Groton — As birds chirped and butterflies flitted around the garden at the Groton Family Farm on a sunny morning last week, volunteer Meredith Russell hoisted up a basket she had just filled with freshly harvested carrots.

“I like gardening, I like being out with living things, and with this, it’s a give back,” said Russell, a Groton resident as she stood among rows of vegetables.

Russell is volunteering each Wednesday to harvest an array of produce, such as carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, turnips and leafy greens. She then helps package the vegetables into compostable plastic bags for distribution to her neighbors at the Grasso Gardens housing complex and residents of Pequot Village.

The Groton Housing Authority, which manages the two housing developments for the elderly or individuals with disabilities, collaborated with the Eastern Connecticut Community Gardens Association, a nonprofit focused on decreasing food insecurity in eastern Connecticut, to start the Fresh Produce Program in early July. Each week, residents who sign up for the program receive a free bag of produce.

Jamie Lee, property manager for the Groton Housing Authority and also an ECCG board member, said they wanted to bring local, fresh produce directly to residents. Easy access to fresh produce is especially important during the pandemic, as places where people used to get food may be closed or accessible by appointment only, and people are minimizing their interactions with others and social distancing, she said.

“We thought this was a great way to get the food directly to the residents where they wouldn’t have to go out and about in the public,” Lee said.

The Eastern Connecticut Community Gardens Association builds gardens, including for schools, churches and social service organizations, and for the past three years has funded the assistant garden manager position at The Giving Garden at Coogan Farm, said Eunice Sutphen, ECCG's director of outreach.

This year, the organization provided the infrastructure, seeds and plants for the garden at the Groton Family Farm on Fort Hill Road and the Whitfield Farm Giving Garden in Pawcatuck. Both gardens are on privately owned land that help provide produce for people facing food insecurity, Sutphen said. The Pawcatuck garden yielded more than 2,000 pounds of food this year that was donated to the Gemma E. Moran United Way/Labor Food Bank, she said.

Since the Fresh Produce Program began in early July, the garden at the Groton Family Farm has yielded nearly 800 pounds of food, with volunteers harvesting about 214 pounds last Wednesday.

The Burrows family, which owns Groton Family Farm, is donating the use of the land, while volunteers are tending the garden, said Sutphen.

Ella T. Grasso Technical High School students, who refurbished the garden last year, also volunteered this year until the COVID-19 pandemic.

Warren Burrows, who farmed the roughly 6-acre property before moving to the West Coast four years ago, said the garden is the beginning piece of a longer term vision for the property.

His family is looking for help to develop the property in some fashion so it would be of value to the town, and local residents would enjoy it as a place of respite and restoration. He said he would like to see the historic house and barn restored and repurposed and to use the property as a source of local, healthy food, as well as an educational resource.

Sutphen said the garden at the Groton Family Farm uses regenerative farming practices that focus on nurturing the soil, without any pesticides, herbicides or artificial fertilizers, to maximize the nutritional quality of the produce. 

The Eastern Connecticut Community Gardens Association, which itself is funded through private donations and grants, is supporting the Fresh Produce Program, said Sutphen.

Lee said she anticipates receiving a $4,000 Connecticut Housing Finance Authority grant to help offset some of the program costs.

Russell, 70, who also tends a small community garden at Grasso Gardens that ECCG installed, has frozen zucchini to later steam, sauté or boil, baked zucchini bread that she’s given to others and brought as a dessert for dinner with friends, and made homemade tomato sauce for the colder months.

For Russell, the program makes it possible to have more vegetables without paying any more money — and she enjoys the effort tremendously.

Russell, who believes it's important for people to have fresh food, said she thinks about what she can do for others and enjoys using her talents for gardening and being outdoors.

Lee said nearly 50 Groton Housing Authority residents are participating so far in the program. As residents started seeing the produce their neighbors are receiving at no cost and the dishes they are making, more asked to be signed up.

“It’s been a great success,” she said.

k.drelich@theday.com