June 28, 2023
What a blessing it was for the Calvary Episcopal Church Food Pantry to be the recipient of the "Love Erin" outreach crew on Saturday. Christie Pickel, mother, shared the family's mission: "Love Erin" is to continue to share Erin's love and light to those in need. Ten members of Erin's family gathered to donate needed items (cereal and personal care products), shop with the pantry neighbors, and assist with carry out…filling 131 shopping carts with food and supplies. Our pictures this week represent the passion that filled our pantry on Saturday.
Asheville Youth Ministry hosts mission groups from many of our eastern states. The youth volunteer throughout the week at various non-profits. Garden Master Doug Kearney welcomed a group of middle school students from the Presbyterian Church in Mt. Pleasant, SC. On Monday and Tuesday morning, the students weeded and mulched an area for us to replant after our spring harvest of lettuce and collards. What a joy it was to work among these compassionate youth and their chaperones!
On Saturday morning, Chef Linda prepared a scrumptious beet salad. Not only did she sauté the beets but added some of the beet leaves to the salad. A sample and a recipe was offered to our neighbors. On a personal note, could you join us for about 30-45 minutes on Friday morning at 8:30 to harvest two rows of beets? We want to distribute these on Saturday morning to our neighbors. You don't need to sign up just surprise us with your presence!
We welcomed 131 families representing 481 individuals and registered twelve new families. City Bakery donated loaves of bread. Other donated items were Flavor-First-tomatoes & peppers, Ingles-bread, Bimbos-snacks and bread, Wal-Mart and Big Lots-misc items and food, Project Dignity-feminine products, Humane Society- dog/cat food and MilkCo-milk. Nativity Lutheran, Fletcher Methodist, Calvary Episcopal, Tabernacle of Praise, and other anonymous donors contributed food and misc. items for distribution on Saturday.
On behalf of the executive committee, thank you to our volunteers and our area churches, civic groups, local merchants, and families for all you do to feed our community helping to reduce food insecurity. We thank you and appreciate your food and monetary donations.
News from LAF (The Lord’s Acre, Fletcher)
WORK SESSIONS THIS WEEK
THURSDAY: Join us at 6:30 p.m. to weed and mulch bean beds in preparation for placing insect cover on them. This drastically reduces the needed for spraying.
FRIDAY: We'll need a crew at 8:30 a.m. for our first beet harvest ever! It's easy and fun.
WHAT WE’RE UP TO
Many thanks to those who have kept up with weeding and mulch the last few weeks while Doug was out-of-town. Apparently it was quite wet. Clearly, the crops and weeds both loved it.
On Monday and Tuesday of this week, middle-schoolers from Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina were in the garden and pantry as part of their Asheville Youth Mission project. There were delightful and helpful, reclaiming and mulching the upper beds. They loved the bear crossing the churchyard, the small snake in the bed, and various earthworms and beetle larvae. Raw beets, not so much.
WE ARE ELECTRIFIED!
Thanks to a grant from our most generous benefactors, the Community Foundation of Henderson County, we now have electricity at the hoophouse and shed. It makes possible heating and lighting for plant starts, additional mechanical ventilation if needed, security lighting, and electricity for events and various tasks.
NO EARBUDS IN THE LAF GARDEN
This week's middle schoolers with Asheville Youth Mission were notable in a lot of ways, including that I didn't need to remind them to hold off on phone and earbud use. I didn't see either the whole time they were in the garden!
Why does this matter? If the garden is holy space, and I believe it is, then we do the modern version of taking off our shoes, which is putting away our phones and earbuds. It allows us to be fully present to our work and fully present to each other. In the garden we participate together in God's ongoing work in a very intimate way, our hands in living soil, separating the fruit of God's abundance from soil and stem. The best prayer is said with dirty fingernails.
