BAV Launches Market Match Fund Campaign for 2024

08:01AM / Friday, April 12, 2024Print Story | Email Story

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — Berkshire Agricultural Ventures(BAV) kicked off its 2024 Market Match Fund campaign with a goal of raising $30,000 during the month of April to increase sales for local farmers and make fresh food more available to low-income households in the Berkshire region.

Thanks to a donor, the first $10,000 raised in the campaign will be matched dollar-for-dollar.

This year's theme of "Boost SNAP, Build Community" recognizes the positive difference that SNAP matching makes in a community by addressing issues of food insecurity and food access—while also supporting the sales, and livelihoods, of local farmers.

Now in its third year, BAV's Market Match Fund is amplifying the impact of SNAP matching at Berkshire-area farmers markets by providing reliable funds to fully support Market Match programs. This centralized funding source enables partner farmers markets across the region to consistently offer a $1-to-$1 SNAP match up to $30, giving SNAP customers a total of $60 to spend on fresh food grown and produced by local farmers.

To date, BAV's Market Match Fund has supported over $370,000 in SNAP sales for local farmers and doubled well over 8,000 SNAP purchases at 11 farmers markets in the region.

Partner farmers markets that have benefited include: North Adams, Williamstown, Pittsfield, West Stockbridge, Lee, Great Barrington, Sheffield, and Berkshire Grown Winter Farmers Markets; Millerton and New Lebanon, NY; and New Milford, Conn.

"BAV's Market Match Fund is such a win-win for local farmers and low-income households in our community. It supports greater sales for our farmers and increases food security and food access for our neighbors," said Berkshire Agricultural Ventures Executive Director Rebecca Busansky. "BAV is so grateful to the many individuals and businesses in our community who have stepped up and supported this effort since we began our pilot program in 2022. Our farmers markets, local food economy, and community as a whole are stronger as a result."

Tags: farming, SNAP,

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South County Celebrates 250th Anniversary of the Knox Trail

By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff
06:18PM / Sunday, January 11, 2026

State Sen. Paul Mark carries the ceremonial linstock, a device used to light artillery. With him are New York state Sen. Michelle Hinchey and state Sen. Nick Collins of Suffolk County.

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. —The 250th celebration of American independence began in the tiny town of Alford on Saturday morning.

Later that afternoon, a small contingent of re-enactors, community members and officials marched from the Great Barrington Historical Society to the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center to recognize the Berkshire towns that were part of that significant event in the nation's history.

State Sen. Paul Mark, as the highest ranking Massachusetts governmental official at the Alford crossing, was presented a ceremonial linstock flying the ribbons representing every New York State county that Henry Knox and his team passed through on their 300-mile journey from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston in the winter of 1775-76.

"The New York contingent came to the border. We had a speaking program, and they officially handed over the linstock, transferring control of the train to Massachusetts," said Mark, co-chair of Massachusetts' special commission for the semiquincentennial. "It was a great melding of both states, a kind of coming together."

State Rep. Leigh Davis called Knox "an unlikely hero, he was someone that rose up to the occasion. ... this is really honoring someone that stepped into a role because he was called to serve, and that is something that resonates."

Gen. George Washington charged 25-year-old bookseller Knox with bringing artillery from the recently captured fort on Lake Champlain to the beleaugured and occupied by Boston. It took 80 teams of horses and oxen to carry the nearly 60 tons of cannon through snow and over mountains.

Knox wrote to Washington that "the difficulties were inconceivable yet surmountable" and left the fort in December. He crossed the Hudson River in early January near Albany, crossing into Massachusetts on what is now Route 71 on Jan. 10, 1776. By late January, he was in Framingham and in the weeks to follow the artillery was positioned on Dorchester Heights.

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