How A Neighborhood Garden Grew Into A Lifeline For Local Food Pantries
A small decision in early 2020—plant three rows of vegetables—turned into a movement that now delivers tens of thousands of pounds of fresh, organic produce to local food pantries. The story begins with Catherine Duffy and her husband Sean, who paused their software careers just as the pandemic hit and redirected their time toward a simple, urgent goal: help neighbors eat well. That first year produced 750 pounds of tomatoes, squash, and beans, all harvested from church-adjacent land and weighed on a kitchen scale. As the need grew, the garden grew too. Fences moved, volunteers arrived, and high tunnels went up to extend the growing season. What started as a backyard-scale effort has become a community resource with two sites: a third-acre plot beside All Saints and a three-acre organic farm near Johnstown, together feeding multiple partner pantries year-round.
The heart of the work is twofold: fight hunger and grow community. Catherine makes clear that hunger has no single face, even in prosperous suburbs. Pantries report sharp increases in demand, while broader budget cuts have constrained the fresh-produce pipeline. The Garden for All responds by growing what each pantry’s patrons actually want—okra and collards in one area, tomatillos or chard in another—so families get culturally familiar foods they will use with pride. Fresh produce is more than a bag of calories; it is a health intervention with long-term benefits. The team’s organic practices honor sustainability and soil health while preserving quality for families who rarely access premium produce. Flowers are part of the mission too: beds of blooms attract pollinators and then become bouquets sent to pantries, delivering a quiet message of dignity and beauty on days that can feel heavy.
Scaling up brought real logistics: planting at farm scale with a tractor and precision tools, coordinating harvests around pantry hours, and adding cold storage on both sites to hold produce for 24 to 48 hours when deliveries stack up. High tunnels keep greens, kale, and collards coming through winter, because hunger doesn’t pause with the seasons. Volunteers remain the backbone. Companies book team days to pick tomatoes or cut cabbage. Students and families sort, weigh, and pack. Tours run year-round to show how composting, cover, and crop choice all connect to health and climate. Municipal compost drop-offs, launched with early advocacy from the team, help residents re-enter the food system by turning scraps into farm-ready soil amendments, shrinking methane from landfills, and tying local food loops tighter.
Faith underpins the project, but the mission is not political. The throughline is a series of small yeses: yes to three rows, yes to inviting neighbors, yes to winter tunnels, yes to a farm when the opportunity appeared. That posture has created room for the community to step in with time, funds, and ideas. The next milestones are clear: refine logistics, expand volunteer capacity, and scale the farm toward a projected 100,000 pounds per year while deepening sustainability education and workforce-skills programming. Meanwhile, the invitation stands open. If you can carry a crate, harvest a row, arrange a bouquet, sponsor a bed, or introduce your company to a volunteer day, there’s a place for you. And if your backyard overflows with tomatoes, pantries will gladly accept them. Hunger is a community problem. This garden proves community can be the solution—one planted bed, one cold frame, one shared bouquet at a time.
