The Morris Farm Trust is very pleased to announce a grant award from the Quimby Foundation for the pursuit of the trust’s AmeriCorps/VISTA Food Security Project. We wholeheartedly thank the foundation for its interest in helping The Morris Farm’s mission of agriculture, education, and community. Our mission falls in line with the foundation’s criteria for “work that creates and supports opportunities for people to consistently choose regional and plant-based foods that restore human and environmental health.”

The grant will allow the project to administer locally sourced vegetable sales through a food buying club targeting low income families, beginning in the Wiscasset area. The project will develop small buying clubs for SNAP beneficiaries, which allow participants to use  “Farm Fresh Rewards,” a Maine incentive program administered by Maine Farmland Trust using USDA funds. The Farm Fresh Rewards program cuts the cost of locally grown vegetables in half. Buying club members will order vegetables monthly through the Morris Farm Store, and the vegetables will be sourced year-round from farms in the Wiscasset area.

Healthy Lincoln County’s SNAP educator will help us design the nutrition education component of the project. Nutrition education, meal preparation, use and storage of vegetables will be included as a component to the buying club, with the long-term benefit being changes in consumption patterns that will support healthy family nutrition, opportunities for low income residents to participate in the local food economy, and support for sustainable vegetable production in Lincoln County.

The grant funding allows The Morris Farm to begin signing up qualifying participants as soon as the beginning of January. It is the hope of the project workers that the buying club will become an avenue for enhancing food security and environmental health for the region, a model for other organizations to use, and a viable resource for administering the Farm Fresh Rewards program. For more information, call Morris Farm at 882-4080 or email the VISTA at vista@morrisfarm.org