Jim Seltzer named Volunteer of the Year by statewide Providers’ Council
Greenfield Recorder
October 18, 2023
BOSTON — Jim Seltzer, a volunteer at ServiceNet’s Prospect Meadow Farm in Hatfield, was named Volunteer of the Year during the Providers’ Council’s Awards of Excellence ceremony on Oct. 2 in Boston. The Providers’ Council is the largest association of human service agencies in Massachusetts.
Seltzer has volunteered with Prospect Meadow Farm, a vocational training program for individuals living with disabilities, since 2014. It was Seltzer who proposed starting a log-grown shiitake mushroom site, which would allow farmhands to lift and handle the logs, use tools, track the progress of each log’s output, harvest the mushrooms, and distribute them to restaurants and markets. Prospect Meadow Farm’s mushroom operation has since grown to include more than 4,000 logs, making ServiceNet the largest producer of log-grown shiitake mushrooms in western Massachusetts.
In this past year, volunteering approximately 300 hours, Seltzer completed the largest greenhouse ever for the farm and assisted in expanding the mushroom-laying yard at the farm’s secondary location. In May, he co-facilitated a multi-day management retreat for Prospect Meadow Farm managers who were gearing up to open the new vocational and production center.
