Each year, CISA presents Local Hero Awards to farms, businesses, or individuals who exemplify our mission of strengthening farms and engaging the community to build the local food economy. We applaud their hard work, social responsibility, and many contributions to sustaining local agriculture.

Liz O’Gilvie wears many hats as an advocate within our local food system: she is chair of the board at Gardening the Community, the youth development and urban agriculture organization in Springfield. In that role, she has provided leadership that helped GTC buy their own land and to take the bold step of building a permanent, year-round farm store on Walnut Street – both the result of a big vision.

Liz is also the chair of the steering committee and working director of the Springfield Food Policy Council which does so much great work, including school gardens and Breakfast in the Classroom at Springfield Public Schools, and advocacy for the brand new Springfield Culinary and Nutrition Center, which will bring scratch cooking to Springfield and Holyoke public schools. Liz and the Springfield Food Policy Council have also advocated for HIP, the Healthy Incentives Program, and founded the City Soul Farmers’ Market, and over the next year she is working with CISA on a project designed to identify resource gaps for food businesses in low-income areas and communities of color.

Liz’s work is varied and vital, and so much of it has happened in partnership with other amazing people and organizations and businesses. But Liz herself really deserves the spotlight: to all of this work, whether she’s focusing on urban agriculture, school food, or food access programs, she brings nuanced, inclusive, big-picture, systems-level thinking. Liz is rooted in her hometown, Springfield, but she is always reaching across geographical boundaries, organizational silos, and racial divides to find common ground and build coalitions that are so much stronger and more effective than working apart. She is tireless about working to undo racism in our food system and calling others in to do the same, and so often her voice is a clarion call to participate bravely in hard conversations, expand narrow thinking, and to dream broadly about possible futures. So for all that, CISA is proud to present Liz O’Gilvie with a 2019 Local hero award.

Hana Martin works as Assistant Manager at Old Friends Farm in Amherst. Hana represents a vital but underappreciated group of farm workers – she is a manager who is essential to keeping the farm running smoothly, and she does it with grace and real dedication to the farm’s health and sustainability.

Hana grew up on a dairy farm in central New York, and she came to farming in western mass about 7 years ago. Her role at Old Friends has grown over the 5 years she’s been there, and today her responsibilities include a mix of field work, farm crew management, and administrative tasks, and she’s part of the management team that makes the big-picture decisions about the farm’s future along with farm owners Missy Bahret and Casey Steinberg.

Farm owners can’t be everywhere at once, and as businesses grow in size and complexity, owners have to put their trust in their crew to keep things humming along—and the people who fill those roles might not always be visible to the outside world, but they make enormous contributions to local farms and therefore the larger local food system. When Casey, one of the owners of Old Friends Farm, nominated Hana for this award, he told me that she does all the direct seeding at the farm, and then he paused weightily, and then when it was clear I needed more context he said, “I NEVER thought I would entrust that important a task to anyone else.”

That’s one example of how Hana frees up Casey and Missy to take on different challenges. She capably fills a role that strengthens the entire farm operation and oversees the crew with care and consideration, and for that CISA is proud to present Hana Martin with a 2019 Local Hero Award.

Diemand Farm is in Wendell, where they raise poultry, meat, and eggs, have a sawmill, and turn out all sorts of delicious foods in their farm kitchen. So, they are a very busy group!

The varied nature of their business speaks to their specific history: this is a farm that has adapted to changing circumstances with a lot of tenacity and creativity over the decades. The farm was established in 1930, and by the 2000s they were best known for their eggs, which you could find in stores all around the region, and for their Thanksgiving turkeys. In 2011, when new FDA regulations loomed that would have been crushingly expensive to implement, they downsized their egg production to a fifth of what it had been. Today, they are undergoing another transition in the wake of new state regulations about housing for poultry.

In 2011, when they were making this decision to completely shift their business model, each family member did independent brainstorming and they asked themselves, “what have I ever dreamed of doing on the farm?”. The outcome was that they decided to expand their focus on the farm kitchen and store and their catering business. That might make that transition sound easy, but of course it wasn’t. This process speaks to the resilient approach the Diemand family has brought to their business over the years, and it’s an example of the persistence that is required of farmers. Tessa, the next generation, recently returned to the farm, bringing her own energy and creative thinking to the future of the business.

So for building a vibrant and diverse farm business, and their tenacity in the face of significant change, CISA is honored to present the Diemand Farm family with a 2019 Local Hero Award.