Feeding Massachusetts: Farms and Gardens Donate Their Harvest
Medford Food Pantry Garden
Photo by Michael Piazza
Down dirt roads and paths, in raised beds and fields, behind churches and historic buildings, people are growing vegetables and fruit and giving them away for free. A few are paid farmers, some are master gardeners, many are volunteers; all are people who want to connect with the land and to give back, working in the fields to help with hunger relief while planting, growing and harvesting a community amongst themselves.
AURELIA’S GARDEN
“I’ll grow broccoli and cauliflower,” Kathy Martin says, and Hannah Traggis hands her packets containing about 200 seeds of each. Martin will start the seeds at home before bringing them to Wayland to be planted. The two gardeners are part of Aurelia’s Garden, a nonprofit organized to grow food for local food pantries.
About a dozen volunteers—some retired, some still working—grow seedlings at home and then plant them on an acre in Wayland they call “Patterson’s Field,” named after its owner. The farm is protected by a conservation restriction and the owner comes by weekly to fill a basket with fresh produce—his only ask, besides the maintenance of the soil’s health.
“We’re not taking secondhand produce to food pantries,” Traggis says. “We’re here to give people real food that they want, that they need, that’s nutritious, that’s ethically grown and ethnically relevant to the populations we serve.” Aurelia’s Garden also grows food at Medway Community Farm for two of Medway’s food pantries.
CAPASSO GARDEN OF GIVING
“I love gardening,” says Gretel Anspach, and because she’s growing food for others, “I can put as much effort into it and not feel like I’m being selfish.” Anspach grows vegetables for local food pantries on a 10,000-square-foot plot in Hudson.
Before retirement, Anspach worked as an engineer at Raytheon where she started a food pantry garden to help employees get more involved in the community. When her neighbor, Mike Manere, learned about the Raytheon garden, he persuaded the owner of the land behind their houses, the late Dan Capasso, to let them farm his land. His daughter now allows them to continue farming the land in his memory.
Anspach doesn’t grow potatoes or onions because the Greater Boston Food Bank already provides those to local food pantries, and she doesn’t grow lettuce as it doesn’t do well in the field’s sandy soil. Instead she grows herbs, musk melons and some vegetables that the food pantries may not get every week, like beans, bok choy, broccoli, carrots, cucumbers, eggplant, garlic, maxixe (West Indian Burr Gherkin), okra, parsley, peas, peppers, pumpkins, radishes, summer squash, tomatillos, tomatoes and winter squash.
The harvest is donated to the Maynard and Marlborough food pantries, where Anspach volunteers 25 hours per week.
While Anspach does the cultivating and the growing, Manere manages the property and the equipment. They are friends and neighbors. “She’s the brains,” Manere says. “And he’s the tools,” she laughs. Besides Anspach and Manere, there are four regular volunteers. “We can always use more help,” Anspach says, “especially during peak growing season which is also peak weed-growing season.”
facebook.com/CapassoFoodPantryFarm
COMMUNITY HARVEST PROJECT
“You planted a row of kale!” Amanda Carrier, farm coordinator of Community Harvest Project (CHP), says to a group of drop-in volunteers. “That’s 716 plants, which will create 7,160 servings.” She adds that the 640 pounds of squash they washed and packed that morning would create 2,560 servings.
In the 1970s, when a local family learned that their neighbors couldn’t afford fresh produce, they invited community members to help grow vegetables on their farm to give away. This community effort is now a thriving organization located in Grafton (15 acres of farmland) and Harvard (30 acres of orchards), with a mission to engage and educate volunteers to grow fresh fruits and vegetables for hunger relief.
“We grow crops and we grow volunteers,” says Tori Buerschaper, executive director. CHP accepts volunteers of all ages, from schools and corporations to families and individuals. Every volunteer gets an orientation and an education in food insecurity then performs whatever farm tasks are being done that day.
Last year, CHP harvested and distributed 274,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables to 18 hunger relief partners, including the Worcester County Food Bank and Community Servings, with the help of 3,675 volunteers. According to Buerschaper, the number of volunteers in 2019 (pre-COVID) numbered twice that. “We provide meaningful work for everyone who participates,” she says.
GAINING GROUND
What started as a small private garden in Concord in the 1990s is now Gaining Ground, a volunteer-driven organization that grows and harvests vegetables, fruits and herbs on three acres to give away to local hunger-relief programs. The farm includes a barn raised by its community of growers and a maple sugaring operation every spring.
“From early April through late October, we depend upon thousands of helping hands working outside with us morning and afternoon,” says Christine Savage, communications manager for Gaining Ground.
With a small staff of paid farmers and over 2,500 volunteers in a typical year, the farm produces over 120,000 pounds of food annually, partnering with local food access organizations to distribute the food it grows in its fields using organic, no-till, regenerative farming practices.
“The work done together with our farmers—by children and adults—grows a community where people know one another, work together in the fields and learn together about hunger, growing a just food system and caring for the land,” Savage says.
MEDFORD FOOD PANTRY GARDEN
When a master gardener saw a need to bring fresh produce to her community, she made it happen. In 2016, after gaining support from the Unitarian Universalist Church of Medford and Medford’s Community Cupboard Food Pantry for a food pantry garden, Joan Parker and several other master gardener volunteers began gardening land around the church, beneath a stained glass window and behind the rectory. Their goal was and is to involve the community and to welcome and teach anyone who is interested in learning about growing food.
While the soil is sandy and full of rocks and much of the garden is shaded, the gardeners work with what they have, choosing plants that have a good yield for small spaces and growing some herbs and seeds at home before planting the seedlings in raised beds at the church garden. They also grow food in two beds at the Winthrop Street Community Garden and provide support for the Grace Episcopal Church’s food pantry garden across the street.
“We focus on crops that are of interest to those who get food at the pantry,” Susan Hammond says, and food they don’t already get, such as fresh herbs, hot peppers and Japanese style eggplants.
“Being on the grounds of the food pantry lets us give folks the freshest food possible,” says Hammond. The gardeners meet on Thursday afternoons to cultivate and harvest, handing packaged crops to the food pantry volunteers before that evening’s distribution.
uumedford.org/connection/food-pantry
NEW ENTRY SUSTAINABLE FARMING PROJECT
On Moraine Farm in Beverly, people are learning to farm as part of the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project, an initiative of Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. New Entry purchases crops the farmers grow on this incubator farm to provide food for seniors and others who need access to fresh food.
Though its mission is to educate the next generation of farmers to produce food that is “sustainable, nutritious and culturally preferred” and make the food “accessible to individuals regardless of age, mobility, ethnicity or socio-economic status,” 50% of New Entry’s work is in food access, according to Ginger Turner, New Entry’s Food Hub program manager.
New Entry purchases produce from the 13 incubator farm businesses plus an additional 20-plus graduate farmers. Funding from local organizations and private donors allows New Entry to pay farmers a fair price while “providing healthy fresh produce to food-insecure seniors and food pantries,” says Turner. A USDA local food promotion grant allows New Entry to continue to extend seniors’ access to local food in the winter by offering flash-frozen vegetables and shelf-stable soups and sauces.
New Entry volunteers do field work and pack CSA shares in the Food Hub. Other ways to help include buying a New Entry CSA share, which, according to New Entry’s website, helps “provide micro-loans to local farmers and help fund the food access work performed by our staff.”
THREE SISTERS GARDEN PROJECT
“Even here on the wealthy North Shore there are a lot of people struggling,” says Elizabeth Green, executive director of the Three Sisters Garden Project in Ipswich. Providing people with access to healthy food is part of the organization’s mission.
The project began in 2012 when a small group of community members came together to provide fresh produce to people on the North Shore while educating the “next generation of farmers, land stewards and food system advocates.”
Its first crops were harvested in 2015 on four acres owned by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, who run an adjacent nature-based preschool and are supportive partners and cheerleaders in the project’s mission, according to Green. Two retired nuns are now volunteers.
“We give a significant number of shares away for free to people who need them and through food pantries so low-income households can have access to fresh produce,” Green says, adding that over 30% of what they grow reaches people who would otherwise lack access to fresh, local produce.
The project offers volunteer opportunities as well as payment of its 280 CSA shares on a sliding scale. Most of their funding is by local individual donors. “We feel everybody benefits from high-quality, low-cost food,” Green says.
WALTHAM FIELDS COMMUNITY FARM
When a group of passionate volunteers began farming four acres of fallow fields in Waltham in 1995, they formed Waltham Fields Community Farm (WFCF), an organization with a mission of hunger relief, education and farm preservation.
WFCF now grows crops using organic methods, offers vegetable and flower CSA shares and a Food for All program with subsidized CSA shares to those who can’t afford to pay full price. There are adult and children’s education programs and opportunities for volunteers to help grow and harvest the vegetables it donates to food banks.
In 2020, WFCF created its Mobile Outreach Market, using its farm trucks to bring boxes of food straight to the people. This year, through the state’s Food Security Infrastructure Grant Program, WFCF was able to create a community outreach farmer position and to acquire a van dedicated to the distribution of the farm’s harvest to people who aren’t able to travel to the farm themselves.
“Because we believe that fresh, local food should be available to all members of our community, we also partner with several local organizations to provide our vegetables to low-income families and individuals needing access to the nourishing harvests of local farms,” says Stacey Daley, executive director. Her hope is that the land can protect and feed people for years to come.
This story appeared in the Fall 2021 issue.
