The Boxborough FreeBee market offers a venue where people from Boxborough, Acton and surrounding towns can give and receive necessities of life: food, ideas, news, books, and companionship. After FreeBee’s Harvest Fair on Sept. 13, the Acton Exchange interviewed cofounder Heather Fleming about how the market came to be and how it operates. She summarized the group: “FreeBee is a community effort to reduce waste and promote sustainability.”
A series of coincidental situations in 2021 brought need together with the philosophy of gleaning to create the market. Community members were collecting donations for people displaced because of a large apartment fire. At the peak of the COVID pandemic, there was food available that would normally be shifted to other recipients, but those recipients — food pantries, halfway houses, or group homes — were closed or not open on weekends. The FreeBee market began with the confluence of the fire, food going to waste, and people experiencing food insecurity yet self-filtering due to stigma.
The Boxborough group began with weekly food distribution. Over the last three years, the FreeBee has switched to a model where they have weekly Food Rescue Saturdays (May to October) and larger themed Community Markets with food, crafts, plants, books, and informational exhibits, roughly once a month. The website and social media @freebeecommunity lists the schedule. Email is freebeecommunity@gmail.com.
The FreeBee offered a chance for people from local towns to chat, to know what was going on. (“It was an in-person version of your newspaper!” Fleming remarked to the Acton Exchange interviewer.) “The events expanded to include crafts and books – things we could largely redistribute without having a lot to store in between. The FreeBee grew through word of mouth and social media, primarily Facebook.” Laughing about the simplicity of the organization, Fleming said, “We don’t exist. We are the epitome of a grassroots effort. We are a group of people who feel passionate about this.”
Fleming said that, for a lot of people, the first FreeBee in 2021 was their first time seeing people in person in months, and getting together with others was a big thing. “For my kids, there were a lot of elements of the volunteer side of things that were very meaningful.”
“We are a perfect testing ground for the intergenerational connections that should be happening more,” Fleming said. “Kids come with their families. Seniors are fountains of care and energy. They talk your ear off and also listen with no judgment. It is hard for many seniors to do a lot of lifting, but others help. People look forward to it. In May, when we get people back together, people say, ‘So nice to see you!’”
Fleming considers herself the orchestrator behind the FreeBee, but is working to get more people involved in helping to manage the market.. “I have enough volunteer willingness to help but not enough orchestrators,” she said. She would also like to have help teaching canning or cooking, or someone to write a how-to guide so other towns can follow suit.
The food comes from Boston Area Gleaners of Acton; food pantries such as Acton Food Pantry and Open Table in Maynard, who share perishable food that will go bad before they open next; Nashoba Brook Bakery (day old bread picked up on Fridays); end-of-day leftovers from Panera in Westford; extra farm produce from Applefield Farm in Stow; and other sources. Local gardeners contribute as well. In spring, the FreeBee gives away plants and seeds. This year, Fleming coordinated a group that is working together on a community garden plot in Boxborough, donated by the Agricultural Commission, and Daisy Hill Farm in Acton donated seedlings to the enterprise.
Both AB United Way (now AB Community Compass) and the Boxborough United Church of Christ (UCC) have been good partners for the FreeBee. AB Community Compass offered to host a website. The UCC building has functioned as a community center, offering storage space in the basement and a place to sort food in the lobby. “We receive food on Fridays, distribute on Saturdays.”
The Sept. 13 market was a Harvest Fair on the side lawn of the UCC Boxborough, across from Town Hall. It included a petting zoo of farm animals, a tractor photo opp, salsa dancing, and displays and activities by: Middlesex Savings Bank, Boxborough Historical Society and Agricultural Commission, Discovery Museum, Household Goods, Boxborough Emergency Reserve Corps, Acton Boxborough STEM, and the Acton Boxborough Cultural Council.
Asked how the group relates to the AB Community Compass’ Resource Center, Fleming said they are not related but that when people ask if they can offer one item or another, she points them to the Resource Center. The Resource Center puts out fliers about the FreeBee.
Fleming suggests readers watch this unscripted video that a FreeBee visitor took of her a few summers ago, “It gives you a flavor of the project and how FreeBee came to be.”
