Joy from a Cherry Tree

The Little White Bags

So this was back in the early summertime, right when we were still picking pounds and pounds of cherries off of the cherry tree in the middle of the church's garden. We had finished picking cherries off of the tree for the day and had placed a reasonable amount of cherries in little white paper bags for the community to take for free. We had to have placed dozens of those little white backs on the produce stand that sits on the corner of 2nd and Clarke St. My mom, my God brother, and I then set off to run some errands, telling a few people about the free cherries on the garden stand before we took off on our errands. As we were driving back on Martin Luther King Drive, just a few blocks from the garden, we saw a mother and daughter. Both had one of the white bags in their hands and it was so adorable to see the two of them chomping down on the cherries as they talked and laughed together. It was a great chance to see our produce in the hands of a loving mother and daughter pair and knowing that the fruit I just picked from the tree was contributing to their joyful happiness. Seeing that moment immediately became one of the many reasons why I love working in the garden year after year and made me truly realize how impactful a little garden on the corner of a block can really be!

Helpers in the garden, picking cherries

Story submitted by Tara Holty, one of the APC team of youth leaders in the Kids Working to Succeed Program.

Lunch! Fun for the Whole Family

One of the historic components of All Peoples Kids Working to Succeed program has been the bag lunch.  At the end of a morning of KWTS work in the garden, student participants, youth leaders and adult teachers would gather in the church basement or on the church steps and eat lunch together.  Each participant would receive a bag lunch, lovingly prepared by folks from one of All Peoples' partner churches.  At the height of the summer, 30 to 40 kids, youth and adults would eat lunch together, 3 days per week, for 8-10 weeks.  

Yes, that's a lot of lunches, and you might be thinking:  what a daunting task to make and deliver all of those lunches!  However, when many hands from many families from many partner communities each made lunches for a day or two, the bag lunch program was very manageable.  The biggest challenge has always been refrigerator space at the church!

Welcome to the summer of Covid-19, when the Kids Working to Succeed program has been completely re-imagined, including the lunches.  Students participate 3 days per week, with online and home activities and one day per week in the garden.  Recognizing that families depend on KWTS lunches as a source of summer nutrition for their children, program leaders designed a way for families to have 3 lunches per week at home as part of the program.  Each Monday, students come to the church with their grown-up to pick up their KWTS supplies for the online and home activities as well as their Grocery Bag Lunches.

Grocery Bag Lunches consist of provisions for lunch for a family of 5 for 3 days per week.   This summer, there are 12 families with kids in the KWTS program.  At first, partner churches were skeptical about this new lunch model.  Grocery shopping for 12 families for 3 days of lunches for 5 people - that's 180 lunches!  However, if you think about making lunch for 3 days for your family of 5 and needing to grocery shop for that times 12, maybe it doesn't seem quite so daunting.  

Well, with just a little encouragement, the partners accepted the challenge.  Hopefully, they are feeling positive about Grocery Bag Lunches on their end, because by mid-summer, All Peoples is claiming Grocery Bag Lunch a success!  In fact, here are some messages which have come in from KWTS families:

[We received] the best lunches today, 3 bags of food separated into 3 categories, spaghetti and meatballs lunch, sub sandwich lunch, and hot dog lunches with ALL the fixings.  These actually brought tears to my eyes because all of our kids go home with this fabulous stuff!!  Not just a basic bag lunch.  It even excites [my husband].

My son feels proud to bring these lunches home for the family.

These lunches are making something new happen for us.  We are actually making lunch and eating it together.  I like this family time better than the old way.

Partners have been impressively creative, have baked dozens and dozens of homemade cookies, have packed groceries in re-useable bags - it is beautiful!  The love that goes into shopping and organizing is very apparent to the families.

From a logistics perspective, the Grocery Bag Lunch program has been very easy to manage.  If a family has transportation challenges, delivering the Grocery bags to their  home as a porch drop on Monday has worked well.  Keeping the items in bulk packaging has eliminated the trash problem that has sometimes been an issue around the church.  

Maybe you are wondering why Grocery Bag Lunches are a topic in the Harvest Hands Blog.  All Peoples grows food as part of an overall commitment to food justice ministry and increasing food security for families that struggle to put daily bread on the table.  Grocery bag lunches are literally helping our kids to grow as they grow food for their community.  This story is one way in which All Peoples can highlight the ways in which many hands are coming together to do this food justice work and to say thank you.

KWTS small group working in the garden

 

Plant Diaries: Early Summer Photo Album

The All Peoples Porch Pots and Partner Plots ministry has taken the Community Garden out into the community - way out!  Peeps Plants are growing up in their new homes on porches, in raised beds, in church gardens and home gardens, across a 3-county area.  Here are a few photos that the plants have sent us (with a little help from their caretakers) so we can see how much they've grown!

Oh Baby!  This little cucumber plant made the journey out to 
Waukesha County and is already producing fruits!  Congratulations!

Here's a message from the cucumber plant in this Waukesha County partner
porch garden:  "The tomato plants were complaining because I was
creeping around near them.  Then I felt like I was going over the edge! 
Luckily my caretaker moved me so my baby cukes won't fall to the ground
and I can crawl around as much as I please!"

And here's a message from the tomato plants in that same porch garden:
"Thank goodness that pesky cucumber plant is no longer crowding
us.  It is SO hot out here, but as long as we get the water we
need each day, we love it!  Our caretaker is doing a good job of
giving us a consistent amount of water each day so that we don't 
get yellow spots on our leaves."

We got this message from 3 happy Peeps Plants:  "Check out the 
lovely couple that takes care of us in their partner plot!  They put us
into these big buckets and we are so comfy and have room for our 
roots to grow!  Pretty soon we will give them what they
need to make salsa."

Our friends out in Rubicon made a cool logo for their 
Partner Plot program.  Many of the church members there
have big gardens and even farms!  This is their first year
of partnering up with All Peoples.

One family started a Partner Plot
near the picnic table in their yard.

Another family has a great big garden.  Can you see the
little Partner Plot sign in the garden?

Here's another friend with a Partner Plot which is growing
yummy veggies to share with All Peoples families.

The next time you visit the All Peoples Darius Simmons
Community Garden, you can look for the All Peoples &
St. Olaf Partner Plot sign!  It was a gift from our friends
at our new partner church.

Our friends from St. Olaf noticed that the strawberry farms
in their area had a lot of extra berries on the vines.  They
braved the warm weather to glean the fields so that families
in the All Peoples neighborhood can have fresh, picked strawberries!
Produce from the St. Olaf Partner Plots is usually delivered on Wednesdays
to the All Peoples Free Produce Stand in the community garden.

We hope you are enjoying the photos and the news from the Porch Pots and Partner Plots!!  Thanks to the photographers and communicators who are sharing their stories with us.  

Keep growing, Peeps Plants!!

Plant Diaries: The Babies are Growing

The Grow Room is empty!  Where are the plant babies now? 

Remember our friends, Tom and Mat O?  They are growing tall alongside
their new friends in Kingo Lutheran Church's community garden.

They are growing so fast, you can hardly find them like among all of their new friends!

Thanks to that nice lady who let Tom and Mat O stay at her house for a couple
of nights!  That really helped them to get ready to be out in the big garden!

Tom and Mat O are pretty famous.  Do you remember the first letter we received from them?  They are even featured in a new short film which All Peoples is using to help teach kids about hardening off their plants before planting them into a big pot or a big garden.  You can watch the movie too!  It's called Baby Plants.

Some of our plants went to St. John's Lutheran Church in Brookfield, where
they met their new caretakers.  The plants spent a few nights on porches in Brookfield,
Waukesha, Pewaukee and Mukwonago before venturing out into the bigger world.

Out at Holy Cross in Menomonee Falls, the youth put some effort into creating
lovely warm, rich beds for a wide variety of baby plants from All Peoples.

Baby plants require a lot of tender, loving care, and we can see that these babies
are being tucked into their new beds with gentle hands.

Meanwhile, back at All Peoples Church, many of the plants are spending a little time in the greenhouse.
Here they are getting used to their new, larger pots, which will be their permanent homes
on neighborhood porches and in the All Peoples Community Garden.

Yesterday, a small cucumber plant was spotted skipping down Clarke Street in the hands of a small boy.  Are pickles in his future?  Stay tuned for more plant adventures!!

This story is brought to you by the All Peoples Community Garden Porch Pots and Partner Plots programs.  During Covid-19, the community garden is moving out into the community in new and broader ways.  If you are a caretaker for a porch pot or partner plot, please submit your photos and stories to linda@allpeoplesgathering.org or post them in the comments.

Submitted by Linda Muth.

We Grow Artists!

You see an old bed frame.  We see a trellis.

In the All Peoples Darius Simmons Community Garden, we grow more than plants.  We grow artists!  One way in which we do that is by up-cycling donated items to create quirky, fun structures which help support our plants as they grow and help support our community's creative spirit.

Headboards and baby crib rails make perfect trellises for our raspberry hedge.  We planted the hedge next to the public sidewalk to serve both as a perimeter for our garden and so passers-by can grab a couple of berries for a snack as they walk along.  Every spring, we prune the dead canes and weave the new growth into the slats and curves of our re-purposed trellises.  Of course, we love to paint our trellises with bright, cheery colors, which helps remind our neighbors not to step on baby bushes as they are growing.

During this season's stay-at-home time, families have picked up old vinyl banners (blank on the back side) and permanent markers to create positive message posters.  Positive messages of hope, faith and love are as important to building a healthy community as are fruits and vegetables!  One of All Peoples core values is:  We Serve Soul Food.  The community garden is a great example of how we live into that core value spiritually and nutritionally.

A few weeks ago, we put out the word to friends and partners that we would gladly accept donations of planting pots, trellis items, plant stakes and fencing items.  Friends responded to the call, safely dropped their items outside of their church, and after checking in with us, dropped them off at our garden table.  We sprayed them down and then had great fun checking out our newest treasures! 

Ladders, old kitchen racks, tomato cages, planters, wire, whirly flowers, sprinkling cans, vinyl sheets, fencing...you name it, we create with it!  Especially in times of unrest and uncertainty, creating and sharing hopeful and cheerful art in a natural space which grows heathy food brings life and peace to our neighborhood.  

If you have items for us to repurpose, please contact the church office at 414-264-1616.