From the Lab to the Farm

MIT Brings a Drip Irrigation Prototype to Gaining Ground’s Fields “What’s that?” has been a particularly frequent question from our volunteers this year, and they’re not just talking about equipment, plants, insects, or other common farm-related mysteries.  This year, the source of curiosity has tended to be a massive black drum, orange metal box, and […]

July New Board Member Spotlights

At Gaining Ground, we are grateful for the thoughtful, compassionate, and diverse voices and perspectives that support and guide the farm. This year, we are thrilled to welcome several new members to our board of directors who bring with them a wealth of creativity, passion, and meaningful insight: Sigmund Correa, Shilpi Desai, Sam Hiersteiner, and […]

Where Sustainable Farming and Food Access Meet

Are you interested in learning about how sustainable, no-till farming practices intersect with issues of food access, food insecurity, and the environment? Join us at Gaining Ground on Thursday, July 21, from 4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., for a new educational farm tour with Assistant Farm Manager Erin Espinosa where we’ll learn about these very […]

Deepening Our Partnership with the Soil

The past two years have been a picture-perfect lesson in why our relationship with the land we cultivate is one of ongoing commitment and learning. A drought in 2020, followed by extraordinary heat and rain in 2021, took their toll on farms across New England—and Gaining Ground was no exception. We watched as our farm […]

Farmer Spotlight: Catching up with Chrissie Edgeworth

This year, we have the great fortune of retaining most of the farmers from our 2021 crew for a new season of growing at Gaining Ground. One such returning farmer is Assistant Grower Chrissie Edgeworth. We are thrilled to have Chrissie back with us in the fields, and wanted to take the opportunity to catch […]

A Farm and a Classroom: Minuteman High School Students Learn on the Land

This June, it wasn’t unusual to spot a group of high school students decked out with hats, work gloves, rakes, and secateurs, scattered throughout the perennial beds at the farm. Once or twice a week, hard-working horticulture students from Minuteman High School pulled up weeds, trimmed overgrown fruit trees, hauled wheelbarrows to the compost pile, […]

Art on the Farm: Call for Submissions

Calling all artists! If you love to paint, draw, collage, or take photos, we want to showcase your creativity on the farm. Gaining Ground is hosting Art on the Farm—an outdoor installation of artwork along a walking route through our fields and beds—beginning September 10, 2022, and ending October 31, 2022.  Pieces will be displayed […]

Young Readers Help Seed a Year of Hunger Relief 

This spring, eager readers at Belmont Day School, Thoreau Elementary School, and Tenacre Country Day School helped to raise over $14,000 in support of our work to get fresh produce to folks experiencing food insecurity. Gaining Ground’s annual Read for Seeds read-a-thon provides funding for up to 70 percent of our total seed costs each […]

Support Gaining Ground in the Ride for Food, 5K Walk for Food, or Off the Beaten Path!

The Ride for Food is a fun, friendly charity bike ride organized by Three Squares New England. For the sixth year, Gaining Ground is organizing a team to take part in the Ride and help us fight food insecurity.  Over the past decade, the Ride for Food has raised over $3.7 million for local hunger-relief organizations in Massachusetts. This […]

Volunteer Chris Lundblad Brings Heart and Know-How to the Fields and Behind the Scenes

Having lived in Concord for 19 years before moving to Lincoln in 2012, Chris Lundblad has known about Gaining Ground for years. But she didn’t become involved until 2020, when she started helping her friend, Polly Vanasse—now Gaining Ground board president—deliver produce to one of the farm’s partner organizations in Sudbury. By 2021, Chris was […]

Farmer Spotlight: Kari Bender

The 2022 growing season is officially gearing up, which means it’s time to share our first farmer spotlight of the year.  Our May newsletter offers us a great opportunity to reintroduce Assistant Grower Kari Bender, who already has a couple months with us under her belt this spring. Kari first farmed with the Gaining Ground […]

Celebrating Art and Shedding Light on Food Insecurity

Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning poet Mary Oliver once wrote, “I could not be a poet without the natural world.” And it is in this spirit that we are bringing a celebration of art to the farm this year. Throughout our fields this spring, we have set up a self-guided farm tour of […]

Nutritious Food, Just out of Reach

“Wow.” The clerk at my neighborhood grocery store took a pause from scanning the items I’d placed on the conveyor belt, a bit stunned by what he’d seen on the cash register.   “These cherries are over $15. Do you still want them?”  I looked at the not-very-large bag the clerk was holding and answered that […]

Energized by Mulch!

In the life of a farmer, as much as deep winter is for reflection and quiet, it is also a time of intricate planning, preparations, and dreaming. Those long days of summer light are so far off, yet in just a short couple of months a rebirth will be upon us.   This season I am […]

Switching Lenses on Hunger Relief

When I was a volunteer at Gaining Ground, I thought like a volunteer. I watched the seedlings my students planted turn into gorgeous veggies, helped drive them to a local food pantry, and heard the exclamations of recipients about the quality of the produce. Yet this process only revealed to me the surface of hunger […]

The Abundance of Four Seasons

Each season at Gaining Ground brings challenges as well as successes; rewarding reminders of the impact and importance of our hunger-relief mission. Foremost among these in 2021 was the return of our volunteer program after a pandemic-driven hiatus. The joy of those first April volunteers was undeniable in their warm smiles, rolled-up sleeves, and dirt-caked […]

2022 Board and Staff Updates

Last year, we bid a fond farewell to board members Penny Austen, Elisabeth Elden, John Canally, and Gretchen Nelson. We are incredibly grateful to each of them for the dedication, enthusiasm, and thoughtfulness they contributed to Gaining Ground over the years.  This season, we are thrilled to welcome four new terrific members to our board […]

Gratitude for Shared Effort and Shared Growth

After more than 15 years of dedicated service, last year David Outerbridge stepped down from his volunteering in support of Gaining Ground.  David—who turned his retirement into a period of keen effort caring for the land and structures on the farm—was a regular and beloved presence among the farmers and volunteers. Last summer, as he […]

Rooted in Community: The Concord-Carlisle Community Chest

You don’t have to look very hard to find the parallels between Gaining Ground and the Concord-Carlisle Community Chest.  “The work that Gaining Ground does is at the core of why the Community Chest does what we do: You grow food locally, you harvest it, and then you distribute it back to people with the […]

Thank You to Our 2021 Supporters!

The board and staff would like to express our sincere gratitude to all those who gave generously and shared their time and talents with Gaining Ground last season. Special thanks go to: Belmont Day School, Thoreau Elementary School, Tenacre Country Day School, Bancroft Elementary School, R.J. Fisher Middle School, and all of the individual students […]
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