Organization looks to help feed the county by growing its own crops on three acres in Chapman
By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
CARIBOU — Catholic Charities of Maine (CCM) is known for its creativity when it comes to fulfilling their mission to combat hunger and, through a major Walmart grant, the organization will trying a new approach to feeding the county — come this summer, they’ll be growing their own crops.
As farming carries an aptly earned reputation of hard and complex work, CCM has some pretty knowledgeable friends to help them along with the project. The $77,500 made possible through the Walmart Foundation grant will allow the project to work with Chapman couple Martie and James Pritchard for CCM to cultivate three acres of farmland. The funds also led to the collaboration with Limestone and Van Buren based Northern Girl LLC., who will be flash-freezing and vacuum sealing harvested produce to ensure that healthy, locally grown food is available year-round.
“We are very much pleased and grateful that the Walmart Foundation has so generously provided these much needed funds to start a program that will impact so many families in a healthy way,” said Stephen P. Latourneau, CEO of Catholic Charities of Maine. “Our two food banks serve 25 pantries in The County, feeding more than 25,000 people and this grant will enable us to increase the amount and quality of the food we are able to provide to folks, and hopefully encourage healthier eating habits overall.”
With Aroostook County’s population placed at roughly 71,000 in the 2010 census and 25,000 of those residents serviced through CCM’s food pantries, that equates to roughly 35 percent of The County’s population receiving assistance — which officials say is no exaggeration.
“That’s what we believe to be an unduplicated count,” said Bonnie Bagley, associate director of CCM, explaining how the pantries keep track of the number of individuals they serve.
Striving to ensure that no one goes hungry, the outside-the-box farming project smacks of that independent, “do-it-yourself” Mainer spirit.
“We’ve never been directly in the farming business ourselves,” Bagley said
The proposed fields for the farming project were tilled in the fall and are ready for spring planting — but there’s lots of work to be done between now and then.
Should Catholic Charities experience a truly cost-effective way of increasing the food available to its pantries through the pilot program, the next step is finding ways to expand the effectiveness.
“We’re using this pilot project as an opportunity to really understand the feasibility of [growing crops], and then look at if we could partner with other farmers and different ways to do that,” Bagley said. “We have a lot of ideas of what else we could do — even help individuals families look at their storage capacities and what they can do to enhance that.”
The success of the pilot program wouldn’t only mean better access to healthy, fresh foods for The County — the model could be replicated in other parts of the country.
As Bagley explained, the local-growing project is one of 10 pilot projects of Catholic Charities USA funded through the Walmart Foundation grant.
“They’re all connected to hunger and we’re all sharing our ideas about what [ideas] we’re trying and what works,” she said, adding that hopefully, a successful pilot project could be implemented in other rural regions of the country.
Around the County, Home Supply and Food Bank Director Dixie Shaw is excited for the project.
“This will help us develop true independence, providing locally grown and easily accessed fresh vegetables based on the efforts of the communities we serve,” she said.
This is the second consecutive year that CCM received a Walmart Foundation Grant, and last year’s grant funding was also utilized in the county.
“Last year, grant funds largely through the Walmart Foundation we used to open the food distribution recycling center we have in Monticello, which allows us to more easily distribute food to pantries in southern Aroostook County,” Bagley said.
