For many people, 2025 has been a hard year. From the funding freeze in January to the government shut down in October, farmers and all of us who depend on them have been impacted. Funding uncertainty for programs that farmers rely on, staffing cuts to agricultural support staff, and economic uncertainty due to tariffs have created a maelstrom for farmers to navigate. Worse still, programs that support distributing healthy food produced by farmers to the communities that need it most — including schools and low-income individuals and families — have been on the chopping block. This hurts the recipients in need of the food, and the farmers who rely on the income from such opportunities. It’s a lose-lose.

It’s easy to become dispirited in a time when so much turmoil at the top is creating fractures throughout the entire U.S. food system. But when we reflect on the past year, we are heartened to see people across the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association’s (MOFGA’s) community coming together in both small, consistent, everyday ways and in big, bolder ways. This looks like volunteering to teach a workshop on food preservation or organic gardening and it looks like advocating on behalf of the reinstatement of farmer funds. It looks like folks stepping up in new ways to feed their communities — such as planting an extra row for the local food bank — when Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits are cut.

All across Maine, gardeners, farmers, and eaters are sharing freely of their time, their home-grown food, and other resources in order to buoy their friends, neighbors, and even so-called strangers in need. This spirit of reciprocity is not a new concept. As Robin Wall Kimmerer shares in her most recent book, “The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World,” reciprocity is as old as the Earth itself, and many Indigenous communities have participated in gift economies since time immemorial. A gift, Kimmerer writes, can be a direct response, such as weeding or watering a plant that feeds you, or it can be indirect, such as donating to a nonprofit that supports land stewardship. Kimmerer writes, “The move toward a local food economy is not just about freshness and food miles and carbon footprints and soil organic matter. It’s about all those things, but it’s also about the deep human desire for connection, for honor, to be in reciprocity with the gifts that are given to you.”

The currency, Kimmerer points out, is relationship. The gift economy enhances mutual wellbeing. In this way, sharing abundance begets abundance. As our gardens and farm fields rest and we plan for the season ahead, how can we plan for abundance? What seeds of reciprocity can we sow in 2026? Will you share some seeds you saved, volunteer in your community, or share a skill at the Common Ground Country Fair? Will you share your ideas with us? MOFGA’s Ambassador Program is hosting a virtual book discussion of “The Serviceberry” on Wednesday, February 11 at 7 p.m. and we’d love to hear from you.

While this publication has long been a benefit for MOFGA members, with this issue we’re sharing it even more widely. Longtime readers have surely noticed its new magazine format. With feedback from our dedicated readers, we’ve taken our tried-and-true content for gardeners, homesteaders, and farmers and repackaged it into a format that we hope will reach — and inspire — even more people. This new design is also more affordable, which stretches the community’s contributions to MOFGA, furthering our mission to transform our food system by supporting farmers, empowering people to feed their communities, and advocating for an organic future.