ABOUT US

Valley Green Feast Collective is a local foods delivery service. Our mission is to support local farms and producers, to help their products reach consumers, and to make local, healthy, delicious food as accessible as possible to a wide range of consumers.

We are committed to being part of a local food system that minimizes environmental impacts and strengthens our local economy. We aim to contribute to a more sustainable community in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts with the service, products, and education that we provide.

We are a worker owned collective business. We strive to create a just, equitable work environment that fosters growth, learning and collaboration. Our work sustains both our bodies and our souls, just as we believe our products will sustain you.

Read more about our history and worker owned collectives below.

Jessica Harwood , M.Ed, CYT, has worked on many farms and is interested in making it easier for people to eat local food, supporting local farms, and making our community more sustainable. In 2007 she had the idea for a local food delivery service and has been working on it since. She won the UMass Executive Summary Competition and a Grinspoon Spirit award for the Valley Green Feast project. She also coordinates The Gleaning Project: Helping Harvest to harvest and donate excess produce to homeless shelters and food pantries. She is the Education and Service Learning Manager of the SCA Massachusetts Program.

Maggie Shar holds a M.S. from Antioch University New England in Environmental Studies, and a B.A. from Hampshire College. She has also worked on many farms and is interested in sustainability, local food and education. She is excited to be a worker-owner of Valley Green Feast and believes strongly in the mission of the business and working collectively. An environmental educator by training, she also is the project coordinator for Fertile Ground (a school garden program), and is a program assistant for All Out Adventures.

Molly Merrett wears many different hats. She is a founding member of the Montview Neighborhood Farm, a human powered, no-till farm in Northampton. During the school year she works as a Garden Educator for School Sprouts, teaching an after school gardening class to middle school students at the Sullivan School in Holyoke. She is also a worker-owner member of the Pedal People Cooperative, a human powered hauling and delivery service in Northampton. Molly graduated from Hampshire College, where she studied Agriculture and History.

Rebekah Hanlon found a place at Valley Green Feast after graduating from UMass Amherst in 2010 with bachelors in Kinesiology. While at UMass, she became a co-manager of People's Market, an entirely student-run collective business that focused on providing the community with socially and environmentally conscious snacks! There she fell in love with the cooperative business model and gained a lot of valuable experience in its creative and open atmosphere. Rebekah was informed about VGF by a member of VAWC and knew it was a special opportunity to become part of such an innovative business model. She now focuses on marketing for the business and spends her time outside the co-op teaching dance!

Valley Green Feast was started by Jessica Harwood in the spring of 2007. Her mission was to support local farms and make it easier for consumers to get local products. After running the business for a year and a half, she was offered a job as the Education and Service Learning Manager of the SCA Massachusetts Program. She accepted the job, but also wanted VGF to continue and grow. She started talking to Alex Jarrett, co-founder of the Northampton-based Pedal People Cooperative. He encouraged her to pursue a collective model, and Jessica began to meet with Molly Merrett and Maggie Shar shortly thereafter. We began to brainstorm, share our visions for a collective, and working toward the goal of incorporating as a collective business. We share a vision of making healthy, local food accessible to residents of the Pioneer Valley while supporting our local farmers and producers.

A collective business is owned and operated by it's workers. There is no boss and no hierarchy. We make decisions together using the consensus model, about everything from what products we carry to how much we pay ourselves. As members of a Worker Owned Collective our work experience is empowering, inspiring and nourishing. Instead of taking orders and following directions we might not understand or agree with, we get to make decisions about what we think will work best. We can be ourselves in our workplace without fear of being punished or fired. We are deeply invested in the business and we know that what we put into it, we will get out of it.

Here in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts we are lucky to have a growing movement of Worker Owned Cooperatives and Collectives. Pedal People, Collective Copies and Food For Thought Books are a few of the local cooperatives who we took inspiration from. Our businesses are supported by the Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives, or VAWC. VAWC was designed to be a network in which Worker Owned Cooperatives could receive guidance, support and connection to other businesses working with similar goals. Please see VAWCs website for more info about cooperatives locally and worldwide: http://www.valleyworker.org. Support your local coops, we're working for a cooperative economy!