A Season

for Shares

A season for shares

How do you make wonderful local food more available to people who aren't able to pay retail prices for it? That's a big question for all local food sellers. Nobody's getting rich selling this good food (just ask us or any farmer) and yet it's still out of reach for far too many of our neighbors.
Our answer at Quabbin Harvest has been to develop what we call our "Community Shares" programs. We partner with various agencies and organizations who provide funding, while our store, staff, and volunteers serve as the logistical hub for ordering, packing, and distribution.

Two programs just wrapped up recently:

• Stocking Up Shares - Seeds of Solidarity developed this program with funding from Orange's block grant. It served 30 households from Jan-June. If you happened to be in the store when Deb Habib and Nalini Goordial were doing one of their fun workshops, you were seeing part of the special programming for this one.
• Protein Bundles for Healthy Eating - This was major! Quabbin Food Connector received a $100,000 state earmark grant that had to be used over seven months (the state's fiscal year ended June 30) and everyone hustled to get close to 600 seriously hefty and nutritious bundles distributed to households enrolled through Athol-Royalston Regional School District's Family & Community Center, Launchspace, Pequoig Farm, Quabbin House, and Valuing Our Children. If that sounds like a lot of food and a lot of partners, it is! We're especially proud of this program, which we helped develop with Quabbin Food Connector in 2022 and which adds high-quality animal and plant protein to the basic produce share format. This was its third iteration and we're looking forward to re-starting it later this year with funding from generous donors.

The state's Healthy Incentives Program is our largest offering, with biweekly fruit and veggie shares for close to 100 households. Anyone who gets SNAP can enroll in HIP!

• Summer Senior Farmshares - And the fourth of our regular offerings is starting up again next week. It's funded by CISA, administered through the Athol and Orange Councils on Aging, and featuring gorgeous produce from The Farm School. It will serve 70 low-wealth senior households in the two towns over 10 weeks.

Anyone interested in volunteering to help pack shares can email our volunteer coordinator. We can always use more hands!

Posted: to News on Fri, Jul 10, 2026
Updated: Fri, Jul 10, 2026