A Lakeville farm that helps provide low-income families with access to fresh produce plans to expand its facilities as a result of new state funding.
Elliot Farm was awarded a $500,000 grant through the state’s Food Security Infrastructure Grant Program, which supports efforts to ensure people throughout Massachusetts are able to obtain healthy, local food.
The family vegetable farm on Main Street (Route 105) is using the funds to construct a new 1,600-square-foot building that will provide it with significantly more space for its retail, storage, and packaging operations.
“This investment is truly essential for us to continue to grow and serve more community members,” said Dee Elliot, who owns and manages the 50-acre farm.
Elliot, the collaborative’s executive director, said the new building, set for completion next June, will enable the farm to provide more produce to PACE, and to better supply its own customers, many of whom are from low-income neighborhoods in Brockton, New Bedford, and Taunton.
Elliot Farm is one of four recipients to date of maximum $500,000 grants from the program, established to address food insecurity and the impacts of COVID-19 on the state’s local food system. In its first five rounds, 191 grants totaling $22.4 million were awarded.
Pam Kuechler, executive director of PACE, said the produce it receives from the collaborative “has been critical in making sure we are able to provide families with a week’s worth of food,” particularly when the numbers of households served by her food bank is soaring due to COVID-19.
Kuecher said it also was “really important for our clients to be able to access fresh local foods at no cost and to really incorporate that into their day-to-day cooking and nutritional needs.”
Elliiot said the partnership also benefits local farms, helping them expand their markets and visibility. Through a separate program, the collaborative employs young people from underserved communities to work on its farm during the growing season.
Elliot Farm was founded in 1993 by Dee Elliot’s father, Kenneth Elliot, when he purchased 5.5 acres of farmland and an adjoining homestead. Dee Elliot and her brother, also named Kenneth Elliot, worked on the farm growing up and took over its operation in 2014.
In 2019, Dee Elliot assumed full ownership and now runs the business with her husband, James Lough, who also operates Colchester Farm in Plympton. Her father still helps out on the farm, and resides in the homestead. Dee and her family live nearby.
Today, the farm encompasses the original site and about 45 acres of nearby leased fields, growing a variety of vegetables, principally sweet corn and beefsteak tomatoes. Most of the produce is sold at its farm stand, set for demolition when the new building opens.
Elliot said a previous job with an arts nonprofit inspired her to start the collaborative. “I wanted to take the skills I learned in the nonprofit sector and combine that with my passion for farming,” she said.
The collaborative, which is usually funded through grants and donations, was selected this year to participate in a US Department of Agriculture program that contracts with farms to supply food banks during the pandemic. The federal program funded its partnership with PACE this year, and the collaborative hopes to participate in it again in 2021.
“This work feels so vital and critical now, especially because of COVID-19,” Elliot said. “What could be more essential than helping feed a family?”
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