“Greetings of 1908. Peterborough Grange has
entered upon its 34th year. Be known it has prospered, as the records show, financially as well as in membership. Success this year rests with each member. The word Forward is a tingling, blazing, fighting word. It’s every sound indicates victory.”

— Handwritten records
of the 1908 Peterborough Grange

The Peterborough Grange’s 1908 record book was found in a heap of other Grange memorabilia in an upstairs room in the Granite building on Main Street in Peterborough around the same time the building changed ownership in the summer of 2008, according to Ruth Holmes. Holmes runs Sunnyfield Farm in Peterborough with her husband, Dan Holmes, both of whom are members of the newly revived Peterborough Grange.

Among the Grange collection are records ranging from the 1870s to the 1970s, including pictures, account ledgers, songbooks and the like, all of which testify to the deeply embedded agricultural roots of the area. As agriculture diminished in importance, Peterborough’s chapter of the national organization evolved into a service organization, Holmes said in an interview earlier this month, and eventually dissolved altogether.

“But, what we’re trying to do is put the agriculture back in there — at least in our organization because we think it’s a good time to do it.”

The Peterborough Grange No. 35 is 28 members strong and growing, Holmes says.

On Jan. 7, Holmes’s daughter-in-law, Abby, who is also a farmer living at Sunnyfield, said area farmers restarted the local chapter a couple of years ago, when some of them who had been meeting twice a month decided the Grange structure could be beneficial for the group. The group liked the idea of being associated with a state and national organization that could represent their interests and ideas about sustainable agriculture, Abby said.

It was shortly after the revival that the historical records of the Peterborough Grange turned up, she noted.

“Farm life doesn’t change all that much in this time. We still have the same conversations and dialogues,” she said. “One of our major goals is to find markets for our products and at the same time we want to be able to provide nutritious food for those in need in our community.”

To that end, the Peterborough Grange has developed the Peterborough Town Farm Project, which is to begin in earnest this year. The Project is based on the Food Bank Farm of Western Massachusetts, Abby said.

The idea is to bring locally produced meat, dairy, eggs, fruits and vegetables to those in need in the community and to compensate farmers for their work. To do that, the Peterborough Grange is fundraising and applying for grants. The money collected acts as a line of credit for local food banks, organizers of free community suppers and other service providers that distribute food or meals, Abby explained.

The Peterborough Unitarian Universalist Church on Main Street recently awarded the Grange a grant of $3,500 for the project to provide food for Peterborough’s three community suppers at the Unitarian Church, All Saints Episcopal Church and the Union Congregational Church.

“It really puts the power of spending in the hands of the service providers — the churches who are providing these meals,” Abby said.

The money goes to the farmer who is supplying the food. “That way we get a fair price for what we’ve produced.”

The goal is sustainability for local farms and nutritional food for those in need in the community.

The project has the potential to grow into a $72,000 operation based upon the Grange’s assessment of the local food banks and community supper needs, but the Grange can’t do it alone, Abby said. They’ll need the support of the community to make that happen.

Local farmers don’t plan to stop making donations to the food banks whenever they can, she added, but some reimbursement through the project will help farmers stay in business.

Peterborough Grange member Ron Lucas of Greenfield recently donated a 450-pound pig to the project for the local food banks, Holmes noted. The Grange used money from membership dues to pay to have the pig slaughtered and processed into sausage. The meat is being stored by local Grange members and is available upon request.

Fundraising efforts for the project are ongoing.

“I think it’s going to be relatively small-scale endeavors that work for us,” said Abby.

For example, Otter Brook Farm on the Peterborough-Greenfield town line accepted Christmas trees after the holidays for a disposal fee of $5 and donated the proceeds to the project, she said. The trees were then fed to the farm’s herd of goats.

The reception of service providers to the project has been very positive, Abby said.

On Jan. 11, Meredith White, director of the Monadnock Area Food Bank at All Saints Episcopal Church on Concord Street, said that the project is a great idea, but she has some questions about how it will work.

The first issue White sees is space. The food bank has limited freezer, refrigeration and shelf storage space and is only open three days a week. The other issue is will the fresh food get used?

“I would love to have a food bank with fresh food, but my moms want something easy,” White said. “Will it work? — I don’t know.”

Often, most of the fresh vegetables made available at the food bank get thrown away, she said.

“My senior women know how to cook, my senior men certainly don’t,” she said. “I think it won’t get used — that would be my fear.”

White said the project might work better with the community suppers. “I bet the suppers would love it because they get it and cook it up that day. They don’t have to store it.”

Martha Dahl, organizer of the free community supper at the Union Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, on Concord Street said, the community suppers would certainly benefit from the project. “And, the local farmers will benefit.”

“To be able to get locally raised food is good nutritionally and to be able support people who are trying to make a living raising food is wonderful,” she said.

What it means for the supper is a greater variety of meals they can serve, she said. “We can create a menu around what’s available.”

When the community supper started at the church a half-dozen years or so ago, the intention was to feed the hungry, Dahl said. “We found that people hungered for community, if not as much, more than food.”

The community supper will be helping to sustain farmers now, too.

“We’re supporting the farmers as much as the grant is supporting our ability to get food,” she said. “It’s a circle. It’s a community effort to support each other.”

The Grange meets on the first and third Sunday of every month at the Peterborough Town Hall. Donations to the Town Farm Project can be made to the Peterborough Grange 35, c/o of Sunnyfield Farm, 197 Greenfield Rd., Peterborough, NH. 03458.