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Grow Food Northampton’s Annual Seed Share Offers Free Seeds, Growing Workshops

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Daily News

NORTHAMPTON — On Saturday, March 14 from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Grow Food Northampton (GFN) will host its annual Seed Share and gardening workshops alongside the Winter Farmers Market at the Northampton Senior Center, 67 Conz St., Northampton.

Community members are invited to pick up free seeds donated by local farms, businesses, and individuals, as well as many grown on the GFN Community Farm, to plant in their gardens. People are invited to bring their own saved seeds to share as well.

Everything is free. There will be two seed drops to ensure that everyone who comes can find the seeds they want and need. Skilled gardeners and farmers will be on hand to offer seed starting and gardening advice. Theree workshops will be offered by long-time gardener-farmers, and Forbes Library will offer story time for the kids. Click here for a detailed schedule of events.

There will also be tabling throughout the event by the Early Childhood Center and Northampton Parents Center, as well as a raffle.

The Winter Market, happening simultaneously in the Great Room of the Northampton Senior Center, will feature 20 produce and prepared food vendors, including locally grown and raised vegetables, meat, herbs, eggs, mushrooms, tinctures and creams, honey, kombucha, wool, baked goods, coffee, meals, and more. SNAP matching will be available to ensure that SNAP recipients can double down on their purchases.

Grow Food Northampton Announces Addition of Three New Board Members

By
Daily News

NORTHAMPTON — Local food and farming justice nonprofit organization Grow Food Northampton announced the addition of a cohort of three new members to the organization’s board of directors.

The new members — Dan Cannity, Hellen Muma, and Mark Seifried — bring a diversity of personal and professional experience to the work of governing Grow Food Northampton, and a deep commitment to the values and work of the organization to both feed community members who are experiencing hunger and establish a robust and just local food system for the Greater Northampton area for the long term.

Cannity has been active in social justice causes for most of his life and served as co-chair of the Northampton Policing Review commission. As a self-described foodie, he frequents Grow Food Northampton’s Tuesday and Winter markets in search of things to try. He is excited by the possibilities and community-building spaces Grow Food Northampton is creating and is proud to help support these efforts.

Muma is a public health professional and public health policy associate with the Springfield Food Policy Council, where she works to advance equitable food access and strengthen local food systems. Her work focuses on addressing systemic barriers to food access and supporting policy and advocacy efforts that center community health and equity. She earned a bachelor’s degree in public health from UMass Amherst in 2023 and a master of public health degree in epidemiology in 2024.

Raised farming alongside her Kenyan immigrant parents, Muma’s connection to food and land is deeply personal and informs her approach to public health work, which is grounded in the belief that access to nourishing food is a right, not a privilege, and that community-led solutions are essential to building just and resilient food systems.

Seifried has been an organic gardener and involved with community gardens and local farms since the 1980s. As a former restaurant operator and food pantry and soup kitchen manager, he has a passion for building community around wholesome and delicious food. He currently serves as pastor and teacher of Haydenville Congregational Church, leads a private spiritual companion practice, and is a community organizer and listening circle facilitator.

Cedar Chest Partners with Grow Food Northampton to Battle Hunger

By
Daily News

NORTHAMPTON — For the fourth year in a row, Grow Food Northampton (GFN) and Cedar Chest, the anchor store in Thornes Marketplace in downtown Northampton, announced their partnership to fight hunger in Northampton.

Cedar Chest is conducting the “Give $10, Get $10” campaign to raise funds for GFN’s SNAP Match program. At GFN’s year-round farmers markets, Tuesday market, and winter market, the SNAP Match program doubles SNAP users’ benefits so they are able to buy healthy local foods at the farmers markets, with the idea that everyone, no matter their income level, should be able to eat nutrient-dense produce and other products from local farms.

Figures for 2025 show that hunger is steeply on the rise in Massachusetts. More than one in three households in Western Mass. does not have enough food to eat, and 67% of those households report having at least one chronic health condition. Eating adequate amounts of healthy local food regularly is shown to improve health and well-being, and the SNAP Match program is key for many Northampton households to ensure they are consuming a healthful diet.

Launched on June 15, the “Give $10, Get $10” promotion allows Cedar Chest customers to donate $10 to Grow Food Northampton’s SNAP Match program and, in turn, receive a $10 gift card to spend at Cedar Chest. Customers can just stop in at Cedar Chest to make the donation and get a gift card in return.

“We are proud to continue our partnership with Grow Food Northampton for a fourth year,” Cedar Chest co-owner Alex Feinstein said. “The ‘Give $10, Get $10’ campaign is a simple but powerful way for our customers to support food access and local farms while shopping local. It’s a win-win-win: people in need get fresh local food through the SNAP Match program, our community’s farms thrive, and Cedar Chest customers get rewarded for giving. In times like these, partnerships like this one remind us that local businesses can play a meaningful role in creating a more just and resilient community.”

Added Alisa Klein, co-executive director of Grow Food Northampton, “with hunger growing every day in Northampton and beyond, this partnership with Cedar Chest is a jewel in the crown of this caring community. With the ‘Give $10, Get $10’ promotion, everyone can play a role in ensuring that all members of our community have enough to eat and our local farms are supported to continue to feed our community for the long term.”

Supporting the Local Food Economy

By
Opinion

Editorial

 

In talking with Alisa Klein about Grow Food Northampton for the story that begins on page 25, she shared some sobering statistics in explaining why the nonprofit’s work is so important.

One is 30% — that’s the percentage of families in Hampden and Hampshire counties that are not able to access enough healthy, nutritious food on a regular basis. Many of those are single-mother households, and for families of color, the rate is much higher.

Alarmingly, that 30% figure actually shot up to close to 50% during the pandemic a few years ago. In response to that crisis, GFN launched a community food-distribution project along with the Northampton Survival Center, which delivered food weekly to 16 low-income housing sites.

“Each of our organizations has continued to do our work separately since the pandemic ended,” Klein told BusinessWest, “but it was the pandemic that kind of set off community insecurity in a new way.”

Adapting to changing needs is critical to the work that she and Michael Skillicorn, the organization’s co-executive directors, along with their teams of dedicated staffers and volunteers, do. In fact, Grow Food Northampton has been evolving since its origin in 2009, when a group of individuals banded together to save a couple of Florence farms — land that has since become a community farm that benefits local farmers, a community garden used by more than 400 local residents, a giving garden that grows thousands of pounds of food annually for food pantries and community meal sites, and much more, including a robust educational program.

The pandemic may have drawn sharp lines around the importance of a local food economy, Klein said, but it doesn’t take a crisis to understand why it’s always important to support farming, help low-income people access food, and, as a byproduct, reduce the pollution created by transporting fresh food long distances.

In Western Mass., any support of local agriculture is welcome, whether it’s the grants, foundations, and donations that fuel GFN’s efforts to help small-scale growers or the many funding partners of the Harold Grinspoon Charitable Foundation’s Local Farmer Awards, which have assisted with capital projects on farms for the past 11 years (the latest winners will be announced in April).

Because, as Klein said, “if you lose farmland, you can’t grow your own food, and you become dependent on the national food system.” And if national crisis strikes — and even if it doesn’t — it’s good to have a safety net close to home.

Grow Food Northampton Announces Co-executive Directors

By
Daily News

NORTHAMPTON — On Jan. 1, Michael Skillicorn joined Alisa Klein as co-executive director of Grow Food Northampton (GFN). Together, they say their complementary strengths and shared vision will lead Grow Food Northampton into an exciting new chapter, advancing its mission as a food and farming justice organization.

Skillicorn joined Grow Food Northampton eight years ago as program director and was promoted five years ago to associate director. Over the last five years, Klein has led Grow Food Northampton as the sole executive director — through the pandemic, the catastrophic flood of the Grow Food Northampton Community Farm in July 2023, and a period of growth and stability for the organization.

In announcing this new model of leadership for Grow Food Northampton, Diego Irrizary-Gerould, president of the organization’s board of directors, noted that “the board unanimously approved this decision out of deep respect and appreciation for both Alisa and Michael, whose complementary experience and expertise are extraordinarily well-suited to meet the needs of GFN. By shifting our structure to one that elevates and formalizes shared responsibility, we are aligning internal practices with the justice-oriented work we do in the community.”

In a joint statement, Klein and Skillicorn added, “it is an honor and a pleasure to work side by side to lead Grow Food Northampton. We believe that our partnership will enable each of us to bring our best selves to the organization. Community food security is a collective responsibility, and it is through collaborative leadership that we can best work with GFN’s remarkable staff, board, and community advisors to fulfill the organization’s mission of nourishing our community and the earth.”

Cedar Chest, Grow Food Northampton Join Forces to Battle Food Insecurity

By
Daily News

NORTHAMPTON — For the third year in a row, Cedar Chest, the anchor store in Thornes Marketplace on Main Street in downtown Northampton, will partner with food and farming-justice organization Grow Food Northampton to conduct the “Give $10, Get $10” promotion that helps community members grappling with food insecurity to afford healthy, local farm foods at Grow Food Northampton’s farmers markets all year long.

Grow Food Northampton’s SNAP Match program ensures that low-income residents can more than double their purchase of nutrient-rich local produce and other farm products at Tuesday Market behind Thornes Marketplace from April to November and, in the winter, at the Winter Market at the Northampton Senior Center. The “Give $10, Get $10” promotion, beginning June 11, allows Cedar Chest customers to come into the store and donate $10 to Grow Food Northampton’s SNAP Match program and, in turn, receive a $10 gift card to spend at Cedar Chest.

“Cedar Chest is thrilled to partner with Grow Food Northampton for the third year in a row,” Cedar Chest co-owner Alex Feinstein said. “Our ‘Give $10, Get $10’ campaign achieves so many important goals: it supports local agriculture; helps a vital nonprofit like Grow Food Northampton; supports our local business, Cedar Chest; and ensures that everyone in our community, no matter their income level, can eat fresh, healthy, locally grown farm foods. We welcome customers to join us in making a positive impact by simply giving $10 and, in return, receiving a $10 gift card.”

Alisa Klein, executive director of Grow Food Northampton, added that “this partnership with Cedar Chest is local generosity at its best. Thanks to them and several other local businesses, our SNAP Match program ensures that food grown in the rich soils right here where we live are nourishing the people who need it the most. Every year, as food insecurity grows, the SNAP Match program grows. We’re lucky that so many local businesses understand the need to support this work. We rely on their generosity for the continued success of this ever-expanding program.”

Florence Bank Announces $50,000 Pledge to Grow Food Northampton

By
Daily News

FLORENCE — Florence Bank announced it has made a $50,000 sponsorship pledge to Grow Food Northampton to help provide healthy, local food to area residents who are food-insecure at a time when federal food benefits are scaling back to pre-pandemic levels.

Helen Kahn, manager of the Grow Food Northampton Tuesday and winter farmers markets, said the sponsorship will help residents who receive federally sponsored food support through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) double their purchases of local food through Grow Food’s SNAP Match program year-round.

The summer and winter farmers markets are an important source of locally grown, healthy food for low-income families. When SNAP customers purchase tokens at the market, Grow Food Northampton provides an extra $10 of tokens free through SNAP Match. Because these tokens can be spent only at the markets, the program directly benefits the farmers as well.

The outdoor Tuesday markets are held every Tuesday behind Thornes Marketplace from 1:30 to 6:30 p.m. from April 18 to Nov. 7. From November through March, the market moves inside to the Northampton Senior Center and is held biweekly.

Florence Bank’s gift, to be offered in increments of $10,000 per year for five years, comes at a time when additional federal support for SNAP provided during the pandemic has been halted, and it also allows Grow Food Northampton to expand its SNAP Match program to serve more families who qualify.

“Many families relied on those extra funds, and even though the pandemic is over, food insecurity continues,” Kahn said. “We expect and hope that the number of people in our community on SNAP who come to our farmers markets to access local food will increase. Local business sponsorships are critical for allowing Grow Food Northampton to meet the increasing demands on the SNAP Match program at our farmers markets.”

Matt Garrity, president and CEO of Florence Bank, added that “we have a mission to serve the community, and we are pleased to be able to support Grow Food Northampton and those it serves at a time when the need is great. We are proud to help fund a program that provides healthy and nutritious food options for folks in need.”

SNAP Match serves a broad spectrum of community residents. “From 20-somethings to seniors, individuals and families of all ethnicities within our community are accessing SNAP Match at our markets,” Kahn said.

She added that it’s important for Grow Food Northampton to keep growing the SNAP Match program because 15% of the population of Northampton receives SNAP benefits, but not everyone knows about the program or how to access it.

In March 2023, 12,640 households in Hampshire County were eligible. Last year, though, only 912 households took advantage of the program, up from 650 households in 2021.

In 2019, SNAP Match was funded with $14,800 raised from sponsorships. Last year, $45,000 was raised and assisted people at both the Tuesday and winter markets. Through local business sponsorships, Grow Food Northampton is prepared to provide $65,000 in SNAP Match during this year’s market seasons.

“We have so much gratitude for Florence Bank,” Kahn said. “Their gift represents a huge percentage of the funds we’re providing to the community. Florence Bank is a great community neighbor.”

Cedar Chest Partners with Grow Food Northampton to Battle Hunger

By
Daily News

NORTHAMPTON — For the second year in a row, Cedar Chest, the anchor store in Thornes Marketplace on Main Street in downtown Northampton, will partner with food-justice organization Grow Food Northampton to ensure that community members grappling with food insecurity and hunger are able to access healthy, local farm foods all year long at Grow Food Northampton’s farmers markets, Tuesday Market, and Winter market.

The Grow Food Northampton SNAP Match program allows community members who use SNAP (formerly called food stamps) to more than double their purchase of nutritious local produce and other farm products at the weekly Tuesday Market farmers market behind Thornes Marketplace, and in the winter at the Winter Market at the Northampton Senior Center.

The ‘give $10, get $10’ promotion, beginning June 12, allows Cedar Chest customers to donate $10 to Grow Food Northampton’s SNAP Match program and, in turn, receive a $10 gift card to spend at Cedar Chest.

“The ‘give $10, get $10’ program is a fun way to collaborate locally and support the incredible work of Grow Food Northampton,” Cedar Chest co-owner Alex Feinstein said. “We welcome customers to join us in making a positive impact by simply giving $10 and, in return, receiving a $10 gift card. Together, we can nourish our community while enjoying everything Cedar Chest has to offer.”

Alisa Klein, executive director of Grow Food Northampton, added that “we are committed to ensuring that every member of our community, no matter their income level, has access to healthy, locally grown produce. We’re so grateful to Cedar Chest. Every dollar our SNAP Match program shares with community members who are food-insecure comes from generous business sponsorships and collaborations like this with Cedar Chest.”