“Who puts people in dirt in white?” jokes Celeste Shaw, community staple and owner of Chaps, as she stands in a bare field where a 300-foot-long communal table will pop-up and play host to 275 guests just two days later. Beginning in 2019, the farm and family has hosted Terrain Table here, a fundraiser for Terrain, the Spokane-based non-profit.

Sniff, swirl, sniff, sip, swish, swallow, close eyes in pleasure, repeat. These eight actions can allow one to enjoy a wine on their own, but when performed alongside others, they open the door to a communal experience. By sharing a toast, taste or bottle, wine can be a conduit for deeply rooted community connections.

Every Sunday at 9am outside of the Main Market Co-Op, you can find volunteers with Spokane Community Against Racism distributing free coffee and breakfast burritos provided by local restaurants Boots and Ruins to anyone looking for a warm breakfast as a way to foster community and fight hunger.

River City Youth Ops seeks to create opportunities for youth to grow and enrich their community in Spokane's West Central neighborhood. Teaching adolescents what it takes to get food onto a plate from seed to sale, students use a small plot of land as the site of their urban farm and sell the produce they grow at local farmers markets.

Stacie Kearney never expect her bread-making hobby to go any further than the confines of her home kitchen. But when COVID-19 shut down businesses and yeast flew off store shelves, Kearney sprung into action selling loaves of her Lucky Lady Bread and sharing her beloved sourdough starter “Carl" with those in the community in need of a little lift.

Free Little Pantries (LFPs) is a grassroots effort to fill the gap in our food system, ensuring that there is access to food 365 days a year. LFPs are popping up all around the country, and the Inland Northwest has taken this mission to heart. Spokane has 20 locations and counting.

With a mission to provide access to good, clean food, volunteers with the Spokane Community Garden Alliance use public spaces to grow healthy, fresh produce to the under-served and local families in need.

For many immigrants, finding the flavors, ingredients and dishes they were raised on in their adopted home countries can be difficult. But the Inland Northwest offers Almaz Ainuu, owner of Spokane’s Queen of Sheba, a unique link to her native Ethiopia: teff.

Mirak Kazanjian launched the Skewers Food Truck because he missed the flavors he grew up with as part of Los Angeles’ large Armenian community. As part of his ongoing desire to help those in need on the other side of the world from Spokane, Kazanjian has been using his truck as a vehicle for change.

With 30 years of ranching under their belts, the Wieselers aren’t always tending calves in their bathroom. During a typical winter they have a straw-filled cattle trailer in the field and a hospital barn set up to handle bad weather, but as Washington faces more and more extreme temperatures, farmers like the Wieselers are having to improvise in order to protect their livelihoods.