Tornado Relief, Grasso Farm, Mullica Hill, NJ

The Gloucester County Board of Agriculture (the local farm advocacy group for NJ Farm Bureau) is starting a GoFundMe page to raise money for Angelo and Leonard Grasso, Vegetable Farmers in Mullica Hill, NJ who lost just about everything from the Hurricane Ida tornado that hit the area on 9.1.21. Both their homes were damaged and now uninhabitable. They are currently living with other family members. Farm buildings, greenhouses, trucks and other equipment were destroyed. Vegetable crops survived in many of their fields down the road, but their equipment and buildings to harvest and pack the crops have been destroyed. This family just put their life savings into construction on a new packing and cooling facility that meets modern food safety standards and was completed just last week. In a blink of an eye, that improvement project was destroyed.

Neighboring farmers are doing their best to help with clean up and salvaging crops in the field, but it looks like the 2021 growing season is over for this farm family. They have suffered devastating personal, structural, financial, and emotional losses.

Farmers are the backbone of our community. This farm family and others locally, have supported hunger relief programs in the past through Farmers Against Hunger and other local charities. Lenny has served on municipal committees, the Gloucester County Board of Agriculture, the NJ Peach Council, and other community groups in the past. Also, they are some of the most humble, hard working and giving people in our community. Anyone who knows them will tell you what a wonderful family they are. They help to feed the rest of us and now they need our help. Please donate what you can.