Stone Soup Kitchen Ministries

Good morning all!  I truly hope you had a great weekend.  It was colder than I was hoping, for sure, but all over our yard and throughout town, I see the signs of spring.   Our friends Cindy and Angela prepared the potluck dinner for everyone last Friday!  It was delicious, featuring a chicken and a vegetarian lasagna with a terrific white sauce.  The dining room was full!  If you are interested in getting involved in this potluck, just email me back.  We can always make room for more friends! I was going to share with you about the results of our Board meeting and which activities/areas for service we decided to expand into, but I'm still waiting on the input from a few people, so that will have to wait until next week.  However, that doesn't mean that we haven't already launched into a couple of initiatives that we all agreed on.  We are moving forward with several partnerships, including with the Ayer Library, some of the area churche...

  Good morning everyone! My phone tells me that it's supposed to reach 60 today, but I'm having some serious doubts about that. That's ok though...I have so many things to tell you about today, my files are bursting out even if the flowers aren't exactly there yet. Last week, along with many of my friends at St Andrew's Episcopal Church in Ayer, I learned about a college behind bars program. The specific program mentioned was through Tufts University, but many other colleges offer classes as well. Anyway, Tufts partners with an organization called Partakers, and volunteers there join teams to become mentors. These are not so much academic mentors as they are friendships and encouragers: people who will get to know an incarcerated person and encourage them on a monthly basis. I think it's an amazing program, and I wanted to share the info with you in case you find it intriguing: https://www.partakers.org/ Ken Burns, on PBS, did a documentary on the ...

Good morning everyone...yawn, stretch, try to get back on track...stoopid time change! I love having more light in the evening, but my body just hates the time change. Anyway, I hope you all had a good weekend and are looking forward to some milder weather this week! At SSK, we are moving ahead with our plans to form more partnerships in order to serve more people. This week and next, we have several meetings with organizations that also have the space and the desire to sponsor workshops, classes, meet-ups, and the like. Many of you know that in the past we have held these types of meetings in the building where we were located. That was fine, but we tended to mostly only see the same people that we were already reaching. We would like to help even more of our community to expand their relationships across the typical divides that can keep people from socializing (and help with their food needs, if necessary), so we are continuing to look for two things: Like-minded businesse...

Good morning, and happy beginning of meteorological Spring!  Under all that snow, wonderful things are happening, but in New England we know that there's more to get through before Spring comes for real real :-) I had a slightly different plan for this letter today, but late last night I came across the title of an article from Psychology Today that immediately caught my attention.  "We've Lost the Spaces that Foster Friendship."  I believe most of us are already aware of that.  For decades, people have been pulling back from joining clubs and other organizations, from church membership and from bowling leagues and community choirs.  Covid made it much worse, and so many of us retreated into our own little worlds, helped along by online "communities."   These gathering spaces outside our homes are called our third spaces (first = home, second = work), and there are fewer of them all the time.  When the great withdrawal began, lots of third spaces ...

Good morning (barely) everyone!  It's later than usual for me to get this letter out, but I have a good excuse...Mike and I stayed up to watch the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics and mourned that it's over for another 4 years.  Happily though, the Summer Olympics will be along in just 2 years.  And then, of course, this morning we woke up late to Snowmageddon, and I turned over and went back to sleep! There are a couple of things to tell you about today.  Last week I was privileged to go and speak to the members of St Vincent de Paul in Westford (located at St Catherine's).  Some of the members of the Littleton chapter at St Anne's came too.  These are people who are deeply committed to serving our communities, and it was an honor to share some of Stone Soup Kitchen's history, philosophy, and current operations with them.  I wish I had thought to snap a picture while I was there! But I did remember to get some pictures when Kim and Mike P cam...

Good morning everyone!  Last week was chock full of the Olympics for Mike and me.  I love watching much of the world coming together to celebrate excellence in sports.  I know that not everyone is as thrilled by the sportsy-ball stuff (To quote my grown children! Whose are they, anyway?) as we are, but we just love every minute of it. In other news, Stone Soup Kitchen has also been celebrating the excellence shown by our Partners, Participants, and Allies.  When I sent out the list last week that we generated at our meeting in January, I didn't know that some people were going to take that as a challenge!  While the board of trustees of SSK will be deciding what major directions we will be following, several people looked at the smaller things on the list and said to themselves (I'm imagining...), "Heck, I can do that right now."  Thus we ended up with special treat bags for the Super Bowl and also themed bags for Valentine's Day!  So a special thank ...

Hiya hiya! I miss you all when I'm gone for a week! I hope you are all doing well, and that you have been able to avoid house and health-related problems during this stretch of snow and extreme cold. I have a lot to share with you today, and most of it is included in a pdf (if you are reading this online and wish to see a copy, please leave a comment on this blog post with your email address...it will not be posted!). This is the result from our meeting in January with all of you, our Partners, Participants, and Allies. It's not too late to weigh in on any thoughts you have for us. If you were able to attend the meeting, you might notice that I didn't include the topic of "Keep some money liquid and wait for the crash" on the report. That's because we are fully aware of how important it may end up being, for us to have ready funds available, and that is already a part of our plans. Other things to share this week: we received a report from the Boston Area ...

  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...

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...

  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...

  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...

Good morning everyone!  I have shout-outs to share this morning, our schedule for the holidays, and news on our upcoming partnership meeting, so let's get right to it!   Schedule first: Stone Soup Kitchen will be closed from Wednesday, December 24 until Tuesday, December 30.   We will reopen on Wednesday, December 31 (for packing), and our dinner and pantry will resume on January 2 and 3 as usual.  There will be no letter next Monday, as I'll be with extended family, including my 90 year old father!  * * * * *  Shout-outs next: AVS (Advanced Vacuum Systems), located in Ayer, has outdone themselves in their annual food drive for Stone Soup Kitchen.  Each year they help to restock our shelves following our holiday push so that we can go into the new year without any lack.  We are so grateful to them! The Ayer office of National Grid has dedicated volunteer hours to us each month for several years now!  They send us fabulous people who...

Good morning to everyone!  It's so great to see the sun back out this morning, even though it doesn't seem to be having any effect on melting the snow.  When Mike and I went to the gym this morning, it crunched underfoot.  You know it 's too cold for melting when that happens! But anyway.  We had a very busy weekend, and once more we were so glad to be in our new home at Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church, where we have much more space to stage our pantry sessions, and where our guests can come inside out of the cold to get their groceries and can enjoy hanging out with friends at the Coffee Bar.  We're coming up on our 1 year anniversary of being at SOV, and that just reminds me of how grateful we are to the members of this congregation who worked so hard to make room for us...you know who you are!  Another reason for gratitude came last week when we received notice of an unexpected grant from the Community Foundation of North Central Massachusetts....

  Good morning all!  Despite the freezing temperatures we've been enduring, there is always some good news to share that can warm our hearts.  Today's good news comes from our friend JL: she bought an extra Christmas tree this weekend and wants to give it to someone who needs one!  If you or one of your friends/neighbors is having a difficult time this year, please email me as soon as you possibly can and I'll put you in touch with her.  This is a first come, only one served situation.  In other wonderful news, my terrific husband Mike and our friend Bob got the first of our two banners up at Shepherd of the Valley where we now make our home.  There's a picture attached for you to see them.  It was FREEZING, and we really appreciate them for doing this.  Banner #2 will eventually go on the Washington Street side of the building.    Now the lukewarm news: Yes, SNAP has been reinstated, but it has been cut for many people, and prices ...

  Happy December! I originally planned to write a letter today, but Mike and I had the opportunity to go with our daughter to visit the studio of her favorite art professor who is now retired from the college she attended. So I decided to take the day off, other than to run some groceries over to the police station and to write this quick thank you to all of you! We couldn't do what we do without all of you. We had a fantastic turnout for our Friday evening Friendsgiving Dinner. My special thanks to Linda, Jim, Tina, Melanie, Ginger, Jane, Elizabeth, Steve, and Connie for contributing to the cooking. Besides these great home cooks, we have had contributions made by individuals, businesses, organizations, churches, and families...contributions of money, food, time, muscles, driving, baked goods, and love. We are going into this holiday season in pretty good shape, and we owe it all to you! Thank you so much 💕

  Ayer Fire and Police Good morning all! I got a late start this morning because the weekend was totally exhausting, but in a good way :-) I believe we saw all of our regular guests and were able to load them up for Thanksgiving with the dinner bags and gift cards on top of our normal load of groceries. Thanks to all of you, our friends will all have a wonderful Thanksgiving this year, so (not to belabor the word, but...) thank you! Thanksgiving bags – made possible by generous donors and assembled by Lin + Vinny M Gift cards for turkeys (or ham, or whatever) – made possible by the generosity of the Ayer Police Union To help offset the distribution of all these groceries this month, there was a one day “Stuff a Cruiser” event over at Ayer Shop 'n Save on Sunday, arranged by Mark L in Dispatch, and manned by both Ayer Police and Ayer Fire. It was successful beyond all expectations. Two huge pickup truck-loads plus the trunks of a car or two. Going into the day, I th...

Good morning to everyone! What a great weekend we just had. I hope yours was wonderful too. Mike bought a blueberry pie at the St Andrew's Holly Fair, made by the incomparable Trisha W, and...ohmygosh! It was the perfect ending to a perfect weekend. Yes, we still have more people coming to dinner and to the pantry than before the shutdown, but also yes, they seemed a bit more calm and hopeful this week. One thing for sure, they definitely were very grateful for all of the food that YOU have enabled us to provide. Thanks to the Police Union, we purchased more gift cards for turkeys and put them together with the Thanksgiving bags that our Lin and Vinny made. Many more people are going to have a happy Thanksgiving this year because of you. I can't stress that enough...sometimes people will say to us, “I wish I could do more,” but just think back to the whole point of Stone Soup: many people, each contributing what they can equals a fabulous, delicious soup (hot dinne...

  Good morning friends! We have officially entered “stick season,” with most of the leaves down now. Personally, I don't mind winter, but I was hoping that fall would last just a little longer. However, even though the leaves have failed us, the community has not! We are so grateful to all of you who have reached out to support our neighbors during this unsettled and uncertain time. We had another very busy weekend at dinner and at the pantry. Our Coffee Bar has become an important fixture at the pantry too. Coffee and a donut don't necessarily solve anything, but they certainly don't hurt anything either! We are really thankful to our rotating crew who have been taking care of the coffee each week and providing a listening ear: Cher, Nancy, Kim, Lauren, and Timmy. Many of our neighbors enjoy sitting down with these folks each week. We have an event coming up where we will need some help if you'd like to volunteer . On Sunday, November 23rd, the Ayer Pol...

  Good morning all! It's the start of another beautiful month, and we are overwhelmed by the amazing generosity of all of you, our supporters, volunteers, donors, and guests. Yes, it's been tough to see people returning to the pantry after they had moved on and to see new people arriving. But also yes, it's been so heartwarming and encouraging to see the community rise to the occasion to make sure that all of the local pantries and food organizations can cover the need: We have received shelf-stable food and funds from Halloween collections and local actions.   You are donating to help Lin + Vinny put together our Thanksgiving bags.   Ayer Shop 'n Save has installed some new towers with gift cards that you can swipe at the registers.  AVS, the Ayer Police Station, and others are organizing food drives for this month.  The Town of Ayer and the Select Board put together a flyer with information on the local pantries and other resources for all our ne...