Today we’d like to introduce you to Kailey Burke and Emilee Herrick.
Kailey and Emilee, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Nourishing the North Shore formally began in 2015 with a small $5,000 grant from Harvard Pilgrim Health Care to start a community garden at Newburyport’s Public Housing for Families neighborhood. As a partnership between Newburyport’s Health Department and the YWCA of Greater Newburyport, we had a mission to create access channels for healthy food to middle and low-income residents in a way that supports our local farmers while energizing and educating our community around local food. Since then, we’ve developed a strong relationship with the Society of St. John, Emery House farm in West Newbury and received an additional three-year grant from Harvard Pilgrim’s Healthy Food Fund. All this, allowing us to greatly expand our programming, hire two employees, build a strong volunteer base, and really set roots in this community. Looking ahead, we are excited to soon begin fundraising to build a community garden which we will have as our home base, inviting all community members.
Has it been a smooth road?
There have certainly been ups and downs for NNS. From losing the land of our first community garden to the all too frequent stresses of securing funding, we’ve had our fair share of struggles. However, there’s been a trend at NNS where amazing opportunities seem to come along at the last minute and save the day! With hard work and support from the community, we’ve been able to turn our hardships into great successes. One of the big struggles for us has been infrastructure – over the past two seasons we have shuffled around over 20,000 lbs. of produce, bales of hay, chicken feed and farm tools without a truck. With truck acquisition as a big focus for this season, we hope to kiss the days of truck borrowing and squeezing veggies into our hatchbacks goodbye!
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Nourishing the North Shore – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Nourishing the North Shore is a nonprofit organization focused on ensuring equal access to healthy, local produce for all members of the greater Newburyport community. Our partnerships with local farms, schools, food pantries and our volunteer base make this mission a reality. Our programs are focused on growing and distributing produce, recovering excess food, supporting local farmers, gardening and nutrition education.
Most notably, our VEGOUT program is a mobile market that travels to multiple locations each week throughout the growing season to ensure that everyone in our community is able to get the healthy food that they deserve. In the 2017 season, NNS held 48 VEGOUT Mobile Farmer’s Markets between two local food pantries and distributed over 18,000 lbs. of produce free of charge. In the 2018 growing season, we plan to expand to a third VEGOUT Mobile Market located in Newburyport that will welcome all community members alike to come and get their veggies! Something that sets NNS apart is that we have our ear to the ground. We understand that our programs must be flexible and reflect the entire community we serve. We constantly encourage feedback and stay nimble enough so we can shift to be most effective.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
Nourishing the North Shore is based out of Newburyport but also serves the surrounding towns of Newbury, West Newbury, Rowley, Salisbury, Ipswich and Amesbury. NNS’s mission was established because of the clear inequality of healthy food access in our community food system. We realized that while a lot of people had access to fresh, local veggies, not everyone did – and we wanted to change that. Our programs were designed to create food access channels and education opportunities for not only high or low-income people but for everyone to access in the same space.
One of the greatest assets of our city has been the people power. We have been so fortunate to have committed and reliable volunteers to help us do everything from farm chores and egg collection to running VEGOUT Markets and volunteer coordination.
A drawback of our community is that hunger is often overlooked. We are so fortunate to live in such a beautiful area, that the basic needs of our residents come at such a high cost and healthy food is often the first thing to be cut out of a families’ budget.
Contact Info:
- Address: 13 Market Street
Newburyport, MA 01950 - Website: www.nourishingthenorthshore.org
- Phone: 978-430-2935
- Email: nourishingthenorthshore@gmail.com
- Instagram: @nourishingthenorthshore
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/NourishingNS/
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