Mary Ann Ford, Co-founder

Mary Ann is a lifelong environmentalist... beginning the night she, at age twelve, slept on the banks of the Colorado River at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The majestic canyon walls loomed above, framing a black sky that could hardly contain the billions of twinkling diamonds hung there. In those moments, Mary Ann discovered her place in the universe--a speck in that immensity, yet a powerful woman who had hiked six miles down into this blazing hot space and who would hike ten miles to get out.

Many years later, as an adult environmentalist, upon learning that the average American's food travels 1500 miles to the table, she asked herself, "How can I call myself an environmentalist and use up that much fuel just for my food?" From a personal level to a community level, and now through Harvest Local Foods, Mary Ann has committed herself to increasing the markets for local farmers and food producers, thereby reducing that 1500 mile average. The mother of two grown daughters, Mary Ann lives in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania with her organic garden and her Philadelphia 76ers T-shirts, flags and souvenir photos. 

Pam Nelson, Co-founder

Pam grew up on three acres in the suburbs of Boston. To a little girl, those three acres were a natural haven in which she spent countless hours playing and just being. She, also, loved the fresh vegetables that grew in her grandfather’s garden and took special pleasure picking ripe tomatoes and eating them right there in the garden, the juice dripping down her chin. Her innocent trust in the wholesomeness of her environment was shattered one day, when, after drinking from a stream near her home, she learned that the stream was polluted. As she grew, she became aware of the many ways that people were damaging the earth and themselves.

Since she moved to West Philadelphia almost 30 years ago, Pam has worked for various non-profit organizations on peace and social justice, ethnic tolerance, and, more recently, healthful food as a staff person at Mariposa Food Coop. For Pam, Harvest Local Foods is a way to contribute to the healing of the earth and its inhabitants, and to share the joys of eating food that’s fresh from the earth and bursting with life. 

Caralea Arnold, Director of Sales & Marketing

Caralea spent the first two decades of her life growing up on her family's organic dairy farm in the scenic hills of Central New York.  Raised with a close connection to agriculture and a natural affinity for most things social,  she now merges her love of culture  with her commitment to sustainable agriculture and the success of family farming through her work at HLF.  Before moving to Philadelphia and meeting Pam & Mary Ann, Caralea logged many a weekend at numerous farmers' markets throughout the Eastern US, interned on various organic farms, and spent six months working with the public interest and advocacy non-profit the Center for Food Safety in Washington, DC. 

Ms. Arnold lives in the Powelton Village neighborhood of Philadelphia and enjoys being part of the city's vibrant local food scene.  When she's not eating or cooking, she loves to write, read and listen to WXPN.

David Dougherty, Packer Extraordinaire

David has been a part-time member of the HFL team for several years now, and really enjoys the rewarding work, the general environment, and the people he gets to be around on an average work day as 'packer extraordinaire' He has always liked good food, although he says his idea of what 'good food' is has definitely changed over the years, with his food focus shifting from 'pizza, PB&J, and pizza' to healthy, local, organic, farm friendly foods; healthy fatty butter and bacon, raw milk & honey,  local veggies/produce and a great variety of local artisan cheeses and breads... and pizza. "And then personally, for me" he says, " there's nothing like a great local craft brewed beer to wash it all down (a tasty cider or beet kavass works great too)".                                                                                                                       

When not at HLF David can be found managing one of the infamous "Green Line Cafe's" (the one most people aren't aware of at 3649 Lancaster Avenue.), making music, cheering on the Eagles and Phillies with hearty devotion, and riding his bike along the banks of Schuylkill river.

Hannah Westheimer, Local Farm & Food Artisan Researcher  

Hannah is the newest member of the Harvest Local Foods team. She has been passionate about organic local food production since growing up on an organic farm outside of Cincinnati, where she learned all about gardening and how important having a connection to our food is. Hannah graduated from Beloit College in 2009 with a major in International Relations and minors in Latin American Studies and Environmental Studies. Since graduation she has worked for many different organizations dealing with local food production and access. She ran urban children's gardens, taught nutrition classes, and transformed an empty lot into a productive organic vegetable market garden. Most recently she worked in Philadelphia with the Food Trust to get healthier food options into the city’s thousands of corner stores. Through all this work she has learned that she loves working and playing in healthy soil and eating good, fresh food.

In joining Harvest Local Foods, Hannah is thrilled to find an organization that shares her values of bringing locally grown food to tables across Philly and to promoting a sustainable agriculture system.

Kaitlin Pomerantz, Local Markets Manager & Operations Assistant 

Kaitlin grew up in a high rise building in New York City, far from any farm space, stars in the night sky, or cows (but with a lovely view of the Con Ed plant spewing gasses into the East River). This lack of proximity to elements of the natural environment birthed in her a strong desire to make up for lost time. She now spends her adult years trying to learn everything she can about the natural world, agriculture and aquaculture, and the production of safe and sustainable food. After much plant growing, cooking, composting, wwoofing, and tinkering, Kaitlin has found a fitting home at Harvest Local Foods, a job which unites her urban roots and her interest in farms and sustainable foods.

In addition to her work at HLF, Kaitlin currently helps to manage a non-commercial oyster farm with her father in Greenport, Long Island—part of a growing movement in that area to promote shell fish habitat restoration. Katie is also a working, exhibiting artist. Her paintings and drawings can be seen at kaitlinpomerantz.weebly.com and news about upcoming shows can be seen at alonelyhunter.tumblr.com.

The Birth of Harvest Local Foods                                

In early 2006, by a wonderful synchronicity, Harvest Local Foods (nee Farm Fresh Express) was born.  Here’s how it happened:

Two women – one in Drexel Hill and one in West Philadelphia – both dreamed of creating businesses that would be personally meaningful and socially beneficial. Both had grown up with vivid experiences of natural beauty. Both loved eating fresh food and both knew that America’s current food systems are hazardous to the environment, to small-scale farmers, and to public health.  For both, the local foods movement held intrigue and sparked imagination.  Each was doing research in 2005 on markets for local foods; Pam Nelson was exploring a subscription model for door-to-door delivery of local foods; Mary Ann Ford was learning, from volunteer work at the Fair Food Farmstand—a local foods stand in the Reading Terminal Market -- that many people were looking for a more convenient way to shop for local foods than coming into the city. In the thought bubble hanging over each of their heads was the germ of an idea: what if I had a business that brought local foods to customers’ homes, in just the amounts and varieties they wanted?  What if….?

Pam began talking with everyone she could find with a connection to local foods (including the director of the Fair Food Farmstand) and Mary Ann attended a six-week entrepreneur’s course, after which Farm Fresh Express was officially birthed with the state of PA.  After only two months and five customers, Mary Ann could foresee that the business she wanted would be more work than one person could handle.  Then… in January of 2006 came the auspicious phone call…. “Hi, I’m Pam Nelson and I got your name from someone at the Fair Food Farmstand.  Can we talk?”

Two months later, bound only by their shared vision, Pam and Mary Ann had hashed out a twenty page agreement addressing every nasty contingency that might arise to ruin a business partnership.  They set up the “office” in Mary Ann’s basement and the storage area in a 12’ X 8’ walk-in fridge (shared with Fair Food Farmstand) with about 30 cubic feet of shelves for their inventory.  One day a week Pam and Mary Ann packed local produce into customers’ boxes (five to ten of them by then), added ice-filled Tupperware containers and loaded them into Mary Ann’s Prius for delivery to customers’ homes. It’s lucky there wasn’t a charge for using the sidewalks at 11th and Filbert Streets as the staging area when it was too crowded inside the market! 

Since then, Harvest Local Foods has grown to over one hundred orders a week, in spite of a down-trodden economy, a cease and desist order for alleged trademark infringement (hence, the new name), five years of 60-70 hour work weeks, and  the many other daily challenges of entrepreneurship. The dream both women dreamed has become a place, a service, a process, a product, a team, a business. The new dreams are of a fleet of vans making hundreds of deliveries a week, a local-foods grocery store overflowing with customers, a stream of millions of dollars flowing to local farmers and food producers and a well-funded foundation telling the stories of farmers and encouraging women to become farmers.  Sound ambitious? Not to Pam and Mary Ann and the team.  In their book of business, dreams are made for birthing.                     

• To deliver the freshest, healthiest food available in the Delaware Valley to health-conscious consumers at their homes or businesses, to food service and health-oriented businesses for their clientele, and to consumers with physical limitations who cannot get out to shop;                                                                                                                                      
• To expand the market for local farmers and food artisans by supplying fresh produce, meats, dairy products, and other comestibles to consumers who would not otherwise buy them;
• To help educate consumers about the benefits of eating locally grown and/or produced foods and
• To operate an economically, environmentally and socially sustainable, for-profit business that operates with a triple bottom line: people, planet, profits.