Food insecurity in MA is at its highest rate - with 1 in 3 people facing it daily.
Land's Sake Farm donates a significant portion of our crops to hunger relief organizations, who distribute our fresh produce where it's needed most: food pantries, shelters, and nutrition/cooking education and food access programs. Donation produce comes from a variety of farm sources, including subsidized and unclaimed CSA shares, the Weston senior veggie voucher program, bumper crops, Farmstand extra stock, and gleaning harvests from our fields. Our goal: that no vegetables go to waste each season.
Charitable food donation is fundamental to Land’s Sake’s history. In the 1970s, Weston’s Youth Office funded Green Power Farm, and began growing food for lower income families. In 1991, Green Power Farm came under the auspices of Land’s Sake, and Weston’s Conservation Commission formally established a hunger relief program, under which the WCC annually contracts a local farm to grow and locally donate $25,000 of produce, and conduct educational programming.
We partner with local hunger relief agencies to get fresh produce into the hands of people who would otherwise have difficulty accessing or affording healthy food. We are proud to harvest and pack hundreds of pounds of quality vegetables for pickup and delivery by our partners, every week: Food for Free, Lovin’ Spoonfuls Food Rescue, Boston Area Gleaners, Rosie's Place, St. Julia's Parish, the Newton Food Pantry, and the Weston Council on Aging.
IN 2022, LAND'S SAKE FARM DONATED OVER 45,000 LBS OF FRESH PRODUCE TO THOSE IN NEED
- $500: Two weeks of food donated to Food for Free
- $250: One weekly pickup by Lovin' Spoonfuls, which donates to those in need throughout the Boston metro area.
- $100 - Fresh early season greens for the Bristol Lodge (family homeless shelter)
- $30 - One week of vegetables and flowers for a low income Weston Senior couple
Thank you for your support, and for helping other families to experience the nutritious benefits of farm fresh, local food. Your sponsorship may be tax deductible, to the extent provided by law, and you'll receive a tax receipt within two weeks of your donation.
For more information on our Hunger Relief program, please contact Sylvia: sylvia@landssake.org.
As the contracted grower for the Town of Weston, Land's Sake Farm kicks off each season by donating 15,000 pounds of produce to reach the goal of $25,000 -- but we don't stop there. As farm production ramps up, so too do our donations. In the past several years we have donated the following to our partners:
"The terms hunger relief and food insecurity are often used interchangeable, though they are recognized as distinct concepts. "Hunger" refers to a physical sensation that most of us may be familiar with, a sensation that can be fixed by grabbing a snack. For folks that are food insecure, they experience the sensations of hunger accompanied by the lack of resources and access to not only healthy, nutritious food, but also, food that meets their dietary needs and cultural preferences. Food insecurity is often influenced and made complicated by one's surrounding conditions - employment, income, housing, race/ethnicity, and disability." - Project Bread (Mar. 19)
"Food insecurity is disproportionately experienced by people of color, immigrant families, and those with fewer economic means. It feeds into the cycle of poverty, perpetuating the generational pattern of hunger and the inequities that go with it." -Project Bread website
Our hunger relief program is made possible thanks to the support of the Town of Weston and the Weston Conservation Commission.
Thank you to the Foundation for MetroWest for supporting hunger relief at Land's Sake!