Stone Soup Kitchen Ministries

  June is such a huge month for endings and new beginnings. Along with all the graduations that are happening, there are also changes that occur at the pantry. One such change is that our friend Elliot M is leaving us for the summer. Elliot began volunteering with us in January, prior to our move from Devenscrest to downtown. He helped to clean out the rooms we would soon call home and to assemble the new racks. And then he basically did anything else that we asked of him. Except for one thing: Elliot rarely showed up on Wednesdays to help pack, except during school vacation week. That's because he is in high school and is going off to be a camp counselor this summer! We wish him the best summer EV-AH and hope that he returns in the fall with lots of great stories to tell Elliot, and other young people like him, help remind me that optimism and meliorism are vitally important qualities today. “Meliorism”...isn't that a great word? It means the belief that we can ...

Stone Soup Kitchen opens at 4 pm on Friday evenings, located at Shepherd of the Valley Church on Washington Street in Ayer. Please park in the Newton Street lot and walk up to the first blue door on Washington Street. Dinner is open to ANYone who wants a good hot meal and some company...no need to bring anything but yourself unless you want to! From 4 to 5, we are open for those who want to get together and socialize in the dining room. The potluck dinner is available from 5 to 5:30 followed by dessert and our open support group, which runs from 5:30 to 6, if you'd like to stay for it after dinner. This week, the potluck will feature La Sita chicken along with various sides, dessert, juice, coffee, and some extra snacks to take home for the weekend. Our food pantry is open every Saturday morning from 10 to noon, same location. Come to the parking lot on Cambridge Street and follow the arrows. If you need food, or KNOW someone who needs food...please come pick some up. Email...

  What a lovely way to start a new month with all the sunshine and flowers today! As much as I appreciate the greenery all around us, I appreciate all of you even more. We are heading for some tough months ahead with all of the social safety net funding cuts, job losses, and market instability, but I believe that you are going to help us to keep up with it as best we all can...together. I would like to encourage each of you to continue to contact our Senators on a regular basis to remind them to fight against the cuts to SNAP and the USDA, the threats against nonprofits that are built into the tax bill they are now considering. We had a great gathering on Friday for dinner, and we were treated to a visit from our local nurses from the Nashoba Associated Boards of Health. It's the first time since we moved that we've had them come for wellness checks, and there were people who were eager to get together and ask questions. We said goodbye to our beloved Nurse Maureen S, a...

  Stone Soup Kitchen opens at 4 pm on Friday evenings, located at Shepherd of the Valley Church on Washington Street in Ayer. Please park in the Newton Street lot and walk up to the first blue door on Washington Street. Dinner is open to ANYone who wants a good hot meal and some company...no need to bring anything but yourself unless you want to! From 4 to 5, we are open for those who want to get together and socialize in the dining room. The potluck dinner is available from 5 to 5:30 followed by dessert and our open support group, which runs from 5:30 to 6, if you'd like to stay for it after dinner. This week, the potluck will feature grilled sausages along with various sides, dessert, juice, coffee, and some extra snacks to take home for the weekend. Our food pantry is open every Saturday morning from 10 to noon, same location. Come to the parking lot on Cambridge Street and follow the arrows. If you need food, or KNOW someone who needs food...please come pick some...

  Good morning! It seems so early in the month for Memorial Day, and maybe especially since it's been cool. When I was a child in school, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, at least in Pennsylvania, classes ended the first week of June. Often, it was hot for that last week, and it was hard to pay attention to what we were supposed to be learning. We all wanted to go swimming! Well, it's a lovely day today, no matter what the temperature, and I hope we can all take some time to remember and appreciate the service of those service members who gave their lives for us. I have several friends from elementary and junior high who lost older siblings in the Vietnam War. It was hard for me to fully understand the impact on their families back then, especially before I had children of my own. Today and every day, I am sad but grateful that there have always been people who were willing to sacrifice themselves if necessary, for their brothers and sisters in combat and for th...

  Stone Soup Kitchen opens at 4 pm on Friday evenings, located at Shepherd of the Valley Church on Washington Street in Ayer. Please park in the Newton Street lot and walk up to the first blue door on Washington Street. Dinner is open to ANYone who wants a good hot meal and some company...no need to bring anything but yourself unless you want to! From 4 to 5, we are open for those who want to get together and socialize in the dining room. The potluck dinner is available from 5 to 5:30 followed by dessert and our open support group, which runs from 5:30 to 6, if you'd like to stay for it after dinner. This week, the potluck will feature a turkey dinner along with dessert, juice, coffee, and some extra snacks to take home for the weekend. Our food pantry is open every Saturday morning from 10 to noon, same location. Come to the parking lot on Cambridge Street and follow the arrows. If you need food, or KNOW someone who needs food...please come pick some up. Email any ...

  Good morning to you all! What a lovely day, even with that brisk breeze! I'm looking forward to maybe being able to spend a bit of time on our porch later today. We had a beautiful weekend as well and were fortunate that the rain mostly held off on Saturday morning so that everyone could come and get their groceries. We have more friends coming on foot now that we're closer to the town center, and bad weather on a Saturday can be a problem. My thanks to Tina, Jane, Lin, Charlotte, and Brian, who took care of the pantry so that I could have a morning off. Since we have consistently seen more foot traffic, we decided to buy a couple of wire grocery carts. I found some that weren't too expensive but were still sturdy enough, and were easy to put together...always a bonus! We'll see how this goes: we've given out one to a guest who has no transportation and we have one in reserve. It's never too early to start thinking about summer activities! Thank ...