Supporting Farmer’s Feeding St. Mary’s
Great Mills Trading Post and the Fight Against Hunger in St. Mary's County

At Great Mills Trading Post, we've spent decades building roads, grading land, and putting up commercial buildings across Southern Maryland. But some of the work we're proudest of has nothing to do with excavation equipment or asphalt. It has to do with feeding our neighbors.
That commitment traces directly back to our founder, Joseph "Bubby" Knott, whose generosity toward St. Mary's County's hunger-relief community left a mark that's still growing today.
A New Home for St. Mary's Caring Soup Kitchen
For years, St. Mary's Caring Soup Kitchen operated out of a small space near the Good Samaritan Lutheran Church, serving breakfast and lunch to children, seniors, the disabled, and working families struggling to make ends meet. As the need grew, the soup kitchen quickly outgrew its home — and finding a landlord willing to lease or sell to a soup kitchen proved difficult.
In late 2021, Bubby Knott and his family purchased the long-vacant Brass Rail Sports Bar property on Point Lookout Road in Great Mills, once a popular gathering spot for softball games and community events before it closed during the pandemic. When the soup kitchen's leadership reached out to ask if the Knott family might consider donating part of the sale price, Bubby's answer went well beyond what anyone expected: he and his family decided to give the entire 12,000-square-foot building to St. Mary's Caring, free and clear.
"We were just speechless," said Kristine Millen, St. Mary's Caring's executive director, describing the gift as "an amazing, amazing gift."
St. Mary's Caring gutted and expanded the kitchen, built out office space, and in August 2023 celebrated a ribbon-cutting for the new location — timed to coincide with the soup kitchen's 30th anniversary of serving St. Mary's County. Today, the facility serves breakfast and lunch six days a week to children, low-income seniors, the disabled, the homeless, the unemployed, and the working poor, and continues to expand its reach into the community.
The Knott Family Center: A Growing Hub for Support
Bubby Knott passed away in January 2024, but his impact on the soup kitchen didn't stop there. In January 2026, St. Mary's Caring held another ribbon-cutting — this time to formally rename the Point Lookout Road facility the Knott Family Center in his memory. The renaming marked more than a tribute; it celebrated a new partnership bringing the Maryland Department of Social Services and MedStar St. Mary's Hospital into shared space at the center, turning the building into a true one-stop resource for food, health, and social services for county residents.
Great Mills Trading Post was represented at the event, a reminder that Bubby's gift continues to shape how the county cares for its most vulnerable residents years after he made it.
Supporting Feed St. Mary's
Great Mills Trading Post's ties to hunger relief in the county extend beyond the soup kitchen itself. Feed St. Mary's, the county's first countywide food bank, was founded in 2019 by members of the Lexington Park Rotary Club to support the network of food pantries and soup kitchens — including St. Mary's Caring — working on the front lines of food insecurity. Feed St. Mary's doesn't compete with local pantries; it exists to supply and strengthen them, distributing well over a million pounds of food a year to organizations across the county.
As a longtime Southern Maryland business, Great Mills Trading Post has stood alongside these efforts, recognizing that a county as fortunate as ours still has neighbors who don't know where their next meal is coming from.
Why It Matters to Us
Great Mills Trading Post has always been more than a commercial construction and excavation company — it's a St. Mary's County institution built by people who live here, raise families here, and care about what happens here. Bubby Knott's decision to hand over an entire building to a soup kitchen, simply because "I like them" and "it's for a good cause," reflects the values our company was built on.
We're proud to carry that legacy forward — supporting the organizations that keep St. Mary's County fed, one meal at a time.
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