Explore: Farm Update
July 27, 2022 • Gaining Ground
This year, we are grateful to welcome back Assistant Grower Rae Axner for a second season on the farm with us. We are thrilled to have Rae’s insight, dedication, and humor on the crew again, and are excited for the chance to catch up with her this busy July. What did you get up to […]
• Christine Savage, Communications Manager
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 […]
• Gaining Ground
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 […]
July 7, 2022
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 […]
June 29, 2022
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 […]
• Christine Savage, Communications Manager
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, […]
June 28, 2022 • Gaining Ground
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 […]
June 22, 2022 • Gaining Ground
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 […]
May 27, 2022 • Gaining Ground
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 […]
• Gaining Ground
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 […]
• Christine Savage, Communications Manager
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 […]
April 14, 2022 • Jennifer Johnson, Executive Director
“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 […]
• Anna Kelchlin, Farm Manager
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 […]
• Polly Vanasse, Board President
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 […]
• Allison Goodwin, Program Manager
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 […]
March 3, 2022 • Christine Savage, Communications Manager
This winter has proved to be an especially harsh one for people experiencing food insecurity. Supply chain woes and labor shortages left the shelves at some grocery stores sparsely stocked. Food prices are the highest they’ve been in years, making it more difficult for folks to afford the food they need. As a result, more […]
• Christine Savage, Communications Manager
A common refrain on the farm these past weeks has been how quickly the winter is passing. The cold season in New England can seem to stagger on without end. But with bustling harvests taking place on the farm through November—and continuing at a reduced pace all winter long—even the grizzliest weeks of snow and […]
December 19, 2021 • Anna Kelchlin, Farm Manager
As we approach the winter solstice, time and space feel more expansive in a vegetable grower’s life. With the leaves now resting on the earth there is a sense of physical and mental vastness. I can see more clearly through the woods, the hardy juncos and bluebirds who overwinter suddenly appear on naked branches, and […]
• Gaining Ground
Throughout the harvest season, produce from Gaining Ground goes to meal programs, food pantries, schools, and shelters in Greater Boston and Eastern Massachusetts. Some of these dedicated organizations use our food to prepare and distribute free meals for people who need them. Others give our vegetables, herbs, and fruit away as part of providing free […]
October 25, 2021 • Christine Savage, Communications Manager
Through the hot, dry days of June, soggy gray days of July, and all the way into October, the flowers at Gaining Ground were a feast of color and light. Heaps of zinnias fluttered in the breeze, waving intense blooms of purples, golden yellows, and stunning coral reds. Tall stands of verbena, with bright green […]
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