Dirt, Sunlight, and Miracles
            Ever wonder how the Food Pantry Garden began?  Simple: One mission committee Chairperson (Elder) read about another church’s vegetable garden in a newsletter.  She mused on whether our church could support a high-maintenance project like this? With the energetic encouragement from other committee members, she presented the idea to Session, and it was actually approved.  Using borrowed and donated tools, tillers, and pick-up trucks, the newly-formed garden committee went to work.  Using material from a torn down shed, volunteers constructed the raised beds.   Load after load of dirt and compost were hauled to the site.  Trellises, teepees, and a bench were made of found objects on the property.
            During this time, a few members of the congregation voiced concerns that this project might be just a bit too much.  But the devoted little group went on to solicit seeds, plants (some carefully grown by St Paul’s own master gardener), and volunteers to plant, weed, water and harvest.  Amazingly, the garden has become a success.  In that first year, we simply hoped to keep everything alive.  Now, the ‘crop’ is so bountiful, it’s hard to keep up with.  During harvest season, a minimum of one to two carloads of carrots, peas, beans, onions, herbs, broccoli, beets, tomatoes, peppers, edible pumpkins, and/or squashes have been delivered to the DMARC Food Pantry each week.  From there, the food is distributed to  several sites in the Des Moines area. 
            At St Paul, small but meaningful events have happened as a result of the garden: Each year the children’s Sunday School plants the first seeds into the garden, involving them in local community mission.  People include the garden in their spring and summer walks.  Pest-repelling flowers and herbs get picked (deadheaded) to become impromptu bouquets.  At dusk, on summer Wednesday evenings, a small group appears to weed and visit.  Families come to water the vegetables and share in the act of giving.  Gourds and dried plants are harvested in the fall to be used as autumn ornaments in the church and for Food Pantry dinners.  High school youth in the PACE juvenile justice center program labored for weeks hauling dirt, compost, and bricks when we decided to enlarge the garden.  Our own senior high and middle school youth have weeded and harvested out there.  An Eagle Scout contributed his time and talents to create a protective and beautiful fence around the garden.  We’ve been included in a local garden tour.  A garden journal has been kept.  A gentleman has been observed several times arriving early on Sunday mornings so he could ‘pull a few weeds’.  So has another family.
            A vegetable garden is generally a humble thing.  Nearly every object used is donated or secondhand.  It involves lots of hard work, sore knees, tired muscles, dirty fingernails, thirst, sunburn and sweat. The weather doesn’t always cooperate.  Sometimes the compost bins have an attractive smell. The bunnies and insects seem to eat more than their fair share.  Still, it is a wonderful place.  Friends re-connect there, and new friendships are made.  Children handle the soil, can see the result of their labor over the summer, and gain experience in hands-on giving.  Arguments have been settled there.  Lessons from our mistakes and miscalculations have been learned there.  And, of course, the garden provides just the right bit of everything to grow lots of fresh produce for us to share with brothers and sisters in need.  I’m so grateful that God dropped me into this project.  And I’m so thankful and proud that my church family could see past the torn up lawn, the dirt and mud mess, the hard work, the constant pestering for more stuff, and the time it took to finally look like a garden, to reach out in love and provide one of life’s essentials to others.   Submitted by Val Nichols