By Joe Smillie, Forum Editor

The Forks Lions Club dropped off more than 25,000 pounds of potatoes, onions and monster central Washington carrots at the Forks Food Bank last week.

The club made its 34th trek to Quincy to pick up the fresh produce it swapped for fresh West End lumber.

“It’s a great swap,” Randy McAvoy, head Lion. “It’s kind of tough to grow a lot of spuds here and they don’t have any wood over there. So what can you say? It’s a good match.”

Forks Lions brought over two trucks of logs Oct. 25.

Not equipped for unloading logging trucks, the Quincy set struggled to find ways to take the logs off the truck, finally using fork lifts to take them off one at a time and stash them on a vacant lot downtown.

Six Forks Lions then picked up their saws and ripped through the logs in about three hours Saturday morning, McAvoy said.

The Quincy crew then split the wood and bundled it into cords the club will sell to raise funds for its projects.

The lumber was donated by several logging companies on the West End, McAvoy said, who set aside lower quality logs for the club.

“It’s not great-looking wood, but it burns up pretty good,” McAvoy said.

After the wood was split, Quincy Lions helped the Forks gang load six pallets of potatoes, a pallet of onions and four big crates of apples to bring back to the West End.

The eastsiders also topped off the load with a bunch of monster Quincy Royal carrots.

The Forks Lions loaded the produce into trailers and brought it back to Forks where they spent a chunk of time Sunday dropping it off at the food bank.

“I think it really makes a difference,” McAvoy said. “I know last year, we brought back so much, some of it ended up at the Port Angeles Food Bank.”

The Forks Food Bank distributes food to those in need from 3-4:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays.

For more information, call 640-8211.