In 2011, we opened the Montague Farm Café as a model to be replicated throughout the United States and in Europe. In July, 2011 we moved the Café to Greenfield, MA to better serve our clientele. In 2012, we plan to open 3 new Cafés in the United States and at 1 – 3 Cafés in Europe. We are exploring a wellness enterprise and have been talking to physicians and community health providers. Are you interested in learning more or offering skills to this exciting part of our work? Let us know.
On April 2010, The Zen Peacemakers launched a unique family-oriented soup kitchen at our campus in Montague. We called this the Montague Farm Café. You can see a slide show of our Montague Farm Café launch in the left corner of this webpage.
The Montague Farm Café filled a gap in the free community meals offered in our surrounding towns (where a staggering 30% of families experience food insecurity and 18% experience hunger) and offered a wonderful and safe place for kids to play. We did (and now do for the All Souls Café) outreach with the family shelters and community meals in the area, as well as the Department of Transitional Assistance, WIC (Women, Infants, and Children), Big Brothers/Big Sisters, and youth who have been in the foster care system. We offered free transportation. We also reached out to neighbors and friends and created a festive gathering.
The Montague Farm Cafés happened every Saturday 12-3pm. So many things made this community meal special -including kid-friendly activities like make-n-take puppetry projects, musical performances, hiking, kite-making, and improv games.
We were very excited about having a health and wellness component to this meal. We provided meal attendees with free access to acupuncture, mindfulness-based stress reduction and relapse prevention coaching in Spanish and English, pastoral counseling, chair massage, nutritional counseling (including resources from the public health program Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC), and a physician. Every Saturday from 1:10-2:10pm, we hosted an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting. Our health and wellness program was directed by John Kealy, M.D.
The Montague Farm Café provided a model for our new Café in Greenfield, MA, the All Souls Café.
Community meals are at the heart of the Greenfield Let All Eat Café –at our meals, we provide nutritional homemade dishes and build a sense of community, feeding body and spirit.
We have 5 distinct tasks to make it easy for people to be involved in a way that works for them. The tasks are: 1. Donating money and/or farm-garden harvest (also helping to coordinate donations from bizes.) 2. Preparing food (main dishes, side dishes, bread, dessert, drink) 3. Serving the meal/ cleaning up 4. Wellness/ creative offerings for adults and for kids 5. Providing transportation for families to the meal/ from the meal
Let us know how you’d like to be involved by contacting laurie@zenpeacemakers.com or calling (413) (413) 367-5278.
Foundations:
A&A Hixon Fund, AsIs Foundation, Hemera Foundation, Lenz Foundation
Individual Major Donors (over $25,000):
Chuck Blitz, Jeff Bridges, Grant Couch, Shaykha Fariha al Jerrahi, Hydar Friedrich, William Greenberg, Sheila Hixon, Eve Marko, Mark Mininberg, Kathryn Pon, Geoff Taylor
and the many individuals who have and are donating time, money and supplies.