Door Creek Church Food Pantry Garden
May 13th | Sue Groves
Growing For Christ!
It is with much excitement that we announce the Door Creek Church Food Pantry Garden. This project has the objective of growing vegetables on Door Creek’s property and then donating them to the network of Madison food pantries.
The idea of using some of Door Creek’s acreage to grow food has been around for a while. However, like any ministry, it takes a group of motivated people to come together to get such a project off the ground. That happened this winter as an initial announcement in the Sunday church bulletin surfaced a number of interested people. That group has now grown to 17 project members and our idea started to become a reality. Given our expected work load, we can always use more!
After much deliberation, it was decided that we would site our garden on the east side of the property just off the east access road. We’re starting with ¼ acre with hopes of expanding in future years. At first that looked like a lot of ground, but with our project team we should be able to fill it up. The ground was graciously plowed up by a Door Creek church member and a truckload of compost delivered.
The cool weather vegetables are already in the ground including: onions, carrots, lettuce, kohlrabi and radishes.
We plant on growing many more things as soon as the Wisconsin weather cooperates, probably around May 15-22. We plan on: tomatoes, watermelons, cucumbers, peppers, cantaloupes and pumpkins. Our focus has been on plants that don’t need much water and cover lots of area, thus helping keep the weeds down.
We also recognize our need to be good neighbors, therefore the front part of the garden will contain a fairly large collection of flowers.
The food will be donated to any of a number of area food pantries. We have initially built a relationship with the River food pantry near Warner Park, Sunshine Place in Sun Prairie and are exploring opportunities with the food pantries in McFarland, Cottage Grove and DeForest. Also the Community Action Coalition distributes food to area food pantries and can handle any produce that we elect not to distribute ourselves directly. These organizations are very well operated and have the advantage of being able to get the food to the people who most need it.
Given the difficult times in the economy, the need for fresh grown food for local families has never been greater. Speaking for the project team, we’re only too happy to be able to help out.
If you would like to be involved with the garden this year, please contact Chuck Karabin at 834-9410 or email at .