Nonprofit breaks new ground

Volunteer donates land, building cost to feed the needy

By Jenna Russell, Globe Staff Correspondent, 12/2/2001

RAFTON - Ken Crater's big red farmhouse sits inside the cozy V where Brigham Hill and North Brigham Hill roads part ways, where neat stone walls border deep banks of fallen leaves. Crater, who has lived here for nearly a decade, is a private person, but he knows his neighbors. When he decided to bring home one of his volunteer projects, it didn't take long for them to embrace it.

Yesterday, a groundbreaking ceremony marked the start of construction of a traditional post-and-beam barn that will include a learning center on 11 acres next to Crater's land. When finished sometime next spring, it will be the new home of Food for the Needy Inc., the volunteer farm begun in Hopkinton 30 years ago to grow produce for the hungry.

Crater doesn't advertise it - to be honest, he doesn't really want to talk about it - but the 47-year-old president of a young Hopkinton dot-com is paying, with his wife, Peg Ferraro, for the land in Grafton and the building. The treasurer of Food for the Needy, Crater has an enthusiasm for the project that is contagious, and neighbors have stepped up to help it happen.

Crater would much rather talk about the kindness of his neighbors, or of Bill and Rose Abbott, the founders of Hopkinton's Elmwood Farm and Food for the Needy, both of whom died in recent years. Crater met them in the mid-1990s, as a new member of the board of directors of the Worcester County Food Bank, which distributes the farm's produce. (He is now president of the food bank's board.) Crater participated in a series of meetings organized by Bill Abbott, whose health was failing, so he could share his vision for the future.

The dying man envisioned new farms in new locations, offshoots that would take the Elmwood concept and multiply its success. ''It was always their dream to have the idea catch on in other communities,'' Crater said.

It's typical that Crater gives Abbott credit for the plan. According to another Food for the Needy board member, the Abbotts' longtime lawyer Alan Greenwald, Crater has played a crucial leadership role in shaping the group's future.

''Bill's vision was not dissimilar, but he couldn't articulate it, and he never had the money to do more than what he was doing,'' said Greenwald, who describes the Abbotts as the finest people he has ever known. ''The idea Bill had, Ken articulated, in terms of the specifics of how to go about it.''

Of more than two dozen people who participated in Abbott's final planning sessions, five or six have remained the nucleus of the current leadership. Most were close friends of the couple, Greenwald said. ''The people who stuck were all old-timers, except for Ken,'' he said.

For Crater, the concept of a volunteer-run farm fits perfectly with his other objectives for building a better world: getting food to those who need it, through the food bank; teaching young people about the value of public service; and preserving open space in his hometown. He is working hard to involve area schools, churches, and community groups in plans for the new farm, with hopes that they will develop hands-on, long-term relationships with the place.

''It's a very compelling idea,'' he said. ''It meets so many needs.''

The idea was compelling enough to persuade two sets of Crater's neighbors to sell him land for less than they might have been paid by developers. It was more important to them that the property be kept as open space, ''and what better way to do it than by growing food for the needy? He has unbelievable vision,'' said David White, another neighbor, who is building the barn and has offered some of his own land for cultivation by volunteers.

A soft-spoken optimist who refers to development proposals as ''preservation opportunities,'' Crater said he came by his idealism, like many others, in the 1960s. He has kept his principles alive in his volunteer work as well as in the businesses he has started: first Control Technology Corp., begun with his older brother in 1975 to supply automated computer control systems for industrial manufacturers (he remains chairman), and more recently, the spinoff Control.com Inc., an Internet forum on automation design with the site motto ''Nerds in control.''

''I like the idea of people helping each other, and that's reflected in the kind of companies I've tried to build,'' he said. ''It's having respect for people, and giving them control, of their work environment and schedules.''

He gave his employees responsibility for managing their own vacation schedules, and threw away the company time clock, despite employees' protests that some would take advantage of him. He instituted a new expense policy that authorized purchases up to $500 without prior approval, and took a large pay cut during a rough patch to avoid layoffs.

''There was a sense that people cared about the company, and knew the people running the company cared about them,'' he said.

Food for the Needy board meetings are held in Control.com's offices on South Street in Hopkinton. In recent years, when the nonprofit has faced shortfalls, donations from Crater have quietly appeared, Greenwald said. There are plans to sell 24 house lots owned by the group in Hopkinton, across the street from Elmwood Farm, but the sale has been held up while sewer permits are sought.

Without Crater, Greenwald said, the group would be completely stalled by the delay; with his investment, they have been ''thrust ahead several years.'' An offshoot operation in Holliston, begun in 2000 on land owned by Jim and Pat Poitras, has been successful, and Food for the Needy's annual output is approaching 20,000 pounds of produce.

''It's not easy to hold an organization together without progress,'' Greenwald said. ''There's no limit to where we can take this, and Ken's the moving force.''

''As a culture, we need to take better care of each other,'' Crater said. ''What people need is a way to help.''

More information about Food for the Needy is available at www.fftn.org.

This story ran on page W1 of the Boston Globe on 12/2/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.