Feeding the Body

One of my personal hopes for the garden this year was that we could expand the ways in which the produce was being used. In doing so, we also expand the numbers of people who eat food from our harvest.

One group of folks that have been enjoying more veggies this year is people who come to church on Sunday morning! I love that we can give away veggies at coffee hour and use veggies in dishes at coffee hour and still have bounty to bring to the food pantry.

About a month ago, my husband David and I were in the garden after church and had a beautiful head of broccoli that we had just picked (our garden's very first!)
While we were working, we were greeted by Jack, a nephew of a couple of FCS's congregants whom we'd never met. He exclaimed with great enthusiasm how much he LOVES broccoli and asked if he could have it. His sister Hannah joined in telling us how much they loved vegetables of all kinds and of course we gave them the broccoli!

Here's the awesomely veggie-loving kids getting ready to eat their new broccoli:

The big beauty

We also have members of our community who cook year-round for the homeless shelter on our street. They have also been using garden veggies this summer and this month made a beautiful pasta salad with fresh garden peppers, cucumbers, green beans, parsley, and zucchini.

Peppers being chopped

Green beans in the bowl

Zucchini being chopped

Yum! Many thanks to Shannon and everybody involved in making these meals.

Post-Irene: Bad News and Good News!

The bad news about the garden post-Irene is that many, many plants toppled over. We had tomato plants on the ground in bent cages with stakes that had popped out of the ground. Beans and cucumbers were leaning all different directions. The broccoli plants were nearly uprooted like small trees.

We get a lot of wind in the garden in the best of weather, but the tropical storm gusts were a bit much for the garden. I suspect at least branches of the plants (which are now mostly upright) may die prematurely.

I didn't take a lot of time to take photos before trying to set things right, but I'm sure you can get a bit of a sense of what the heavy winds did to our garden from these:

But the good news is that nothing was actually uprooted; we had another great harvest just one day after the storm! I was able to bring a big bag full of more kale, collards, chard, tomatoes, pole beans, cucumbers, bok choi, peppers, parsley, sage, and even a few tomatillos over to the food pantry. Big thanks to Zac and Reebee for helping with the harvest:

Reebee and Zac harvest greens!

Kale

Pole beans

Chard stems

Our biggest cucumber yet (those beans are pretty big too!)

Basil, tomatillos, and red and green tomatoes

Tomatillos

Feeding the Body

Today's delivery to Project SOUP!

Today we donated the veggies pictured below, plus the following:
- several pounds of pole beans both green and yellow
- a few cucumbers
- several small bell peppers

Sweet Banana peppers and LOTS of plump, spicy Serrano peppers

Small tomato harvest - A lot more have been cracking due to fluctuating moisture or finding other uses.

Lots of kale, collards, chard and bok choi

Parsley and sage

Feeding the Body

It's been nearly a month since I've posted anything on this blog. Time flies! So many big, beautiful things have been happening in and around the garden, but this is the time of year when big things can easily start to go wrong. Pests move in, days grow brutally hot and dry, plants grow ill.

I have had so many things I've wanted to share on this forum, I haven't known where to begin. Let's begin again with something beautiful and familiar!

This morning I harvested an amazing bunch of veggies to bring down to Project SOUP. There were cucumbers, many kinds of tomatoes, a little bit of broccoli, carrots, serrano peppers, green peppers, baby bok choi, parsley, sage and the usual pile of kale, collards and chard.

When we are able to bring vegetables down to the pantry early in the week, often they are the only fresh food available to clients at that time. When I arrived today, for example, there was a small pile of onions on the counter and when I left it looked like this:

Yum!

Feeding the Body

Our harvests are getting bigger and bigger! This week I pulled our first beets out of the ground. They are such big, beautiful specimens. I also harvested lots of kale, collards, chard, lettuce, and parsley and brought them over to the East End House in East Cambridge (Project SOUP was mysteriously closed). The food pantry there was about to give away their weekly delivery of rescued food from Food for Free and the staff were overjoyed to be have such fresh, local veggies to distribute as well.

Here's some more pictures of this week's veggies:

'Early Wonder Tall Top' and 'Touchstone Gold' beets

Swiss chard and collards

Kale!

Feeding the Body

I'm back from vacation in Portland, OR and have returned to a garden brimming with life and giant plants! Many thanks to the folks who cared for it while I was away -- especially Elizabeth F!

Today I harvested an IKEA bag full of greens and brought them to the food pantry. (Yes, you read that right!) It included chard, collards, bok choi and loads of three different kinds of kale. Have you ever seen an IKEA bag full of greens before? It's quite the sight:

Feeding the Body

With all this heat (and frequent extra water) the garden has been growing very quickly. It is finally time to bring our first big bag of vegetables to Project SOUP, the food pantry of our mission partner the Somerville Homeless Coalition!

See the 'Winterbor' kale to the left? It has grown big and thick. So have the other two kinds of kale, collards, lettuce, and bok choi.

The lettuce has fed the Sunday morning crowd and folks went home with the small thinnings tonight after Rest and re/New. These are small greens that I had pulled them from between the greens to let the remaining plants grow to full size.

But the biggest and brightest of the lot, the 'cream of the crop' so to speak, is is going to be delivered tomorrow to Project SOUP. We have two grocery bags full of lettuce, a bunch of the best kale I could find, and all of the full-size bok choi specimens (it is a smallish variety).

This delivery is partly to fulfill our promise to the original funders of the garden. We are required to give 10% of our produce to the poor. Realistically, urban gardens often make this 'donation' without trying.

All that said, food pantries are accustomed to receiving produce significantly past it's prime. Tomorrow I will deliver a big bag of super fresh, super local, organic veggies to one of these pantries. What does it mean to give our very best away and only keep the punier specimens for ourselves?

P.S. We will likely have a glut of all kinds of gorgeous produce in the very near future. There will plenty for our church community and extended communities to enjoy! Please let me know if you'd like to cook with our produce for any kind of church function and help yourself to snips of herbs.

Feeding the Body

Look at the beautiful worm we found on Sunday! This picture does not do justice to it's length and shininess. We are fortunate to have soil that is full of these little (and big) guys, but what a strange picture to start this harvest-oriented post with! Or maybe not...

This past Friday, we harvested our first 'crop' of the season. If you ever come work in the garden during the week, it is likely that you will meet a handful of passersby and neighbors who come to ask questions, give feedback, and look at the progress (and beauty) of our garden.

On this particular day a man approached Elizabeth F and I as we were preparing the zucchini bed and asked us, "Do you have any worms?" To which one of us said something along the lines of, "Oh, yes. Lots!" And then we didn't quite know what to say next. I figured he was a slightly awkward garden-lover wanting to make conversation.

Within a short time, however, it came out that this man actually loves a worm-loving pet turtle! He carries around a small jar to collect treats for his beloved pet (much to the horror of his wife who hates worm, but it seems like they've figured out ways to work around this). So of course we went scouring around for some nice plump worms and came up with a small harvest for him to bring home. (It turns out it is very difficult to find worms when you're looking for them. They're sneaky creatures.) So, in the loose sense of the term, the garden has had it's first 'harvest' of the season!

I am really, really, really excited to let you know that this coming Sunday we will have our second harvest! The lettuce, arugula, parsley, and radishes are getting pretty big, and this Sunday at coffee hour look for a simple, super fresh first  First Church Garden salad. It'll look something like this one from my own garden, but LOTS bigger:

I hope to see you there!