Community FarmShare

Our Vision: Community FarmShare envisions a local sustainable food system: …Where equity and diversity are valued as being the heart of achieving a just food system; …Where our neighbors facing food insecurity know where their next meal is coming from, and that it is of the highest, freshest, most nutritious quality; …Where residents help tackle food insecurity challenges through financial support and volunteering; … Where our skilled vegetable and fruit farmers in Montgomery County earn what they deserve to do what they do best - grow and sell nutritious, fresh produce to all eaters.

Community FarmShare links families experiencing food insecurity with fresh produce from local vegetable farms. We partner with local organic, regenerative, and naturally grown vegetable farms in Montgomery County which produce a weekly variety of fresh seasonal produce. Through generous donations from community members, we buy CSA shares (the weekly produce bags) from the farmers and provide them to families experiencing food insecurity throughout the growing season (typically about 25 weeks). This means each family in the program can rely on knowing they will be able to have healthy meals each week, delivered to their home by volunteers. We partner with other food assistance and social service providers to help us identify the families most in need of such healthy local produce.

Farm Fresh Produce Bag Packers

We are looking for volunteers to help pack bags of fresh produce for families in our community nutrition programs.

We pack produce for our two programs - "Food Is Medicine", supporting low income residents managing their diet related chronic disease through healthy food access, and our "Farm to School program", supporting families experiencing nutrition insecurity in MCPS schools.

Produce is packed every Wednesday afternoon in shifts of 2 hours from late May to early November.

Volunteer packers will help the Community FarmShare team assemble fruits and vegetables into approx. 500 individual bags that will be delivered to families across the county.

Produce Bag Delivery Drivers

We are looking for volunteer drivers to pick up produce bags at our FarmShare aggregation hub in Derwood (located at Common Root Farm) and deliver the bags to 6-8 families in a neighborhood community each week. Each volunteer's route is the same each week, which offers volunteers the opportunity to build a sense of community with the families and the farmers. We do our best to match volunteers to nearby communities where you live in order to minimize the carbon footprint and to make the best use of your time.

In addition to home deliveries, we also deliver directly to partner community-based organizations which help us as a central pick up location.

We partner with farms on both the West and East sides of the county; farms are located in Dickerson, Poolesville, Derwood, Brookeville, Ashton and Sandy Spring.

We understand that making a full 24 week commitment can be difficult; for this reason each route will also have a pool of back up drivers so volunteers can have some flexibility as needed.

In the past, volunteers have enjoyed this opportunity since it is a way for people to make a direct difference in people's lives; also, there are opportunities to connect with the families, since you would serve the same families each week. Supporting our local small scale vegetable farms is another important part of our mission, so in this way, you too will be part of helping to build up a resilient local food system!