MAKING THE CHANGE Sharing the Harvest Community Farm at the Dartmouth YMCA
Annual Report 2014
Growing Food, Friends and a Future Dear Friends, Colleagues, Volunteers & Supporters: Feeling like a broken record, 2014 was our best year yet at Sharing the Harvest. Donating 82,242.4 pounds of fresh food to fight hunger, we surpassed our self-imposed goal by more than 17,000 pounds! Through the combined efforts of 3,186 volunteer visits culminating in 8,100 hours of their time and talent, Sharing the Harvest was able to prepare, plant, cultivate, harvest and donate more than 328,000 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables for our neighbors in need from Fall River to New Bedford to Wareham. Serving 17 food pantries and emergency-feeding programs, Sharing the Harvest has donated almost 400,000 pounds of local, healthy food since we first planted in 2006. Through those first nine years a lot has changed. The produce amounts have changed, the volunteer hours have changed, the crops have changed, the fields have changed and the staff has changed, but one thing has remained constant, the commitment. Whether it was the staff, or the volunteers, or the Farm Committee, or the belief behind the mission, the commitment from everyone, even though they all had unique reasons for believing in it, remained constant. We are donating time, treasure and talent to feed our friends and fellow citizens. We are committed to acting, to action, to results and to making the change needed toward healthy communities. And while we continue to grow and change and improve and refine, all involved will continue to carry that commitment to action and that drive to still make the change into our tenth year and beyond. With utmost sincerity,
Daniel H. King Sharing the Harvest Community Farm Director
Derek Heim Dartmouth YMCA Executive Director
The Sharing the Harvest Mission Sharing the Harvest Community Farm has three major objectives: • Alleviate Hunger for children, families and adults in need of food assistance throughout the south coast of Massachusetts by growing and distributing nutritional food to food pantries, soup kitchens and emergency feeding programs from Fall River to Wareham. • Promote volunteerism and an awareness of hunger in our communities, and build our community through neighbors helping neighbors. • Teach volunteers about farming, agriculture, nutrition, nature and food origination. Though the major focus of Sharing the Harvest is growing nutritional food to relieve hunger, this program promotes volunteerism and fosters the education of volunteers and the community-at-large to understand and confront the reality of hunger in their own communities. Local emergency feeding programs cannot provide sufficient amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables to satisfy the health needs for well-balanced meals, especially for young children and seniors. Fresh produce is cost prohibitive for many low and low-middle income families in our region, which leads to poor nourishment among a variety of other health concerns. The key to the problem was finding a low-cost supplier that could grow, harvest and prepare fresh crops for emergency feeding programs with a one-day turnaround. Sharing the Harvest Community Farm was the answer. Sharing the Harvest also promotes financial stewardship and partnerships between public, private, non-profit and government agencies. These agencies work with local residents of all ages, incomes, abilities and creeds to fight hunger in their community by growing and distributing fresh vegetables to thousands of neighbors in need. Community volunteers from businesses, schools and civic organizations bring their energy and their enthusiasm to help fulfill our mission to grow nutritious food to feed the hungry in our community. The farm continues to create the civic involvement, goodwill, and spirit of volunteerism that we had hoped and continues to mobilize thousands of volunteers to make a difference in their community. The overall success of the Sharing the Harvest Community Farm will have a substantial long-term impact on the lives of thousands of low-income children, families and seniors at risk in local communities.
History of Sharing the Harvest Sharing the Harvest Community Farm is a grassroots effort to alleviate hunger at the local level. Sharing the Harvest was created at the Dartmouth YMCA in 2006 for the express purpose of producing fresh, local, and healthy fruits and vegetables for distribution by the Hunger Commission, program of the United Way of Greater New Bedford. While the Hunger Commission has provided food for local food pantries and soup kitchens since 1987, they’ve had no consistent supplier of nutritious, fresh vegetables. Sharing the Harvest Community Farm filled that niche. Since 2006, Sharing the Harvest has provided 289,756 pounds (or 1.16 million servings) of fresh, local, healthy produce and has been home to 14,028 volunteer visits which have collectively donated 34,365 hours of their time and talent.
Our Organizational Structure
Sharing the Harvest Community Farm is a volunteer-driven initiative under the direction of Dan King, Farm Director, Derek Heim, Executive Director of the Dartmouth YMCA, Emma Rainwater, AmeriCorps*VISTA Volunteer Development Coordinator, Emily Secor, AmeriCorps*VISTA Farm Education Specialist, and the Farm Committee, our volunteer steering committee. The United Way of Greater New Bedford assists with both volunteer recruitment and community outreach. The United Way’s Hunger Commission picks up the produce almost daily and distributes it to local food pantries, soup kitchens and other emergency feeding programs, ensuring that 100% of the food grown on the Sharing the Harvest Community Farm reaches the people in need in our community.
Hunger Agencies Served
Sharing the Harvest, through the Hunger Commission, serves: • • • • • • • •
Veterans Transition House of New Bedford Pilgrim Church Soup Kitchen of New Bedford Catholic Social Services of New Bedford M.O.L.I.F.E. of New Bedford Immigrants Assistance Center of New Bedford St. Anthony of Padua of New Bedford Red Cross of New Bedford Harbour House of New Bedford
• • • • • • • • •
House of Hope of New Bedford Harmony House of New Bedford Salvation Army of both New Bedford and Fall River Citizens for Citizen of Fall River Veterans Association of Fall River Damien’s Place in Wareham Reflections of New Bedford P.A.C.E. of New Bedford Holy Spirit of the Ascension of Fall River
Education and Outreach Sharing the Harvest Community Farm provides free opportunities for school groups to visit, volunteer, explore and learn at the farm and on the Dartmouth YMCA property. Our goal at the farm is to provide this opportunity for both the educational and civic opportunities it affords, and while providing these no-cost field trips requires additional funding, Sharing the Harvest is committed to allocating the program dollars needed to the development of a comprehensive program that will help teachers bring students to an active outdoor agricultural classroom. While at the farm, students connect with agriculture and nature in an old-fashioned way, with their hands. While visiting, the students work in the soil, pass through the pastures and wander in the woods. While part of their experience is volunteering and part is exploring, all of it affords the children a real connection to food production, food origination, and the natural farm environment. Sharing the Harvest provides them with an opportunity to get their hands in the dirt and their eyes in the wild to learn while giving back to their community. Depending on the weather and the season, kids are given the opportunity to perform various tasks on the farm, including, but certainly not limited to: preparing beds for planting, sowing seeds in the soil, transplanting seedlings, cultivating crops and harvesting and preparing produce. Sharing the Harvest Community Farm provides students a place to explore new territories, taste new flavors, touch new textures and see new sights while learning about agriculture and the role it plays in our personal and community-wide well-being. School field trips and student education is one of the many successes Sharing the Harvest has celebrated, and it has been most effective due to the positive impact volunteerism and community partnerships can have in solving community issues. Through ongoing relationships with local schools and non-profit organizations, farmers and residents, we are all helping to fight hunger and solve a serious community need. Thanks to volunteerism in the south coast, Sharing the Harvest is making a difference improving the quality of life for thousands of low-income children, families and seniors in our community. Schools that visited the farm in 2014 were: Dartmouth Middle School RARE Achievers, United Way’s spring Day of Caring event (with local high school students from New Bedford High School, Greater New Bedford Vocational Technical High School, Fairhaven High School), Tabor Academy, Carney Academy, Rochester Memorial School, Nativity Preparatory School, DeMello School, Alma Del Mar Charter School, Global Learning Charter School, Southeast Massachusetts Education Collaborative, Beckwith Middle School, Community Connections, Crossroads for Kids, Bay State College Alternative Spring Break, UMass Dartmouth, UMass Dartmouth Alternative Spring Break, and Fall River Kids2College. Thank you!
SUPPORT
Special Thanks To Our Supporters
AAA Southern New England George H Abbot Dorothy E Aghai Kathryn M Aisenberg Astro-Med, Inc Joel S Avila Benjamin & Deborah Baker John R Beauregard Black Bass Grill Brix Bounty Farm David A Brownell Shirley P Butterworth Dorothy Cabral Chiropractic USA at Faunce Corner Christian Science Society Comcast Foundation Community Foundation of Southeastern Massachusetts - Sustainable SouthCoast Fund Community Foundation of Southeastern Massachusetts - James Arnold Fund Community Foundation of Southeastern Massachusetts - New Bedford Rotary Club Fund Concordia Company LLC/Stuart McGregor Esmeralda S Costa Cove Pediatrics, LLC Barbara A Craveiro Crystal Ice Co. Inc Darden Restaurants, Inc Foundation Dartmouth Grange DePuy Synthes Spine Destination Soups, Inc Laura Dill Zelinda and John Douhan Donna M Edberg Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Farm Credit East, ACA Robert B Feingold & Associates, PC Fire Systems Inc First Citizens Federal Credit Union Henry E Foley, Jr Carol Forfa Don & Mary Fronzaglia Garden Club of Buzzards Bay Gail Davidson Glaser Glass Ruben Goldstein Walter J Granda Jennifer Hall Melissa E Haskell Elizabeth A Heim Humphrey, Covill & Coleman Insurance Agency, Inc Island Foundation JCM Electrical Contractors, Inc
Beverly & David King Donald C King William & Kimberly Kleinfeld Kurtz Family Fund Carolyn & Robert Lytle Charles H Macomber Massachusetts Service Alliance Mr and Mrs Gregory Mayhew Rebecca & Charles W McCullough Gertrude E Medicke Mary Elizabeth Medicke Richard J Medicke Daniel D Morais Alice Morgan Justin Mortensen Anita K Moses Neto Insurance Agency, Inc Not Your Average Joe’s Inc Joseph O’Connell Peter J Ouellette Pecora Corporation Prime Engineering RP Valois & Co Andrea Reno & Wade Hampton James R Rice Hetty K Roosevelt Shannon Jenkins & Doug Roscoe Gary & Donna Schuyler E Ann Sheehan Charlie Simmons Raymond M Smith South Wharf Yacht Yard Southern Mass Credit Union Janice Speakman Spherion Clay & Clara Stites David A Tatelbaum Texas Roadhouse The Carney Family Charitable Foundation The Congregational Church of So. Dartmouth The Robert F Stoico/FIRSTFED Charitable Fdn The Vela Foundation J Mark Treadup William & Suzanna Trimble UMass Dartmouth Unitarian Universalist Society of Fairhaven Betty Ussach-Schwartz Marge Waite Anne Webb Erin Williams Youth Service America Fred & Jane Zimmermann
Agricultural Production Review The 2014 growing season was our most successful to date. In 2014, Sharing the Harvest Community Farm planted, grew, and donated 82,242.4 pounds of fresh healthy produce to the United Way’s Hunger Commission. Thanks to the 8,100 hours of volunteer service in 2014, we were able to produce and donate 21,677 more pounds of fresh vegetables than in 2013. That 36% increase is phenomenal and would not be possible without the thousands of hardworking volunteers who visited the farm. Coupled with the donations from the previous seven seasons, Sharing the Harvest has donated more than 289,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables to local hunger relief since 2006.
The Harvest in Detail
May
PRODUCE WEIGHT 135.8
June
2,297
July
25,232.2
August
25,853.2
September
12,418.8
October
12,279.4
MONTH
November TOTAL
4,026 82,242.4
Monthly Harvest
Donations by Crop Crop
2014 lbs
2013 lbs
2013-2014 Difference
Asparagus Beans Beets Berries Broccoli Cabbage Carrots Cherry Tomatoes Cucumbers Eggplant Greens Kale Leeks Lettuce Onions Peppers Potatoes Rhubarb Scallions Squash Swiss Chard Tomatoes Turnips Winter Squash Zucchini
135.8 110.6 366.2 41 0 631.2 0 2421.2 11892.6 10408.8 139.6 2696 0 818.8 524 5340.8 267 7.4 1010.4 13036.4 745.8 10478.8 2942.8 12668.4 5558.8
123.8 0 196 10 44.2 0 419 1472.8 9152 6077.4 0 3678.2 92.2 187.6 64 5990.2 96.2 4.8 477.6 7798.4 582.6 4707.4 5504 9139.6 4747.4
12 110.6 170.2 31 -44.2 631.2 -419 948.4 2740.6 4331.4 139.6 -982.2 -92.2 631.2 460 -649.4 170.8 2.6 532.8 5238 163.2 5771.4 -2561.2 3528.8 811.4
2012 lbs
2011 lbs
2010 lbs
0
0
0
906.2 0 43.8
413 0 200.5
224.5 0 16
789.2 1929.8 2092.2 3576
0 53 4140 2160.5
4 183 3325.5 433
2183.2 279.4 74.2 168.2 3480.8 129.4 13 366.6 6139.2 572.6 6680.4 2060 9871.4 1967.6
1880.5 337.5 73.5 699 2234 223 0 834 4276 454.5 1765.5 5075 6108 1853.5
1406.5 118 505 279 471 91 0 321 1486 247.5 2245 2026 4912.5 15
Volunteer Information In 2014, Sharing the Harvest Community Farm had 3,186 volunteer visits totaling in a combined 8,100 hours of volunteer service. That is up 577 visits and 1,260 hours of volunteer service from 2013. Those increases represent a 22% increase in volunteer visits from 2013 and a 18% increase in hours volunteered. Each year Sharing the Harvest continues to grow with volunteer visits and hours worked, and for that we’re thankful, as each new volunteer visit and hour worked allows up to provide more healthy food for our neighbors in need. When averaged over time, each volunteer visit in 2014 equated to 25.8 pounds per visit, up from 22.8 pounds per visit in 2013. When figuring pounds per hour, each hour worked at the farm produced 10.2 pounds of food donated. 2014 Volunteer Drop-in hours remained identical to 2013. They were: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday from 9 am to 12 pm and 2 pm to 5 pm and Saturday from 9 am to 12 pm.
Volunteer Groups Volunteer groups that visited Sharing the Harvest in 2014 were: Bay State College Alternative Spring Break, St. Julie’s Youth Group, New Bedford Youth Build, UMass Dartmouth Alternative Spring Break, Hope Service Corps, Tabor Academy, Comcast Cares Day, YMCA Southcoast, New Bedford Young Professionals, Veterans Transition House, Congregational Church of South Dartmouth, Farm Credit East, ACA, St. Peter’s Church, First Congregational Church of Wareham, Johnson & Johnson, North Middleborough First Congregational Church, UpWard Bound, PAACA’s Green Youth Brigade, New Bedford Mayor’s Learn And Serve, The Trustees of Reservations Conservation Corps, Southcoast Youth Court Community Service, Santander Bank, St. Vincent’s, REEL Serious, YMCA Adventures @ Metro West YMCA, UMass Dartmouth Student Ambassadors, Target, FedEx, RJ Reynolds, NSTAR, Saint Anne’s Hospital, First Citizens Federal Credit Union, and Zeta, Lambda, Chi. Additionally, regarding individual volunteers, Sharing the Harvest hosted 11 volunteer leaders who volunteered 50 hours or more, from which five volunteered more than 100 hours. Thank you leaders! We could not have done it without you!
Thank You 2014 Volunteer Leaders! Tim Doolan Liz Hesketh Andre Goyer Carolyn Lytle Margaret Ishihara
Patrick McCarthy Anne Morse Richard Soares Ben Pierpont Anita Moses Susan Wood Jeff Morse Efrain Montalvo
AmeriCorps*VISTAs In addition to the great volunteers working in the fields, Sharing the Harvest hosted two pairs of AmeriCorps*VISTAs in 2014. From January 2014 through July 2014, Megan Berthiaume and Ellen Selley served as the Health & Wellness Specialist and Volunteer Development Coordinator, respectively. While they were here volunteering, they helped build the organizational capacity of the farm through building our volunteer base, starting the Volunteer Leader program, and developing and publishing the Harvest Health cookbook and nutrition and recipe cards for all the crops grown and donated here. Megan and Ellen did a fantastic job helping to move the farm to the next level. Beginning in September 2014, Emma Rainwater and Marah Holland came on board as the new AmeriCorps*VISTAs in the positions of Volunteer Development Coordinator and Farm Education Specialist. In 2014, they helped to dramatically improve the Volunteer Leader program and volunteer experience as well as successfully fundraising for farm education and infrastructure expansion.
Working with Nature The steady growth of the farm’s volunteer hours over the past nine seasons has demonstrated that Sharing the Harvest is not only improving stewardship of the land, but also reconnecting our youth and our volunteers with nature all while enhancing the social fabric of our communities. Both the crop fields and the woods serve as an outdoor classroom for the school-age children, campers, businesses and individuals. Furthermore, the property affords itself to creating a live, dynamic environment for visitors and guests of all kinds as the property provides open access to anyone.
Volunteer Information by Month 2014 NUMBER OF VOLUNTEERS
2013 NUMBER OF VOLUNTEERS
difference
2014 HOURS WORKED
2013 HOURS WORKED
difference
January February March April
0 0 58 228
0 6 55 235
0 -6 3 -7
0 0 138 628
0 14 117 741
0 -14 21 -113
May
630
331
299
1544
844
700
June
512
252
260
965
507
458
July
555
421
134
1650
1337
313
August
515
406
109
1545
1244
301
September
400
466
-66
824.5
1046
-221.5
October
191
305
-114
514
688
-174
November
97
120
-23
292
262
30
December
0
12
-12
0
40
-40
MONTH
Crop Diseases There were no terrible crop diseases at the farm in 2014. The crops did suffer from some regular destruction by pests, specifically deer eating the green bean plants and woodchucks regularly eating the cucumber and summer squash plants. Also, in the spring, a chipmunk continued to wreak havoc on our spring cucurbit plantings.
2014 Sharing the Harvest Funding 2013 Funding Spread Funding Contributions Grants Special Events
Amount $36,159 $59,790 $3,311
% 37% 60% 3%
Infrastructural Changes While there were no major changes to the fields in 2014 at Sharing the Harvest, there were some great changes in the wash and preparation areas. In the spring of 2014, volunteers removed much of the slippery loam from the wash station and moved in 10”+ of crushed stone for a dry, well-draining wash area. Additionally, in the summer, Sharing the Harvest fundraised for a much-needed larger walkin cooler. Moving up from an 8’x8’ room, Sharing the Harvest now has an 8’x20’ professional walk-in refrigerator. Another change at the farm was the moving of the compost area to plow under some beautiful valley soil on the south end of the fields.
Sharing the Harvest Farm Committee Megan Berthiaume Nancy Bonell Derek Christianson Marah Holland Derek W. Heim Shannon Jenkins Beverly H. King Daniel H. King Rebecca McCullough
Richard J. Medicke Justin Mortensen Roseanne O’Connell Emma Rainwater Carolyn Roberts Gary Schuyler Ellen Selley William Shell Bryan Wood
Summary 2014 was our best season yet. Volunteers at Sharing the Harvest Community Farm planted, cultivated and donated 82,242.4 pounds of fresh, local, healthy produce to our neighbors in need along the Southcoast. That huge volume of food is all thanks to the tremendous effort of 3,186 volunteer visits which provided 8,100 hours of volunteer service. Without those volunteers and the farm’s supporters, none of the 41 tons of produce donated would have been available for the United Way’s Hunger Commission In 2014 Sharing the Harvest donated 21,677 more pounds of fresh, local produce than in 2013 made possible by the 577 additional volunteer visits and 1,260 more labor hours donated. Now with 2015 upon, we have the even-greater goal to surpass 82,000 pounds of food donated, so please, join us this season to make it the best season ever!
276 Gulf Road Dartmouth MA 02748 508.993.3361 ∙ ymcasouthcoast.org