The latest in church

growth efforts

Community gardens on church properties

meet big need in tough times

    New growth strategies are bearing fruit — well, more likely, vegetables — on church properties throughout the Northwest.
In such varied locations as Vancouver, Wash., McMinnville and Newberg, churches that, of course, always seek to foster spiritual growth among their congregations are also engaged in a new kind of cultivation — church-based community gardens to help address local hunger in today’s tough economy.
   One of the older church gardens in this region is at the McMinnville Salvation Army Corps, 1950 S.W. Second St., which in 2003 started a community garden to provide fresh produce for the corps’ food pantry for the needy.
   That garden inspired a more recent effort behind McMinnville Seventh-day Adventist Church, 1500 S.W. Old Sheridan Road.
   Also, similar operations recently set up behind Newberg Christian Church, 2315 Villa Road in Newberg, and Vancouver (Wash.) Vineyard Church, 1207 E. Reserve St. A new one starts this month at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, 110 S. Everest Road in Newberg.
   The Salvation Army effort was spotlighted last year with a feature story in the ministry’s Western region newspaper, New Frontier. It told how the corps, with a small building on four acres of land, decided to put the extra earth to good use.
   Since January 2008 the garden has produced more than 1,600 pounds of zucchini tomatoes, bell peppers, carrots, squash, broccoli, herbs and more. The garden is generally harvested three times a week, yielding 150 pounds of produce each time. A daily average of 12 needy households receive fresh produce from the garden.
   Jan Noland, who helped start the garden with her husband, Gary, told the newspaper that the goal was to not only feed people in healthy ways, but also help them learn skills to become more self-sufficient.
   Built by volunteers, the garden has grown considerably in the last five years and is now supported by Yamhill County Master Gardeners. Last August, 23 different people volunteered a total of 332 hours working in the garden. A master gardener is also present at the weekly workdays — Tues-days and Saturdays — to provide instruction to even the most novice gardener.
Anyone can participate in the general pantry gardening. For those who want to grow food on their own, personal rows measuring 150 square feet are rented for an annual fee of $15, which includes plants, seeds and instruction as needed.
   Help and advice from the Salvation Army got the Adventist garden off to a good start in McMinnville. According to a recent article in that city’s News-Register newspaper, members of the Adventist church decided they needed to take action as the recession began to deepen earlier this year.
   Del Lewis of the church said so many in the congregation and friends and neighbors were becoming unemployed that a “pretty good-sized” vegetable garden was called for. Devoting part of the church’s back lawn to the effort, they put a deer fence up, hauled in compost and developed the garden. A resident on nearby Baker Creek Road, who has a horse ranch, provides well-decomposed manure that is mixed with the topsoil to enrich the garden.
   Water is provided for the gardeners, who are asked to supply their own seeds or starts. No work is allowed on Saturday, which is the Sabbath for Adventists, but otherwise the garden is accessible anytime day or night.
   Although he has been canning and preserving most of his life, Lewis has been taking the Oregon State University Extension Service’s Master Food Preserver Class, to be sure he’s up to date on the latest safety recommendations.
   In nearby Newberg, Newberg Christian Church set up its new community garden on the west side of the property. Church secretary Debbie Groat told the Newberg Graphic she has seen perfect strangers pull in and ask for a garden plot after seeing the church’s new sign for the garden on Mountainview Drive.
   The church offered 10-foot by 25-foot and 20-foot by 25-foot plots and also provides free water through a drip irrigation system. The church also offers free classes by local master gardeners.
    Local residents Bruce and Nancy Schultz and Paulette Hansen told the Graphic that they really appreciate the church getting involved with the community in this way. Together, the Schultzes and Hansen, whose plots are adjacent and form a 40-foot by 25-foot rectangle, are raising tomatoes, peas, broccoli, peppers, cucumbers, squash and herbs.
   The Vancouver Vineyard Church garden was among several community gardens mentioned in a column last month by Oregonian writer David Sarasohn. He wrote how gardeners David and Andrea Walker were looking to their third summer harvest from the 3,000 square-foot garden.
Hoping for a yield of 5,000 pounds of produce, the Walkers have had the greatest success with squash, tomatoes, lemon cucumbers and pole beans, but also have grown lettuce and carrots.
   The church’s senior pastor, Steve Fish, once sepnt two years at the Oregon State University School of Agriculture. This year he designed a system of covering the crops with black plastic and fish emulsion to encourage growth. The garden is maintained by about a dozen volunteers connected to the church —some of them also clients.
   Andrea Walker said that when the harvest comes in, the week’s produce is offered on tables outside the church’s food panty office. Sometimes when the produce on the tables runs short, clients are invited into the garden to make their own ground-level choice.
   In Newberg, St. Michael’s Episcopal will have formal groundbreaking of its Chehalem Valley Community Garden at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Aug. 10.
   At all locations, those involved in the gardening enjoy seeing the results of their efforts. As McMinnville’s Bev Norman told New Frontier, “My mom always said, ‘Gardening is good for the soul’ and it really is.”
    The newspaper summarized that all involved would also agree gardening is even better when it feeds the hungry.