Slough Farm & the Community
Our Slough Farm Suppers program has brought together Island farmers, fishermen, and chefs to produce nutritious, single-serving, frozen meals for those who need them most, at no cost.
Meals Provided
Now in our fifth year of partnering with IGI on SFS, we have provided over 193,500 meals distributed through the Island food pantry, Hospice of MV, the MV Boys and Girls Club, the MV Councils on Aging, MV libraries, the YMCA, Community Services, Island Healthcare and others. In 2025, 66,000 meals are projected to be made and distributed to our island partners.
We are always looking for folks and organizations interested in partnering to produce and distribute prepared meals for those in need. If you are interested in donating local ingredients or financial resources, partnering, or otherwise collaborating with Slough, please contact us!
Our Slough Farm Suppers program has brought together Island farmers, fishermen, and chefs to produce nutritious, single-serving, frozen meals for those who need them most, at no cost.
How it works
We have worked exclusively with local chefs and source as many ingredients as possible from on-Island; every Slough Farm Supper features at least one local vegetable or protein.
Whether butternut squash, Katama bay oysters, or tomatillos, Island farmers and fishermen produce a bounty of ingredients we have used for our Slough Farm Suppers program. Now in it’s fifth year, we are partnering with Island Grown Initiative to bring even more meals to even more islanders than ever before!
Originating during the peak of the Covid pandemic and modeled after the New York City based Feed the Front Lines program, Slough Farm Suppers has made thousands of meals distributed by local food equity programs for islanders in need.
At its inception we collaborated with out-of-work chefs and used local produce and meats otherwise not sold due to wholesale markets closing during the pandemic. That first summer operating out of a rented kitchen from Camp Jabberwocky, SFS produced and distributed 5271 soups and meals for those experiencing food insecurity on our island. By fall 2020, it became apparent that if we wanted to grow we would need to look for a partner to expand our offerings and streamline our distribution. Naturally Island Grown Initiative (IGI) was up for the challenge. At the time their IGI2go soup program was creating meals with gleaned produce and donated meats and distributing to a handful of locations across the island. Our official partnership began in October 2020 with a grant given from Slough Farm to IGI for the costs of containers, products, administration, and other costs associated with distribution of the prepared meals.
Resource for Island Non-Profits
Part of the Slough Farm mission is supporting our fellow island non profits. We do so in a variety of ways. Our beautiful farmhouse is available for holding gatherings, discussions, strategic planning sessions, fundraisers, continuing education and board retreats.
The farm’s Horse Barn is also equipped with a sunny classroom. This space is perfect for children and adult art classes. It can also be used by island non-profits for presentations and informational classes.
Please contact us for collaboration requests and questions regarding use of space. Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.
Katama Farm Partnership
In winter of 2021, two farmers and two educational non profits came together to create a partnership to farm at Katama Farm.
Located just across the airfield from Slough Farm, this 168 acre farm is owned by the town of Edgartown and has been continuously farmed for decades. In summer of 2020, it became known that the property would be looking for a new tenant to carry out its educational and farming operations. For the next 10 months a committee of farmers, neighbors and conservation commission members met to discuss the best future for the farm. Everyone shared the same feelings that such a vast spread of flat, fertile pastures deserved to be farmed and farmed well. The agricultural education that has taken place at Katama farm is an important asset to both our year round islanders and seasonal visitors.
Morning Glory Farm, The Grey Barn, The Trustees of Reservation (TTOR) and Slough Farm realized that while managing a 168 acre farm and running diverse, year round, educational programs was a daunting task, If we all worked together, we could accomplish the goal together.
The Edgartown Conservation Committee agreed that everyone is stronger together and leased the farm operation to Morning Glory Farm with part subleased by The Grey Barn, and the educational lease to the Trustees of Reservation with part subleased to us at Slough Farm.
We are successfully a few years into this partnership and it has been such an amazing outcome. All four parties work together to achieve the same goal of growing food and providing hands-on experiences for those interested in learning about it.
The educational lease includes 30 acres of pasture, a classroom with a teaching kitchen, an educational garden, a large barn and two greenhouses. TTOR manages all year round educational programming including a large farm summer camp. They grow an acre of pumpkins and sunflowers in partnership with the help of Morning Glory Farm, and manage a community garden.
Slough Farm manages 25 acres of pasture and the educational garden lovingly referred to as “the Friendship Garden”. We bring our livestock over to Katama Farm for the grazing season, allowing the program participants and summer camp kids access to hands-on farm animal experiences and of course- good old farm work. Our “flerd”, flock/ herd of sheep, cows and goats rotate through the 25 acres grazing the grassland and leaving their nutritious droppings as they move on to the next paddock. Campers help setting up and moving fence, watering and monitoring general animal health each day.
We raise our pigs at Katama farm as well, allowing them to root around in fields and areas that need “rototilling” with their powerful snouts. All summer the pigs get the food scraps from the cooking classes happening on site and in the fall head to the sunflower and pumpkin patch to clean up what’s left and get the areas ready for winter cover cropping.
The friendship garden is a special place. We are honored to work its soil and create an educational space that also feeds our island. The friendship garden is always open to the public to wander through and explore. School groups, summer campers and visitors get their hands dirty and support the work of growing food. Bed prep, planting, watering, weeding, harvesting are all part of the curriculum. Students that help in the spring with school groups often return in the fall to harvest and bring produce back to the school cafeteria.
From pork to potatoes, all food grown and raised at Katama farm by Slough Farm and TTOR is either used on site for educational offerings or donated to those in need through the food equity network and our partners at Island grown Initiative.
While Slough Farm is not currently open to the public, we encourage you to visit Katama Farm to see what we have all built together. Open year round for drop in guests, visit the TTOR Farm Institute website for information about programs and offering.
Community Donations
Slough Farm takes pride in our ability to share our bounty with those in need on our island. Anything we do not use on site for programming, makes its way across the island to a variety of food equity partners and non profit organizations. While we are not a large scale producer, we have worked hard to regeneratively grow and raise as much as we can on the 80 acres we farm. We prioritize our food going to places that can make the biggest impact. Our donations shift with the seasons and we are so grateful to our partners who accept and utilize what we have, when we have it.
Donation outlets include but not limited to, Island schools and preschools, YMCA of MV, Council on Aging, Hospice of MV, MV Boys and Girls Club, The Anchors, Island Food Pantry, MV Center for Living, Serving Hands, MV Libraries, Kinship Heals, Island Grown Initiative, Chilmark community lunch, The Farm Institute and Produce RX.