Written by Charles Noyes
Photos by Kelly Z Photography

Sponsored by Valley Home Improvement

Published in Northampton Living (December 2021)

Mollie Hartford met Chris while attending Monument Mountain High School in Great Barrington. The day after graduation they started dating each other, but with acceptance letters to colleges halfway across the country from each other, their budding romance faced a huge first test. “It was kind of perfect,” Mollie began. “We both went off to do our own thing with the space to figure out if we still wanted to be together when we came home.

And we did! Instead of being together 24 hours a day and burning out, we were forced to take things slow.” And it’s a good thing they did, because that experience was part of what brought them both to the Valley. “We were starting to have that conversation about where we wanted to be in 10 years and I really wanted to live in this area,” Mollie said. She’d gone to Hampshire college and loved the progressive and academic atmosphere of Northampton. “A few days after deciding we wanted to move to the Valley down the road, Chris saw a job posting in the area that he liked,” Mollie remembered. “This was in 2013 and the way I tell it is we went for a walk and got about 3/4 of the way around the block before I was convinced. Within a month we were gone and we’d moved to Northampton.” The Valley turned out to be the right place for them as they’ve stayed to this day.

Cut to today and Mollie, Chris, and her children, Rowan, 10 and Calvin, 5, are all in love with the Valley. The kids love their circle of friends who all live near each other. The family loves biking on the bike path together and doing some of the less arduous nature walks nearby. This passion for nature is also evident in the volunteer work that Chris has done with Tree Northampton, helping to keep the Valley green.

Mollie remembers connecting to a network of doulas in the area, which lead her to begin volunteering for the organization It Takes and Village, an organization that seeks to aid families especially families with young babies. “Fast forward 6 or 7 years and I just kept raising my hand to do things. Because it’s such a grassroots organization, everyone who works there is a parent who’s had this experience of being or feeling isolated and knows what work needs to be done.”

Interestingly, one of Mollie’s favorite hobbies ties in very closely with her passion for helping families in need. “I remember being around 10 and watching old ladies knit and thinking ‘I really want to do that.’ When I went to college it was the fashion to knit during class. It felt old-fashioned in a retro way to have this sweet innocent hobby. It’s very simple, a little bit old-fashioned.”

Mollie doesn’t just consider knitting a hobby. It’s what she does for the community as she helps sow together the loose strands of the Valley’s social fabric. Through her position at It Takes a Village, Mollie coordinates any needs a family may have. “Part of my job,” she explained, “is managing the invisible fourth program we offer, which includes referrals and connection. So often we have volunteers who worry they may not be able to provide everything needed by the families they’re helping.”

“I’m not trained in how to handle domestic violence,” she continued, “but I’ve got a contact at Safe Passage. I don’t know anything about fuel assistance, but I’ve got my top three places I can call and find out.” She illustrated this point with an anecdote from during the pandemic. “Someone called us and said their washing machine was broken so I said let me see what I can do. I reached out to other volunteers who offered this person to come through to their basement and use their washer. All they had to do was ask and the connection was made.”

At the end of the day, this link between Mollie’s favorite hobby and her lifelong passion for helping people feels natural and effortless. “There are these threads connecting everybody and sometimes it’s just my job to find those threads and attach them where they need to be.”