Heavens Harvest Farm-Disaster relief needed

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asking for help but now the stakes are so much higher. Please help us save a multi-generational family farm committed to the ideals of local, organic, sustainable, and healthy food growing into ongoing perpetuity. Your health and well-being are communally connected directly to the soil at Heavens Harvest Farm and many more farms like ours. We will use the funds donated to clean up storm damage and remove affected crops and pay our farm expenses as we replant and attempt to harvest new crops. Unfortunately, the summer farming window for 2023 for new crops is almost over.

Federal agriculture officials declared a natural disaster in seven Massachusetts counties where farmers are still recovering from heavy rains and floods last month that caused at least $15 million in damages across 2,700 acres, the Healey administration said Tuesday afternoon. The declaration from the U.S. Department of Agriculture immediately opens up low-interest loans and the option to refinance existing loans for farmers that experienced losses caused by excessive rain and flooding from July 9 through July 16. A disaster was declared in Berkshire, Bristol, Franklin, Hampden, Hampshire, Norfolk, and Worcester Counties. Bordering counties — Dukes, Middlesex, Plymouth, and Suffolk — are also eligible for the loans, including those in Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont. More information is available online.



Hello from Heavens Harvest Farm, located in New Braintree Ma close to the

Quabbin Reservoir.

In 1994 Ashley, Ethel Howard, and our three children began a love affair with a beautiful 59-acre former dairy farm in New Braintree, Ma. We intended to raise certified organic vegetables and fruit to care for our health needs and share this with others as the business expanded. As public school music teachers, as well as Ashley, a playing professional French Hornist, and both of us teaching private music lessons, time was a precious commodity in pursuing a planned business under the label of Heavens Harvest Farm.

We started by providing our local supermarket with summer veggies. Over the past 28 years, we have grown into a significant three-prong operation with four major farmer markets, 15 Whole Foods stores and an operational CSA year-round with a summer membership of over 250.

We are committed to local labor relationships with high school summer help and the support of local home-school families. Also, "serving the least of these" with relationships recently begun with a partnership with Quabbin Regional School System and their Post Graduate Special Needs student population. We work with several service organizations in the greater Worcester area that provide for refugees and also with homeless and low-income residents.

Over the past several years, we have encountered an untenable reality with three disaster designations, including Covid-19 and 2 USDA declarations, one in 2021 for significant flooding and another this year, 2022, for severe disaster drought conditions.

All of this spells out a failure to keep pace with rising costs for everything associated with profitably running our farm. Farming is challenging, with extended hours and small margins financially and has been seriously worsened by factors out of our control.

We have struggled over these last three years to make ends meet, living frugally within our means, and have arrived at a crossroads.

We have been and will continue to be committed to growing USDA-certified organic produce and will always work to provide our customers with the most nutritious product possible.

All of these circumstances have brought us to this inescapable conclusion that we need help to right the ship financially for us to continue. We ask for your support beyond partnering with our various offerings to help us dig out from under the overwhelming weight of 3 huge unforeseen factors against us in the past three years.

We remain committed to our original desire to serve others to honor our faith in God, who has provided this land for us to be faithful stewards of in perpetuity.

Please consider helping further this cooperation between a local family farm of 3 generations and our client base serving Central and Eastern Massachusetts with an ongoing heart to bless, especially those who are hurting and in need of a generous spirit of mercy and grace.