Harvesting Abundance: Local Initiatives of Food and Faith
160
Harvesting Abundance: Local Initiatives of Food and Faith
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Overview
Engaging stories with photos in local communities and neighborhoods showing the church in action.
Many congregations, schools, and organizations are reaching out into their neighborhoods to share God’s story of abundance by establishing community gardens, beehive colonies, and other agricultural initiatives. They are creatively using their land and property; providing training, inspiration, and cross-cultural experiences for all ages; while at the same time feeding the hungry and building community relationships. Too often food banks only take non-perishables loaded with preservatives and sodium. Church entities involved in agricultural ministries are able to provide healthy food from their gardens to feeding programs, food pantries, and others in need. This book tells the tale of 25 such communities in story and image. An inspiration for others to develop such projects, food and faith can go hand-in-hand as we get our hands dirty while learning more about what Genesis 2 describes as God “planted” a garden. Gardening can be seen on the rooftop of a church in the city, beehives in the midst of a seminary, or a local community garden alongside the church’s parking lot. Discover where this movement is alive and growing, and find ideas for starting your own “food and faith” initiative in your own backyard, roof, or front porch.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780819233103 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Church Publishing |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 8 MB |
About the Author
Brian Sellers-Petersen, co-founder of the Episcopal Food, Farming, and Faith Network, is an avid gardener at home and office (St. Mark's Cathedral, Seattle) and a consultant to Seattle Tilth Food and Faith Initiative. He has worked with Episcopal Relief & Development (ERD) for the past 15 years in a variety of capacities, including as the creator/developer of Episcopal Relief & Development's Abundant Life Garden Project curriculum, a leader of pilgrimages to sustainable agriculture programs in Ghana and Central America, senior advisor to the president of ERD, former Director of Church Engagement, and former Western Regional Director. He is on the advisory council of the Beecken Center at Sewanee, and previously worked for World Vision and with Bread for World. In addition, he has worked with All Saints Pasadena; the Anglican Diocese of Port Elizabeth, South Africa; and the Student Christian Movement of South Africa. He currently lives in Covington, Washington.
Sarah Nolan co-founded The Abundant Table, an Episcopal rooted nonprofit farm and worshiping community. She serves on the Episcopal General Convention’s Task Force on Creation Care and Environmental Racism and is actively engaged in work and conversations around emergent ministries, organizational vitality and the intersection of food, faith and the environment. She lives in Richmond, Virginia.
Read an Excerpt
Harvesting Abundance
Local Initiatives of Food and Faith
By Brian Sellers-Petersen
Church Publishing Incorporated
Copyright © 2017 Brian Sellers-PetersenAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-3310-3
CHAPTER 1
Environmental Change-Makers and the Community Garden
Holy Nativity, Westchester, California
Established during World War II as a place for the burgeoning neighborhood to gather on Sundays for family worship, Holy Nativity is located on the west side of Los Angeles. In 1947 homes cost $6,000, while today they sell for $950,000. Originally agreements in the planned community prevented homeowners from growing their own food or cultivating gardens, as these practices might compete against local farmers. Once an agricultural area, it is now a hub for air travel; Los Angeles International Airport is its neighbor. Times have changed along with the landscape, and Holy Nativity has responded to those changes.
As with churches in many urban areas, there was a growing concern about food insecurity within Los Angeles County. Holy Nativity had a sizeable piece of land surrounding the church, so leaders began to wonder if the conventional landscaping of juniper bushes and green lawn could be turned into edible landscaping. What if a community garden could be established that would provide produce to the local food pantry? With vestry approval in 2008, people from churches, mosques, and synagogues; community volunteers; and Holy Nativity parishioners dug up 1,100 square feet of property and created a vegetable garden.
Since then the original garden has grown to four thousand square feet and expanded to include twenty-six fruit trees, a medicinal herb garden, and a wildflower garden that attracts bees and butterflies. The garden is maintained by a team comprised of local neighbors, food activists, social justice activists, and people who just like to garden. The team gathers every Thursday from late afternoon until dusk to work in the garden. The bounty is delivered to the Food Pantry LAX for distribution throughout the wider community.
The Community Garden is not all that Holy Nativity offers on the environmental front. Environmental Change-Makers (ECM) began in 2005 when five local neighbors met with the rector, Peter Rood, in the Holy Nativity Community Hall to decide what they could possibly do about ecological problems like global warming. From these humble beginnings ECM grew, and as the members discussed individual triumphs in "doing something" to help the environment, they began hosting events such as movies and talks with guest speakers.
ECM was incorporated in 2012 as a California nonprofit corporation and is in the process of applying for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. Today it is a joint project under the direction of Joanne Poyourow (who designed the garden as well as other local gardens and manages its plantings) and John Tikotsky (a landscape architect who designed the rainwater harvesting for the garden), along with Peter Rood.
Through ECM, organic vegetable garden classes are taught each month, open to the general public. Topics have included planning an autumn vegetable garden, crop rotations, attracting good bugs, and water wisdom. Joanne has also written several booklets and how-to guides, which are sold to the community gardeners.
The gardens at Holy Nativity have been a catalyst for change in the community. Where once gardens were prohibited, now they thrive, making a space for sharing environmental solutions. The gates to the gardens are pieces of art that remain open for any and all to walk in and experience the wonder of creation. At the Change-Makers' monthly meetings they seek new ideas, share with one another, model changes, and show others that through everyday living environmental sustainability is possible.
CHAPTER 2Hunger No More Urban Garden
Imago Dei Middle School, Tucson, Arizona
Founded by Episcopal priests Anne Sawyer and Susan Anderson-Smith, Imago Dei Middle School is an independent, Episcopal, tuition-free middle school serving low-income families in Tucson. Dependent on charitable donations from hundreds of individuals, businesses, and foundations who share a vision of breaking the cycle of poverty through quality education, Imago Dei is a success story on how a school can grow an urban garden and engage students at the same time.
Susan Anderson-Smith, chaplain of Imago Dei, became concerned about the physical health of her students while observing their eating habits and listening to their stories about what kinds of food they ate with their families. Using the program What's on Your Plate? teachers and students began working on the activities in the workbook. One of the activities was to draw a picture of their neighborhood, designating the location of libraries, playgrounds, grocery stores, schools, and so forth. In the process, Susan learned that no child in the class lived in a neighborhood that had any source of food better than a convenience store. After doing research, she learned more about healthy, reliable, organic, sustainable, affordable food — and how it was not available to most of the families who attended Imago Dei. Thus began Hunger No More Urban Garden, as they learned how to grow their own food through creating an urban organic garden in the limited space behind the school in the hope that what was learned would be taken back into the children's neighborhoods.
The students — the scholars — became engaged and empowered. They became self-determined about their garden as well as their health and wholeness. Susan shares how "it is a joy to watch their joy in creating and caring for the garden, and in the food it produces. They are becoming advocates for themselves and their communities for reliable and healthy food sources as well as healthy and humane production of food."
It wasn't easy. They faced numerous hurdles: getting middle schoolers interested in growing and eating anything that might be healthy can be a challenge. Getting them to remember to water can be another frustration, as can growing anything in the desert. A limited growing season and a lack of water can be obstacles, but there are always solutions. With time, the students began to connect the dots.
Today the garden serves many purposes in addition to growing vegetables. Yes, it is a laboratory for the school's scholars to learn why and how to grow healthy food, but it also helps them learn how to run a small business. Seedlings are sold at local farmers' markets, with proceeds used to acquire seeds and other gardening materials. The food grown is now used to supplement the school lunches and snacks. Families who are in greatest need also receive produce from the harvest.
It is not just about growing vegetables and flowers. In the process of becoming gardeners, scholars learned about the whole food growth cycle, including the vital role that bees play through pollination. A potter now makes available beautifully handmade pottery bee pots; the students plant flowers in them (knowing that gardeners love growing flowers to attract pollinators) and also sell them at farmers' markets.
Partnerships have been important to the success of this program, with Intuit becoming a main partner. Susan shares that through a mutual friend, a member of Intuit's "Innovation Catalyst" team was "cultivated" and has organized more than fifty employees over the years to come to the school to teach the scholars how to run a small business. They have learned life skills such as how to: develop a budget; keep track of inventory, sales, and profits; market and sell; calculate the cost of production; develop and sell new products; and even develop and deliver an elevator speech.
Other partners have included master gardeners, community garden individuals, and University of Arizona experts who have helped the school learn about composting and water harvesting. One remarkable feature of the garden is a vertical garden on a wrought iron fence on one of the sides of the garden (the other three sides are made up of brick buildings). It is made up of a series of old pairs of blue jeans with the legs cut off and sewn up above the knee. The legs are filled up with small stones and gravel to help with drainage and topped with soil and compost, with tomatoes spilling out the top.
In addition to being the cofounder and chaplain at Imago Dei, Susan has strong connections to gardening. She reflects:
How far we have removed ourselves from the earth and living simply and responsibly, all in the name of convenience and efficiency and modernity. My maternal grandparents, their sisters, and brothers were all farmers, not as a business, but as a way of life. I spent many summers helping my grandparents and my great aunts and uncles harvest crops and can vegetables so we would all have something to eat in the winter. I knew which fruits and vegetables were in season when, and when they weren't in season, you didn't eat them. I have been reconnected with these memories and have been compelled to look at how I can personally live more simply so others may simply live, as well as promote that thinking and behavior in our scholars.
Imago Dei offers their middle school students a chance to participate in long-term projects that give back to the community and to the planet. Through water-harvesting, building and maintaining an organic garden, raising and selling organic seedling vegetables and bee-attractive plants at a farmers' market, they effect real change in a world while learning about social and environmental issues.
CHAPTER 3Farmers' Markets
Church Parking Lots
In its simplest form, according to Wikipedia, "a farmers' market (also farmers market) is a physical retail market featuring foods sold directly by farmers to consumers." Pretty simple, but after checking out lots of farmers' markets hosted or sponsored by Episcopal congregations, the definition should include the making of personal connections between farmers, shoppers, congregations, and communities for the mutual benefit of all. If you have a parking lot or front lawn, access to farmers who need their food sold, people who eat, and a creative group ready to roll up their sleeves, you can start a farmers' market ministry. There are hundreds of church-based farmers' markets that you can go to for inspiration and advice. Here are a few stories, excuse the pun, gleaned from their websites (of which the links are listed in Appendix D).
The Healthier Heart Farmer's Market
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Trenton, New Jersey
The Healthier Heart Farmer's Market at Trinity makes healthy and fresh produce available to our urban neighbors through the participation of regional farmers who accept cash; EBT cards; Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) benefits; and Senior Farmers' Market vouchers. Generally open each Friday throughout the summer, the market also partners with local hospitals and community-based organizations to offer complimentary health screenings and educational materials. Through cooperation with the Mercer County Office of Aging and Nutrition, the market is also a convenient distribution site for Senior Farmers' Market vouchers, a program that allows eligible seniors to receive financial assistance for the purchase of Jersey Fresh fruits and vegetables. To further the cathedral's mission of fellowship and hospitality, all visitors to the market are served a free nutritious lunch made from local produce, with opportunities to attend regularly scheduled "healthier eating" educational workshops, cooking classes, Bible study, and organized prayer.
Peachtree Road Farmers' Market
Cathedral of St. Philip, Atlanta, Georgia
Now in its tenth year, Peachtree Road Farmers' Market is a leader in the community, being the largest producer-only farmers' market in the state. Producer-only means that everything at the market has been grown, raised, or made by the seller, ensuring fair prices for both the vendors and the consumers. The market takes place on Saturday mornings beginning early April until mid-December and Wednesday evenings mid-April to the end of October. The market is open rain or shine; in the event of bad weather, the entire market is moved inside the Cathedral of St. Philip. Both of our markets accept SNAP (food stamps / can process EBT cards) and double the dollar value. There are fifty weekly vendors and over thirty-five chef demonstrations are held through the season. Each week brings new produce, vendors, events, live music, and fun! On Wednesday evenings, guest can enjoy farm-to-table fresh meals on site or to take home. Live music, chef pop-ups, and local breweries make it the perfect evening for gathering as a community.
Farmers Market
St. Stephen's, Richmond, Virginia
The mission of the Farmers Market at St. Stephen's is to seek "to connect our choices about the foods we buy and eat to our call to be stewards of God's creation, as we build community and support local farmers." Their goals include: "connecting God's call to environmental stewardship to the foods we eat, stewardship of resources, and reducing the carbon footprint of what we eat; building community by providing the city of Richmond and our local neighborhood with a healthy way to gather and connect with each other on a regular basis; educating patrons with practical ways to maintain the connection with the sources of their food; and helping fill the growing demand for fresh, locally grown and prepared foods in Richmond." Patrons can speak directly to the people who grow and produce the food, learn what methods and practices the farmer or producer uses, and get tips about how to prepare the produce, eggs, meat, poultry, and other goodies offered. Many customers remark on the size of the market: it's big enough to have what they need, but it's not overwhelming. Free parking is available and children, bicycles, and dogs are welcome.
Greene Street Market
Church of the Nativity, Huntsville, Alabama
The Greene Street Market at Nativity is downtown Huntsville's producer-only, open-air market for fresh, locally grown vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers. You can meet farmers with gorgeous local produce, grass fed beef and pork, free range chickens, and eggs; pick up freshly prepared meals, gourmet popsicles, traditionally made relishes, cheeses, preserves, and breads. Open Thursdays from May to October, local artisans also offer their works alongside vendors who sell prepared foods in addition to the fresh food.
Saint Michael's Farmers Market
Saint Michael and All Angels, Dallas, Texas
The Saint Michael's Farmers Market is a nonprofit community outreach ministry of Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church where local farmers, ranchers, and artisans sell directly to the North Dallas neighborhood. The market's focus is on local food, with food vendors required to sell at least 60 percent of their own homegrown products. Products must come from within 150 miles of Dallas County. The producers' growing practices vary. Some vendors do have farming practices that are chemical-free and pesticide-free, commonly known as naturally grown or possibly USDA certified organic.
Homegrown Alabama Farmers Market
Canterbury Episcopal Chapel, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Homegrown Alabama is a student-led group at the University of Alabama that seeks to educate students about the value of local produce, as well as to foster partnerships between local farmers and the University of Alabama. Partners include Canterbury Episcopal Chapel, Alabama Farmers Market Authority, UA Office of Community Affairs, Students for Sustainability, and the SGA Department of Environmental Concerns. The goal at Homegrown Alabama is to facilitate relationships between local growers and the community they feed. As well as a food ministry, it is also a teaching ministry for students and the community to learn that what we put on our plates is being grown in ways to improve the health of the soil, so animals and plants can continue to be productive for our grandchildren's grandchildren. They advocate eating fruits and vegetables in season because they're fresher, healthier, and far tastier, and the variety keeps eating interesting.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Harvesting Abundance by Brian Sellers-Petersen. Copyright © 2017 Brian Sellers-Petersen. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Foreword: Sarah Nolan
Introduction Chapter 1: Environmental Change-Makers and the Community Garden (Westchester, Los Angeles)
Chapter 2: Hunger No More Urban Garden (Imago Dei School, Tucson)
Chapter 3: Farmers' Markets
Chapter 4: Shepherd Farm (Good Shepherd, Town & County, Missouri)
Chapter 5: Gardens, Workers, and Bees (Virginia Theological Seminary)
Chapter 6: The Cathedral Learning Garden (St. John's Cathedral, Denver)
Chapter 7: Blue Corn and More (Navajoland)
Chapter 8: The SPR Food Garden (St. Paul and the Redeemer, Chicago)
Chapter 9: Community Gardens Ministry Network (Connecticut)
Chapter 10: Plant a Church: Plant a Garden (St. Mary Magdalene, Manor, Texas)
Chapter 11: Episcopal Camps and Conference Centers
Chapter 12: Thistle & Bee (Diocese of West Tennessee)
Chapter 13: Plot Against Hunger (Church of Our Savior Farm, Dallas)
Chapter 14: The University Farm (University of the South, Sewanee, TN)
Chapter 15: Creation Keepers (St. Andrew's, Seattle, WA)
Chapter 16: Bluestone Farm (Community of the Holy Spirit, Brewster, NY)
Chapter 17: Faith and Grace Garden (St. Timothy's, Des Moines, IA)
Chapter 18: Food Bank Farm (Church of the Holy Cross, Redmond, WA) Appendix
Glossary
How to: • Get started • Go Local • Get connected
Listing of Gardens
Resources