What We’re Doing as SNAP Funds Lapse
As a farm that accepts donations, we feel it is our obligation to inform our community, our customers, and anyone we interact with how we are responding to SNAP benefits stopping.
Here’s what we have done and continue to do in response to the upcoming lapse in SNAP benefits
We have reached out to journalists, the President, the Vice President, U.S. Senators, U.S. Representatives, the Governor of West Virginia, and the Speaker of the House to press for immediate attention and action on the realities families are facing right now. Within 24 hours, the Governor’s Office reached out in response, showing interest in our grassroots Farm for Better model and the work we’re doing to keep food moving directly to people.
We have contacted every major food and farm organization in West Virginia to coordinate efforts and make sure communication stays open between farms and the people making policy decisions.
We continue to speak publicly through our own channels and direct outreach about what this shutdown means for families who rely on SNAP and for the farms that feed them.
We have redirected our own resources to keep food moving directly to people who need it most through our own food pantry.
We continue to grow and raise food by hand every day to feed our community.
Back in August, we stopped using social media to promote our farm. We stopped after announcing that we accept SNAP benefits at our farm and seeing the backlash that followed. The response brought thousands of people to our page, our website, and our front door. Farmers, families, supporters, and critics. Most messages were encouraging. Some were not. A few were threats. Many were insults directed at the people we serve. We’ll never repeat those words. The people we help should never have to hear cruelty from those who’ve never known hunger.
For those of you who don’t know us, Sean worked for the federal government for twelve years. He stayed through the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, missing paychecks for our family while Alexys was managing a multiple sclerosis diagnosis. Across this country, people throw insults at the poor, the sick, at public servants, and at anyone who falls behind. But everyone is carrying something.
Before you post a comment online, before you choose not to knock on your neighbor’s door to see how they’re doing, remember that everyone is hurting in some way. No one needs another reason to feel small. Compassion costs nothing, and silence helps no one.
On Saturday, November 1, SNAP benefits stop rolling out. This is not a temporary issue. There will be responses, but without real restructuring, people will still become collateral while politicians use their suffering to justify their own existence. Every minute that real action is not taken, our nation is choosing to let our neighbors starve. Politicians are actively letting people die. Not one side. Both. The rot is bipartisan.
We are farmers. We have chosen to feed people. Production is slowing everywhere this time of year, but hunger is not seasonal. This is not political. This is not red versus blue or any other divisive, exclusionary tactic used by those in power to keep people distracted while the systems that sustain them are stripped away. It is basic humanity. Calling it anything else is ignorance.
Real solutions will not come from the top down. They must be grassroots. If the federal government passes a temporary stopgap funding measure, nothing changes. What happens the next time, and the time after that?
How many times do people have to be sacrificed before anyone in power decides to fix what keeps breaking? That is why Alexys and I farm the way we do. We are tired of systems that extract and collapse instead of nurture and nourish.
Everyone can do something. It doesn’t have to cost a cent. Take care of your family first because no one else will. Do not donate money, time, or any other resource if you are behind on a single bill. Action can look like checking in on a neighbor, calling a friend to see if they are alright, or learning skills that make your household more resilient so you rely less on broken systems and keep more money in your pocket.
If you are able, donate locally wherever you are. If you are in the Mid-Ohio Valley and have the means, consider giving to one of the community pantries in the area or to our own Farm for Better program. Every dollar turns directly into food, grown and handed to the people who need it most.
Learn More About Farm for Better
In our August 29 newsletter we asked this question to everyone reading:
If money and policies disappeared, and all we had was land and food, how would you care for your community, not just yourself or your family, but everyone around you?
Only two months later, that time is now.
In our final social media post, we left by saying:
This farm feeds people. If that offends you, you’re not our people.
To everyone who subscribes to our newsletter, reads our blog, supports our work, or simply takes the time to care about what happens here, thank you. You are the reason we keep doing this.
Take care of yourself and others.
Sean and Alexys
Why Donate to Us?
Most food programs depend on grants, payrolls, and grocery store leftovers. We don’t. Every dollar given here stays on the farm and turns directly into food. We grow it, harvest it, and hand it to the people who need it. There are no middlemen, no staff, no funding cycles. Just us, working the ground and feeding our community with what we raise ourselves.
When you donate to Farm for Better, you’re not supporting an organization. You’re supporting independence, food grown by farmers who answer to no one but the people they feed. We are NOT a nonprofit, and donations are NOT tax deductible. Tax deductions are not why you should give. People shouldn’t need incentives to help each other. They should be helping because it’s right, not because it pays off at tax time.
Every box that leaves our farm looks the same, whether it’s bought or given. That’s how we protect the privacy and dignity of everyone who comes here. Just food handed over with respect.
We are a small farm, but every little bit helps. If you would like to donate, please feel free below. If you would like to setup a pantry donation please contact info@carltonhillfarm.com and put “Donation” in the subject. Thank you.