Garden Grows Fresh Produce For Family Pantry

HARWICH – A typical food pantry might conjure thoughts of canned soups and instant mashed potatoes. Not exactly so at the Family Pantry of Cape Cod.

Right behind the pantry is a large garden that this year is expected to provide, according to Family Pantry executive director Paul Lonergan, 5,000 to 6,000 pounds of produce.

“It’s going to come off that vine today, and it’s going to be in your bag tomorrow morning,” he said. “Nobody is giving you fresher produce than that.”

Fresh produce is, of course, expensive. The crops grown in the garden supplement what the pantry gets from the Greater Boston Food Bank. The 9,000-square-foot garden, which Lonergan said is “very, very organized,” opened in 2011.

“I love the garden,” Lonergan said.

 Vendors and partners have donated plants, and there’s a special “locally grown” refrigerator at the pantry, according to Lonergan. 

He remembered a time when he first came to the pantry and saw a two-and-a-half-foot tall plant out in the garden. 

“What the heck is this?” he recalled asking.

“It's garlic,” garden manager Laura McCullough said.

“How did it grow so quick?” Lonergan said.

“You put the bulbs in the ground in November; you have garlic,” McCullough said.

Indeed, that garlic was then set to be picked earlier this summer. Other crops had been planted around Memorial Day and were also expected to be picked later. A 2024 document from the Harwich Planning Department, in fact, said the family pantry’s garden produced approximately 6,200 pounds of fresh vegetables for clients per season.

“I love it,” Lonergan said. “I love it.” 

Volunteers can work in the garden, tending to the plants that will eventually become fresh produce in the bags of the pantry’s clients. No prior experience is necessary to volunteer in the garden.
 Earlier this summer, garden volunteers were “working diligently” through a week of intense heat, according to Lonergan.

“It's 100 degrees out there in that sun, and they're weeding and watering, because guess what? It's important that that produce gets grown, and those plants survive,” he said. 

The produce sourced from the nearby garden plays a significant role in the pantry’s mission as a choice pantry where clients leave with food that people truly want to eat. In part because of the garden, a trip to the Family Pantry looks almost exactly like a trip to the supermarket.

“We have five proteins frozen, and we have dairy,” Lonergan said. “We have eggs. We have cheeses. We have the fresh produce. And today, it might be oranges and apples and pears. Tomorrow, it might be peaches.”