Explore: Hunger Relief
December 18, 2025 • Debbie Pullen
The plunging temperatures and icy walkways of winter often coincide with a spike in food insecurity. Thanks to the protection of our high tunnels and caterpillar tunnels, Gaining Ground grows food year-round, ensuring fresh, nutritious produce reaches our hunger relief partners throughout the colder months. This fall, with funding from a Massachusetts Food Security Infrastructure grant, we installed heat in two of the farm’s high tunnels. Heat will allow us to grow a wider variety of vegetables over the winter. This year, we are experimenting with early spring broccoli and onions to offer more crop variety from January through March. Learn more about winter growing.
November 16, 2025
In its 22nd year, Gaining Ground’s Food for Families program provided more than 11,000 pounds of fresh produce to 125 households in Concord and Carlisle and we are not done yet.
Community-based organizations such as Gaining Ground strive to fill the growing gaps left by federal funding cuts to emergency food assistance programs.
October 29, 2025 • Gaining Ground
We don’t grow bananas at Gaining Ground, but banana *boxes* are an integral part of our work on the farm. We utilize loads of these cardboard boxes each week to pack our abundant harvests and donate the bounty to food assistance programs. Banana boxes are sturdy, long-lasting, reusable, and stackable, and they are a crucial […]
September 22, 2025
By embracing “seconds”—produce with small blemishes but full of flavor, Gaining Ground reduces waste, supports partners, and proves that good food doesn’t have to look perfect.
August 7, 2025
Hunger in Massachusetts persists, but so does the power of community
June 9, 2025
At Gaining Ground, food literacy is more than knowing what’s on the plate. It’s about us learning to grow and harvest the culturally-preferred foods people want to cook with. Here’s how we help to connect food and knowledge.
June 3, 2025
Gaining Ground’s Food for Families program is our sole direct-to-client program serving more than 200 people.
April 25, 2025
With the generous support of longtime Gaining Ground friends Joe Rigali and Tracy Winn, we’re launching a planned giving program.
January 21, 2025
At Bedford Food Bank, the staff focuses on assisting two types of insecurity when a person needs assistance affording food: food security and nutrition security.
June 26, 2024 • Danielle Capalbo, Communications & Development Manager
For more than 20 years, local elementary and middle school students have raised money for Gaining Ground while strengthening their literacy skills, through a springtime read-a-thon called Read for Seeds.
• Danielle Capalbo, Communications & Development Manager
For the second year in a row, Gaining Ground is proud to support the Madd Love Meals program at UTEC, a weekly delivery of free groceries throughout Lowell, Lawrence, and Haverhill that nourishes about 120 households experiencing food insecurity.
May 29, 2024 • Danielle Capalbo, Communications & Development Manager
Just like a seed needs the right combination of soil, water, and sunlight to grow into a strong, healthy plant, young children need vitamins, minerals, and nutrients to grow into strong, healthy individuals. That’s why Community Teamwork in Lowell has partnered with Gaining Ground since 2014 to provide Head Start students and their families with […]
April 26, 2024 • Mark Congdon, Director of Agriculture
Happy Spring! It’s the most wonderful time to celebrate all the tremendous work that’s been happening at Gaining Ground over the many years! Our mission to grow nutritious food in support of hunger relief is both admirable and humbling. As the new Director of Agriculture, I am honored to join these efforts with our passionate […]
• Kari Bender and Chrissie Edgeworth, Farm Co-Managers
The season is kicking into gear, and at the farm on Virginia Road our team is busy with all of the tasks that mark the coming of spring. We farmers kept busy through winter harvesting from high tunnels, repairing tools, crop planning, building out farm infrastructure, and much more. Now we’re thrilled to welcome back […]
• Dani Capalbo, Development & Communications Manager
As we promote food security through local, sustainable agriculture, we celebrate the local, sustainable philanthropy that makes our efforts possible—like generous investments from The Community Foundation for MetroWest, which launched almost 30 years ago to change lives in the region. “Back then, there were many philanthropic efforts in Greater Boston but people seemed blissfully unaware […]
April 25, 2024 • Polly Vanasse, Board Member and Community Farm Team Member
What can happen when you join a team eager to develop their “game” with extraordinary “coaches” who excel at growing food and creating a sense of purpose? The inaugural Community Farm Team formed in 2022, made up of folks who had found tremendous joy volunteering at Gaining Ground and who hoped for longer sessions and […]
January 25, 2024
Winter months on the farm are prime time for reflection, and when we look back on the 2023 season—from sowing seeds to reaping abundance—we see YOU, our amazing community of supporters, at every step. Thank you! Without your generous contributions of time, talent, and treasure, Gaining Ground simply could not farm as we do, exclusively […]
December 7, 2023 • Danielle Capalbo, Communications & Development Manager
On a crisp fall morning, chef Inna Khitrik stirred a huge skillet of aromatic Mediterranean soup over the stove at Women’s Lunch Place, a Boston-based day shelter that serves more than 1,800 unhoused women each year. “We ask for just their first names, no other questions,” said Khitrik, who became the Kitchen Manager in July […]
• Allison Goodwin, Operations Director
As the farm settles in for its winter rest, we reflect with gratitude on the year’s successes and challenges. The fields are quiet now, blanketed beneath cover crop, mulch, or salt marsh hay. Gone are the spirited laughter and chatter of volunteers. The barn and pavilion are packed tightly with distribution tables, banana boxes, tools, […]
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