Massachusetts
Concord farm donates all the produce it grows to fight food insecurity in Massachusetts
One Concord farm is helping to combat food insecurity in Massachusetts by donating all of its produce.
Gaining Ground, a 35-year-old, no-till organic farm, doesn’t sell a single fruit or vegetable. Every harvest is donated to people facing food insecurity across Massachusetts.
“We have never sold a single fruit or vegetable,” said Jennifer Johnson, executive director of Gaining Ground. “We have given away everything we grow. We’re exclusively dedicated to food insecurity.”
They said they measure their success, not in sales, but in what they give away to communities in the state.
Helping over 10,000 people across Massachusetts
Their food reaches more than 10,000 people in 41 cities and towns across Greater Boston, Lowell, and the MetroWest area. And the need continues to grow.
In Massachusetts, food insecurity has more than doubled since the pandemic, now affecting one in five households. Rising inflation has made it even harder for many families to afford fresh, healthy food.
“I’m a firm believer that access to nutritious food, the kind you need to live a healthy life, is a human right. Full stop,” Johnson said.
Volunteers and staff grow familiar crops like tomatoes, broccoli, and lettuce, but also more culturally specific ones like Brazilian eggplant, Asian greens, and a wide variety of hot peppers.
“We really consider it a gift to be able to give this food to people so that it can nourish them both in body and soul,” said Johnson.
One of the farm’s longtime partners is House of Hope, a family shelter in Lowell. The organization serves three meals a day to around 200 people, with much of the produce coming from Gaining Ground.
“I’ve been a chef for years,” said Paul Dubuque, who works at House of Hope. “If this produce was going to a restaurant, you’d be paying a lot of money for it.”
In 2024 alone, Gaining Ground donated 139,000 pounds of produce. That’s enough for more than 650,000 servings. For many, it’s not just about nutrition; it’s about dignity.
“When people receive Gaining Ground food, they tell us that they have the dignity of being seen as equals,” said Johnson.
Long-term sustainability
The farm is also committed to long-term sustainability. By using no-till methods and organic practices, they protect the microbial life in the soil. That’s one key to growing nutrient-rich food.
“Good farmers grow vegetables and great farmers grow soil,” Johnson said.
“The fungi and bacteria in the soil take the nutrients and transform them the compounds into a readily accessible compound for the plants,” said Mark Condon, Director of Agriculture at Gaining Ground.
That makes the plants stronger, the food more nutritious, and the land more resilient… especially as the climate changes.
“No-till really assists when we have a lot of rain or a drought,” Condon said. “The soil can act as a sponge to absorb or a great filtration for too much water.”
From farm to food pantry, and soil health to human health, Gaining Ground is growing a lot more than vegetables. To learn more or get involved with Gaining Ground, click here.
A teenager was pulled from a pond in Milton, Massachusetts, after he went missing while swimming Saturday night.
The Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office said the teenaged male was taken to a Boston area hospital following the incident at Houghton’s Pond. It’s unclear how long the teen was under water, and there was no immediate word on his condition.
State police had said earlier that they responded to the pond shortly after 7 p.m. for a person who entered the water and didn’t resurface. State police divers, detectives, troopers, and the Milton Fire Department were all on scene involved in the search.
The DA’s office is conducting an investigation with state police that remains ongoing. Further information is not being released at this time.
This story will be updated when we learn more
A Massachusetts man is facing multiple charges for allegedly engaging in inappropriate communications and exposing himself to children.
Orate Kyle Graham, 20, of Bridgewater, was arrested this week on two counts of disseminating obscene material to a minor and one count of accosting or annoying another person.
Bridgewater police said they were made aware Tuesday of allegations involving interactions between several girls age 12 and 13 and an individual known to them only as “Jay.” The individual said he was 17 years old during conversations with the girls through FaceTime and in person.
Through an investigation, police identified “Jay” as Graham, and also found that he had regularly engaged in interactions with the minor victims. During those interactions, he allegedly exposed himself and asked the girls to expose themselves to him.
He was arrested Thursday and taken to the Plymouth County House of Correction, where he was held on $25,000 bail. The case remains under investigation by Bridgewater police and the Plymouth District Attorney’s Office.
Massachusetts
Fisherman reels in white shark off Massachusetts, then snags the hook from its toothy mouth
BILLERICA, Mass. (AP) — Elliot Sudal didn’t need a bigger boat, but he did need to find a way to get a hook out of a shark’s mouth.
Sudal, a veteran angler and boat captain, reeled in the nearly nine-foot shark — also commonly known as a great white shark or a great white — on June 7 on Nantucket. White sharks are a protected species in the U.S. and must be released immediately when accidentally caught.
That presents a nasty problem for a fisherman because the white shark is a formidable apex predator best known for the 1975 movie Jaws, in which Roy Scheider utters the famous line “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” upon seeing the big fish. Sudal, who caught the shark while fishing from shore, decided to use his encounter to demonstrate how to respond to such a situation.
Sudal posted a video of himself removing the hook to his social media accounts. In the video, Sudal climbs onto the back of the shark, secures the fish in the surf, and removes the hook from its mouth. By the end of the short video, the shark is back in the water.
White sharks typically have about 300 teeth arranged into five rows, so speed was key.
“Hooks out and back on her way in 15 seconds, not sure how to do it better,” Sudal wrote in an Instagram post that included a video of the shark release.
Sudal is no stranger to sharks, and has caught and tagged hundreds of them over the years. He said in a social media post that this month’s encounter with a white shark was the first time he has ever caught one of them in more than a decade of the work.
Sudal’s practices have sometimes attracted the attention of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, such as in 2017, when the agency investigated his handling of a smalltooth sawfish, an endangered species, in Florida. The agency said in 2018 that it sent Sudal a letter “informing him of the Endangered Species Act issues and the safe handling protocol for sawfish.”
White sharks are not listed under the federal Endangered Species Act, but are subject to special federal protections. The International Union for Conservation of Nature considers them vulnerable globally.
Sightings of white sharks off New England have ticked up in recent years, and some scientists have pinned that to the greater availability of the seals that they prey on. Dangerous encounters between white sharks and humans are extremely rare, and only a few dozen fatal white shark bites on people have ever been recorded.
___
Whittle reported from Portland, Maine.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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