Red Shirt Farm, Berkshire Grown and Berkshire Bounty Win Grants Totaling $800,000

In February 2024, the state awarded $800,000 in food security grants to three Berkshire County organizations working to get more good food onto more tables — Berkshire Grown, Berkshire Bounty, and Red Shirt Farm. Our share, $50,000, went toward finishing our farm store and commercial kitchen. The Berkshire Eagle’s Jane Kaufman covered the story, including a look at what the new kitchen will make possible.

Originally published in The Berkshire Eagle, February 15, 2024. By Jane Kaufman, The Berkshire Eagle.

Red Shirt Farm, Berkshire Grown and Berkshire Bounty have each won grants to help farmers get food onto the tables of hungry Berkshire County residents.

The two grants, totaling $800,000, are part of an $8.2 million funding award that went to underserved communities across the state.

$750,000 to feed Berkshire County

Berkshire Grown, in collaboration with Berkshire Bounty, won a $750,000 grant from the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources. All but $6,000 of that grant goes to buying food and distributing it to 27 food pantries and other emergency food sites and programs across Berkshire County. It breaks down to $44,000 a month and runs through May of 2025.

The grant will allow Berkshire Grown and Berkshire Bounty to serve more than 11,000 people per week.

“Everybody’s expectations are that those numbers will quickly jump by about 30 percent,” Margaret Moulton, executive director of Berkshire Grown, told The Eagle.

“We’re adding nine new pantries and we’re able to increase the amount of food that’s going to each pantry,” said Morgan Ovitsky, executive director of Great Barrington-based Berkshire Bounty.

Some of the food will be delivered in what’s known as the school backpack program. Berkshire Bounty volunteers will deliver food to families of schoolchildren living with food insecurity.

The Local Food Purchasing Grant prioritizes purchasing food from socially disadvantaged farmers in a 400-mile radius.

In the past, food has been purchased from Massachusetts farms and growers in Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and New York’s Hudson Valley. Now, based on the state’s preference to keep the funding in state, Berkshire Grown and Berkshire Bounty are looking to farmers in the Pioneer Valley as well. The grant will support a total of 20 to 25 farmers.

“Most of our farmers that we’re dealing with out of state are livestock farmers, either poultry or beef farmers, so pulling that money back into the state is also a larger chunk of the invoices in terms of dollar value,” Moulton said.

Explaining the decision to source in the Pioneer Valley, she said, “There are more underserved and BIPOC farmers in the Pioneer Valley than there are in the Berkshires, mainly because there are more farms over there.”

Some farmers will deliver directly to two coolers: one that Berkshire Grown has in Great Barrington, and one that Berkshire Bounty recently installed in North Adams, as well as a freezer in Great Barrington.

Berkshire Bounty volunteers will deliver food from those locations — or in some cases, directly from farms — to the food pantries.

Farm store and commercial kitchen

At Red Shirt Farm in Lanesborough, construction is a little behind on a farm store and commercial kitchen. The $50,000 grant, which required an equal match, will go toward final construction and inspections required to obtain a certificate of occupancy. A number of larger federal and state grants have paid for construction to date.

Red Shirt Farm owner Jim Schultz said he’s hoping to open the commercial kitchen and brick-and-mortar farm stand prior to June, in time for the first tomatoes he grows.

Schultz and co-farmer Sarah French grow vegetables and heritage breed chickens, turkeys and pigs on a total of 13 acres, serving 150 families, two farmers markets, and a restaurant. They accept SNAP and Healthy Incentives Program payments at farmers markets and also will at the store.

Once finished, the 30-by-40-foot building with a wrap-around porch will function as a hub for local farmers who wish to can or process their produce to add retail value. The store will also showcase those items.

“We, as a producer, grow a lot of vegetables for direct sale market,” Schultz said. “Heirloom tomatoes have cracks and splits, are amazingly tasty, but they’re not the perfect tomato that oftentimes the customer is looking for.”

Those tomatoes often return from the market and get fed to the animals.

“So now, with a commercial kitchen, we’re able to take any of that, not just tomatoes, but all of the produce that we grow, and value add it, make it into sauces and salsas,” he said. “Without a commercial kitchen, you can’t even make a salad for somebody, like a grab-and-go salad, because that’s considered processing and that can only be done in a certified commercial kitchen.”

The space will also be used for teaching fermentation, canning and other processing techniques. Having an onsite farm store will also allow people to buy produce, something that he sees demand for on a daily basis.

In addition, and importantly to Schultz, the kitchen will be available to farmers, food producers, food pantries, for micro batching.

The closest available commercial kitchen is in Greenfield. While Schultz has used it to make ginger syrup, it’s often not worth it for small-scale farmers to schlep to Franklin County and back.

“Remember what happened with COVID and how quickly food disappeared and how hard it was to find local food?” he said. “Having that facility available here in our community is really important.”