanwhile, Carol, a science teacher and tutor, was also a self-described “vegetable gardening geek” with three decades of experience. Her involvement with Bainbridge Prepares was as her neighborhood captain.

One day, Carol dropped by the library, and she and John talked about the possibility of vegetable gardening classes. Carol volunteered to teach them—or, as she puts it, “I pretty much forced him to let me lead” them. That’s when Veg Club was born.

This year some of the super-popular Veg Club sessions will still be on Zoom, but John and Carol hope to offer more field trips, including tours of home gardens and P-patches (small neighborhood gardens in Seattle and elsewhere named after the Picardo family whose former land was the site of the first such garden). They want to partner with BARN for canning and fermenting classes. In March, they’re leading a tour of the Olympic Organics composting facility, which is where Town & Country Market’s green waste joins other sources to become soil amendment for gardens.

Food Resilience Team

When the team leadership positions opened up, John reached out to Carol to ask if she would join him. The duo’s goal is to “improve food security in crises, both acute ones, like earthquakes, and gradual ones, like climate change.

Even though they are all about growing food and its role in community resilience, they are also interested in household emergency food storage, which Carol says “can be daunting, so it’s tempting to assume that one has enough or to put it off entirely.” She adds, “I hope to help make it more manageable and effective for all of our neighbors.”

John says, “After a conversation with Carol, I started doing more research on nutrition needs for humans and discovered that some emergency kits available online look great but fall short of the minimums. I’d like to find a way to share that info with our friends and neighbors so they stock up on items that will help.”

Prepare in a Year 25

The Bainbridge Prepares year-long readiness event, Prepare in a Year, is back in 2025. The focus for February is food. About this month’s theme, Carol offers this advice: “Fear not the Food Storage Task!” She adds, “Stay tuned for more info later this year.“ John recommends that people join the Veg Club Zoom classes and field trips or watch the archived videos here.

If you’re interested in getting involved in food resilience, join Carol and John for upcoming maintenance parties (TBA) in the food forest managed by our partner, Friends of the Farms. You can also reach out to the Team Leads to offer your home food garden or P-patch for Veg Club field trips.

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