Stone Soup Kitchen Ministries

  Good morning everyone! You are probably in the process of shoveling out, so please take good care of yourselves and take frequent breaks. We are fortunate that it isn't too heavy, but it certainly is DEEP! I want to thank everyone who came out Saturday afternoon to join in our first Partners, Participants, and Allies meeting. You guys rocked it! We got so many good suggestions that it's going to be hard for our Board to choose just one or two. For those who couldn't make it, you are welcome to send me suggestions via email and I'll add them to the lists. What we did was to consider how to best honor our motto, "Building a bigger and more inclusive table" and our official mission statement: "Stone Soup Kitchen is a relational food and community-building 501(c)3, which is community-funded. We work to alleviate food insecurity and hunger, while also bringing marginalized and lonely people together for food and friendship with other communi...

  Stone Soup Kitchen opens at 4 pm on Friday evenings, located in 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, our potluck with feature meat loaf, 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 any...

Good morning everyone!  Martin Luther King Jr has been a great source of inspiration for me in my work over many decades.  If I've calculated properly, I was in 3rd grade when he was murdered, and I remember telling my mother that the news man said that some king had been shot.  She knew immediately whom they were talking about, and it caused no small amount of distress in my family.  It wasn't until years later that I better understood his work and his impact on society.  I hope you have also been inspired by his life and legacy, and if you want to learn more, I can't recommend anything better than his "Letters from a Birmingham Jail." We want to remind you all one last time, that this coming Saturday, January 24, is our Partners, Participants, and Allies Meeting at 1:00pm at Shepherd of the Valley Church.  Everyone is welcome to come and see what's going on and help us chart a course for the future.  Even if you haven't volunteered or donated, if y...

  Stone Soup Kitchen opens at 4 pm on Friday evenings, located in 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, our potluck with feature chicken with gravy or mustard sauce, 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 ...

  Good morning, and please plan to come to our first ever meeting of all of Stone Soup Kitchen's stakeholders! SSK is an organization in which ALL participants are seen as having an interest in its success, so everyone is invited to this first (annual?) meeting of Partners, Participants, and Allies! Whether you support SSK materially or financially, through prayer and goodwill, through volunteer hours, and/or through visiting us and enjoying our services, we cordially invite you to join us for an hour or so on Saturday January 24, 2026, at 1:00pm . We will be meeting in the dining room and the fellowship hall of Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church at 21 Washington Street in Ayer MA. There is limited parking in the lot off of Cambridge Street, with entry through the gray door. There is more parking available in the lot off Newton Street, with entry through the first blue door on Washington Street. This is a meeting that we wanted to hold last January, but we ended up...

Stone Soup Kitchen opens at 4 pm on Friday evenings, located in 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, our potluck with feature brisket pot roast 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 ...

  January 2026 Dear Friends of Stone Soup Kitchen, Happy New Year! The biggest news this past year was, of course, our move to Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church on Washington Street in Ayer! It's been a great new home for us, allowing for a much better system for our pantry distribution each Saturday. We got off to a slow start because of the move, but most people seem to have been able to find us! We had another slowdown due to a fire in August, but then we saw quite a surge in the fall during the government shutdown. It mostly seems to have stabilized now, but it has made our yearly stats a bit less meaningful than in previous years. * * * * * Thank you to all of you for your faithfulness this past year in supporting our community through Stone Soup Kitchen. As a reminder, our mission is two-fold: to help alleviate food insecurity and hunger, and to bring lonely or marginalized people together with other community members, helping them to form more relationsh...

Good morning and Happy New Year, dear friends!  This weekend, Mike and I had the occasion to be guests at our pantry.  Mike is not allowed to drive for a time (He is fine!  It's just a precaution) and just before New Year's, I contracted the worst flu I've had in maybe decades.  So Mike walked down to the pantry on Saturday morning to get bread, bananas, apple juice, and cans of soup.  He was also given cookies, a cup of hot chocolate, and a place to sit and chat with someone other than me!  Needless to say, we were glad the pantry was there, and our very capable crew took care of everything.   In a separate post, you will find our end of the year thank you letter and annual wrap-up of what we accomplished.  There are also some stats for those who are numerically inclined!  If you need an "in-kind" tax form and/or a monetary donation tax receipt, those will be coming over the next few weeks.  If you don't receive one by January 20...