By Cathy Adams
Cathy is a long-time writer and novelist with an avid interest in gardening. She has served as an editor at Southern Living and Portico magazines, a creative writing instructor, among other achievements.
Every day finds 10% of the residents of Greater Birmingham, 80-100,00 people, unsure of the source of their next meal.
Ironically, it was an over abundance of nutritional food yielded by their home garden that led Alexandria Parrish and Danny Evans, married attorneys, to embark on a mission that has potential for wide reaching results in addressing hunger.
“During the summer of 2008 my husband and I were astounded at the amount of squash, cucumbers and other vegetables that our home garden produced,” Alexandria recalls. “People at work were almost running from us as we tried to give away more food than we could use.”
As the national economy imploded during the fall of that year, Parrish and Evans read about increasing numbers of people falling on hard times and formulated a plan for providing not only more but also better food for those in need.
They went to the Session of Mountain Brook Presbyterian Church, which sits on ten acres on Brookwood Road, and outlined a plan for using a quarter acre of the church’s back yard for a community garden. To work out the logistics of distribution they contacted various community kitchens. Magic City Harvest agreed to send a team to pick up produce several times a week for distribution to relief agencies around the city.
A quarter acre of land behind Mountain Brook Presbyterian was tilled, composted and planted as a giving garden.
Ground was broken and donated seeds and seedlings planted on Good Friday of 2009. “The first year we worked every weekend and many nights,” Alexandria says. “We both have day jobs, so the next step was raising money and volunteers.” As the garden has grown as an outreach ministry, Charlie Hunter has been hired as garden supervisor.
Thanks to a volunteer gardening army of church members and community supporters, yield from the 2010 garden was 5000 pounds of organic produce, an increase of 2000 pounds from the initial summer’s efforts. Pastor Cary Speaker’s wife Sally serves as volunteer coordinator, posting task sign-up sheets, tracking volunteer hours to determine person hours per pound yielded, and sending out email updates.
No pesticides are used in the garden, and Alexandria points out that food that has to fight to live has much higher nutritional value than vegetables grown in bug free greenhouse environments.
With design advice from Edwin Marty, then director of Jones Valley Urban Farm, the Mountain Brook Presbyterian gardeners began with five crops and have expanded their reach to include their current first winter garden of turnip greens, collards, radishes, lettuces and spinach.
Winter greens will provide nutrition for Birmingham's homeless and hungry.
With participation across all ages of the congregation, church members are encouraged to give the compost tumbler a turn, and church youth painted a garden shed built as an Eagle Scout project. A drip system developed in Israel provides efficient water-wise irrigation.
Church members and community volunteers of all ages find a mission in the garden.
“We are encouraging community involvement,” Alexandria says. “We can provide access to gardening for those who may not have a home garden but who can donate time. A dozen lawyers weeded, planted and mulched as part of the Birmingham Bar Association’s ‘Servis Juris’ community service day.”
Last summer’s Bible School at MBPC involved a week long study related to food, hunger and nutrition. Focusing on the problem of hunger in our community, the children raised money for the world hunger Heifer Project, made a dinner at the church using only foods grown in the garden, sorted non-perishables in the church’s food pantry, and took field trips to the places where Magic City Harvest delivers.
The future is unfolding. “We would love for other churches to join with us,” Alexandria says. “We’ve been offered other ground but need more resources in the forms of people, money and marketing.”
“The next progression is to create a non-profit that can serve as an economic engine that can generate money to fund this and other similar gardens and, in doing so, produce jobs. We are considering the possibility of producing fresh food that could be frozen and sold locally. This can be a healthy, vibrant system for the whole community.”
The Community Garden yielded 5000 pounds of produce in 2010.
“There are parallels between food and faith in watering and nurturing giving bounty.”
For more information or to volunteer contact the church office at 967-5037 or on the web at mbpcusa.org/garden. A video of the Mountain Brook Presbyterian Community Garden is available on youtube, and the church invites those interested to visit their Facebook page.
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