To me personally, it feels like the greatest thing
that I've ever done in my life.
This is all cat litter?
Yeah.
Hi, I'm Jill.
I'm Kenny.
And we live in Acushnet Massachusetts.
Acushnet is a small town
located about halfway between
Providence, Rhode Island and Cape Cod.
We live on a small farm that my grandparents purchased
in 1954, and it's a kind of a very well-known,
iconic little spot that most people
who are townies around here know of.
(acoustic guitar strumming)
I grew up here. I spent my summers here.
I worked on the farm.
My grandfather was a World War II veteran.
Part of his healing process was working
on this farm and working the land.
So it was corn, potatoes, tomatoes,
like a whole variety of just your standard vegetables,
but they had so many that he started to give them away
to all of the neighbors.
I started taking over the farm in 2007.
Kenny was at a store one day and he was standing
behind a man who was shopping
and he was counting out literal change
to buy a can of cat food.
He was driving home and thinking about that
and thinking how many other people there were,
particularly during this time of a pandemic,
but just in general.
So we have a town Facebook page and he commented on it
that he wondered if there was anything in the area
that offered like a food pantry for pets.
Why don't we use the farm stand?
It just sits there empty during most of the year.
Once it blew up on the Facebook page,
we took a couple hundred dollars
and we got six Rubbermaid totes,
dog food and cat food in dry and wet varieties
and we put it out at our farm stand.
The news that had heard about us
and wanted to come down and do a story on us.
It aired the next morning and we had a line
of cars out front of people dropping off stuff.
We've had to go multiple times and get more totes
because we just had so many people bringing donations to us.
We've had a lot of people that were really,
really grateful, that thanked us.
Have a good day, man.
It's a beautiful day, thank you guys.
We never thought that there would be
like 100 or 150 people a week using it.
We thought that maybe 2 or 3 people might use it one time
and then we would, it would be over.
We organize it. We provided a place.
We may have come up with a very quick idea
but this is completely a community effort.
Everything that we have out there is a donation
from somebody, whether it's friends, family,
our community, total strangers.
So, we do a very small part in, in this, I really believe.
But it also feels really good.
Yes.
(laughing)
Like I get voice messages of people crying
that it gives them dignity.
They don't feel like they're being watched.
They don't feel like they're getting
garbage for their animals to eat.
To me personally, it feels like the greatest
thing that I've ever done in my life, almost.
On our Facebook page right now,
Acushnet Pet Food Pantry,
at the very top of it we have a blue button.
That's a Shop Now, which has our wishlist,
which we are constantly updating
for what we are low in stock on.
We gladly accept absolutely anything
because we go through a huge amount of product every week.
So we're constantly looking for new things.
It would be nice to see other people do things like this.
It's just a way to make a very subtle, very simple change
in your life that can help other people a lot.
I, I literally can't speak, I'm crying so hard.
Hon can you give me some tissue?
Please, welcome to our home.
And please just let me say, from the bottom of my soul,
thank you so much for what you do for people.
You know, just like it's hard for people
to find dignity in taking human food.
It's even harder, I would imagine to watch
a man at a register counting his pennies to feed his cat.
What you do is so beautiful. I just love it so much.
Nutrish, I'm proud to say has raised
tens of millions of dollars through the sales of our food.
We are going to send a truckload of our support
and I'll go heavy on the cat and a little less on the dog.
And I'm gonna make sure we get some toys
and beds in there too.
You know, animals do not live by food alone.
Rachael, thank you so much.
I mean, that's, it's going to do
like crazy things for people.
(twinkling effect)