Partner Plot News: Honey!

This is the story, told in pictures, of how jars of fresh, artisanal honey made their way to the free produce stand in the All Peoples Darius Simmons Community Garden.

These are bee hives.  In nature, bees make their own hives, but bee keepers build these little houses which are just perfect for honey bee colonies.  Each bee in the colony has its own job.  Forager bees are the bees we see in the garden.  Their job is to go out into the world, flying from flower to flower to collect nectar (the sweet juice in the center of the flower). The nectar will be turned into food for the bees in the hive. Pollen from flowers sticks to the bees, so as the bees go from flower to flower, that pollen moves from flower to flower with them.  This pollinating process makes it possible for plants and trees to produce fruits, from apples to zucchini.  This is why taking good care of bees is so important!

When the forager bees come home to the hives, they give the nectar to the house bees. A little bit of bee spit from the forager mixes with the nectar.  A little bit more bee spit mixes in when the nectar goes to the house bee. That bee spit helps the nectar turn into honey.

Inside the hive, the house bees build little hexagonal cylinders out of wax to hold the nectar. After bees squirt the nectar into the wax hexagons, the bees inside the hive make a warm breeze with their wings to remove some of the water from the nectar.  The nectar becomes thicker.  That is how it becomes honey!  To keep the honey fresh, the bees make a little beeswax cap for each hexagonal honey pot. In this photo you can see the honeycomb - all of the little hexagons are filled with honey!

Bee keepers collect honey from the hives by removing some of the honeycomb.  It is important to leave enough honey in the hive so that the bees have food for the winter!  Remember, honey is bee food first, and people food second.

The process of collecting the honeycomb and squeezing out the honey is sticky business!

This is a honey press.

Look at all that honey!!

It's important to remember that raw honey should not be given to children under age 2.

The pressed honey is then decanted into jars.

Good to the last drop!!

And that is the story of how jars of yummy honey made it to the All Peoples produce stand. Thank you to Pastor Larry, the honey team and friends from St. Olaf for this fun Partner Plot Project!!

Partner Plot News, Fresh from the Corn Field

Our friend, Steve, was busy with his camera during the last 2 weeks, as teams from St. Olaf and All Peoples harvested corn fresh from the partner field!  Neither heat, nor pending storms kept the team from completing its mission!  Everyone involved had fun, learned a lot and says THANK YOU!

This team helped collect the first batch of corn for the All Peoples vegetable stand.
The community was so excited to get its first taste of fresh, Wisconsin sweet corn!

Check out how beautiful all of the produce grown in St. Olaf partner
plots looks at the free produce stand!

It's so much fun when we work together!
St. Olaf friends will recognize this woman doing her part.

The littlest harvester was a pretty great helper!

Our friend Steve calls this "four-handed picking"

What's the last you thing you did before heading off to college?  Picked corn, of course!

Always stop to smell the flowers.  And photograph bees.

Photos submitted by St. Olaf Lutheran Church, Rubicon, WI

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!!

The Plant Diaries: We've Got Mail!

We've got mail!  

Ever since our tomato plant friends, Tom & Mat O. wrote their first letter to All Peoples, we have been hoping to hear from them again.  One day, we missed them so much that we put on our masks, drove over to see them took a couple of sneaky photos.  We don't want to be helicopter parents, but gosh, they are growing up so quickly!  But never could we have guessed that they would send us this news so soon!  Here's the letter we just received:

Dear APC Friends,

We are bursting with excitement to share our big news – WE’RE EXPECTING! We’ve included a picture so you can see the beginnings of our little babies. They’re just little blossoms now, but it won’t be long before they are strong and robust tomatoes.

 

We really hadn’t planned on starting our family so soon, but there were a few days when we drank in a little too much sun. That and the healthy, organic soil we’re living in  made us decide there was really no reason to wait. And we’re not the only ones. Our neighbors in the pots on either side of us are also looking forward to the arrival of their red little bundles of juiciness.

 

Our friends, the Radishes, advise us to enjoy every moment, because these kids grow up so fast. A whole bunch of their children left to start their careers filling empty stomachs. We’ve included their last “class” picture before they were packed into bags and took off. They’re a crunchy bunch!

 

That’s news for now. Until we talk again, remember to set your roots firmly in the soil and reach high in the sky!

Peace and love,

Tom & Mat O

Tom & Mat O. sent us this selfie!

Tom & Mat O. sent us this photo of their neighbors, the Radishes.

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.

The Plant Diaries: Our First Letter

Have you heard the news?  All Peoples Church has started a new program.  It's called:  Porch Pots and Partner Plots.  This year, because of the Corona Virus Pandemic, gardening in big groups in the Darius Simmons All Peoples Community garden will not be happening in its usual way.  Naturally, when we had to explain the ramifications of the new safe-gardening protocols to the little sprouts in the Grow Room, they were sad.  They love hanging out with the Kids Working to Succeed children and folks from the neighborhood and friends from partner churches. 

Of course, we can't have sad sprouts! So, the All Peoples team came up with a plan.  Why not invite KWTS kids to grow potted plants on their porches?  Why not invite church families, neighbors and friends to plant a few All Peoples plants in their own gardens?  Why not ask partners with gardens or fields of their own to grow All Peoples Plots? 

Let's do it!  (All Peoples peeps say that a lot.)

This is how it came to pass that on a lovely Saturday morning, a very kind lady stopped by All Peoples Church to pick up a couple of plants.  Two little tomato plants were selected by Miss Susan, the All Peoples Garden Educator, as the first babies to go out from the All Peoples Grow Room into the wide, wide world.   Naturally, plants that travel love to take photos and write stories about their adventures.  Yesterday, we received a letter from the kind lady and the plants.  Here it is:

To our dear APC friends,

First thank you for giving us such a great start in life. We were so lucky to have the company of all those plants and people who cared for us since we were babies. We miss you all!

We haven’t yet met all our new friends at Kingo, other than the nice lady who welcomed us on Saturday. She drove us to our new home and let us spend a little time getting to know the area as she planted the neighbors we’ll be living next to. It was lovely, but a little overwhelming to be out in the big world. We were feeling tired after such an exciting morning, so the nice lady took us to her house. She said we would be staying with her a few days while she teaches us about how to live out on our own. To be honest, we’ve not big fans of the cold and rain, to say the least. Sometimes we find it hard to stay standing. But the nice lady assures us that when we finally settle into our new beds, we will be very happy that we put in the time to become acquainted with changing temperatures, sunshine, and rain.

That’s all we have to share for now. We pray that God will shine abundance on the APC gardens. Give our love to all our old friends and tell them that great adventure awaits them!

Peace and love to all,

Tom & Mat O.

Tom and Mat O visit their new home.

Tom and Mat O meet a few friends who are little younger
than they are.

It's hard to get used to the wind and rain, but luckily,
Tom and Mat O can hang out at their friend's house.

Pop Goes the Market

Late in the summer, All Peoples received an invitation from St. Mark's Episcopal Church to participate in a pop up market in the church yard. We gathered together some pickles we had canned and dried herbs for tea. We picked some greens, tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and flowers from our gardens and gathered up some dried sage we had hanging in the greenhouse, and on a misty Saturday morning we set up a table.  Two of our faithful garden volunteers staffed the table and by the end of the morning we had more than $140 in sales.  The proceeds from the sales went back into our Kids Working to Succeed program - supporting the kids who grew the produce.  

This is a great example of churches making good use of their assets and working together.  St. Mark's identified the need for a farmer's market in their church neighborhood.  They gathered together a couple of vendors, and invited All Peoples.  All Peoples is committed to providing free, healthy produce to families in need, and is also seeking sustainable income sources in order to support the work that young people do in the garden.  This was a win-win and fun situation.  And the pickles were the hot-ticket item! 

Pop-up markets are sure to be part of our garden sustainability plan.  If you'd like to invite us over to sell fresh or preserved products, let us know!