A PASSION FOR HELPING OTHERS: Farm nourishes hearts

Cattle raised by nonprofit helps feed the hungry

GEORGETOWN - A few years ago, Georgetown home builder Mike LoVullo bought three cows and set them out to graze on a bit of land owned by his co-worker Lee Godbolt.

LoVullo had a dream that he could raise enough beef to feed the people who rely on the Friendship Place soup kitchen in Georgetown.

His efforts have ballooned into the creation of the nonprofit Outreach Farm, which in its first year has 49 head of beef cattle and more than 70 acres of leased land.

Kathy Wilson Robinson, director of Clemson University's Center for Neighborhood Development at the Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life, checked with national organizations, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and found that the farm is the only organization of this kind in the country.

"It is unique in that it has become self-sufficient within a very short time," she said via e-mail. "It fills a niche in the quality of food that selected food assistance organizations are able to get in the Georgetown area."

Outreach Farm Board President Bob Morin and LoVullo said they hope to replicate the program in other parts of the county.

Besides the food kitchen, the farm has delivered free beef to other Georgetown nonprofit organizations such as the community center Teach My People, the Pawleys Island Civic Club and Child Care, and two schools for disadvantaged boys.

It also recently began delivering beef to the Community Kitchen in Horry County. Organizers say the meat is a key part of more than 800 meals a month for the hungry in Georgetown and Horry counties.

Each steer yields up to 800 pounds of meat, which is ground into beef for chilies, spaghetti, hamburger and other meals. Outreach also provides stew beef and bones for soup. Donations help pay for the meat processing and it is stored in a borrowed freezer.

"He has a passion for feeding people and he does it in his spare time," Morin said. Morin met LoVullo at a wedding 20 years ago and persuaded him to move to Pawleys Island.

Outreach Farm also has two crop farms that are worked by the boys at Tara Hall and the Georgetown Marine Academy, both nonprofit residential homes for troubled boys. The boys get more than free beef and produce from Outreach Farm though, Georgetown Marine Institute director Mike Wright said.

"It gives them a sense of responsibility," he said. "It broadens their perspective of giving back to the community. They give the onions, cabbages, collards, rutabagas and turnips they raise to other nonprofit organizations."

LoVullo said he wants to give a registered calf to one of the Tara Hall boys to raise and show as well as develop a herd of Black Angus cattle to help support the Hall.

Tara Hall director Jim Dumm remembers when LoVullo appeared on the Hall's doorstep offering the free beef and farm programs. "I thought he was crazy, but it worked," Dumm said. "Getting that beef is as good as getting cash. He has done a great job."

LoVullo didn't always work with the disadvantaged. He was a home builder for 25 years in Rutledge, Vt.

About 1995, he heard the local soup kitchen and homeless shelter needed a cook for Sunday meals. He didn't have any particular cooking skills but he volunteered anyway. There he met shelter operator John Casserino.

"He was an amazing man," LoVullo said. "He is one of the people that I admire. He helped needy people when he was in his 30s, unlike the rest of us who do it in our 60s."

Casserino, who had a wife and two young children, gave up a good job with the power company to run the shelter, which was deeply in debt.

While volunteering there, LoVullo put together a program called Choices, which involved taking recovering alcoholics and drug addicts into the schools. "We didn't ask them to tell the students what not to do," LoVullo said. "They told them what they did and what the consequences were."

After he moved to South Carolina, LoVullo volunteered at the soup kitchen, held a fundraiser and helped remodel the kitchen.

He also noticed very little beef was being served at meals. He remembered that the U.S. Department of Agriculture used to provided beef to the soup kitchen in Vermont but that wasn't happening at Friendship Place.

"Beef is expensive," LoVullo said. "When Friendship Place spends money to buy beef they have to cut back on other programs."

That is what prompted LoVullo to buy three cows to help the soup kitchen. He said his little cattle operation quickly got, "cost prohibitive," so in September 2004 he applied to become a tax-exempt corporation complete with a board of directors.

"From that point it grew," said LoVullo, who is the group's executive director.

Help has come from a variety of sources. The local Bunnell Foundation gave a large donation to buy equipment and cattle. Clemson University gave nine cows, the U.S. Department of Agriculture gave the group a grant to help with farm infrastructure such as fencing and waterlines and Myrtle Beach Building Supply contributed 90 percent of the building materials used by the farm.

"We established a friendship when we met," said Bobby Smith, president and owner of Myrtle Beach Building Supply. "There is a quality about his life that touched me in a personal way, and I felt like that I wanted to be a part."