Growing vegetables, growing community

St. Joseph’s parishioners launch community garden project to help the city’s most vulnerable

With a plenitude of beets, potatoes, onions, carrots, tomatoes, turnips and rutabaga now stored in the parish kitchen, this autumn has marked a successful “trial run” for a new community garden initiative at St. Joseph Church in Grande Prairie.

This gardening project was conceived, planted and harvested on the grounds of the church, with donated time and resources from several parishioners and three fully utilized garden beds, whose harvest will be used to feed Grande Prairie’s homeless and most vulnerable.

It was a multifaceted initiative: it was a form of community building between parishioners, it allowed the church to attempt sustainable gardening, and it offered the parish a way to further its charitable outreach to the city’s local drop-in for the homeless, the St. Lawrence Centre.

The project’s three leads – Tim MacDonald, Carey Mruk and Barry Tameling – are hopeful this year’s first attempt is only the beginning of what will become an annual parish ministry.

The construction of the garden beds began in April and on September 18th their seven key vegetables were uprooted and packed away at the parish kitchen.

The greatest blessing for Carey Mruk has simply been seeing this initiative, nearly two years in the making, finally come to fruition.

With the vegetables now harvested, they are grateful that the seeds planted, cared for and watered throughout the spring and summer will now be used to feed those most in need.

“Just to see so many people come together and see everything grow like it was supposed to, and just to know that we are providing future food for people that need it – it’s amazing,” she said.

The project was the brain child of Tim MacDonald, who first presented the idea of a parish garden project during a Lenten presentation in 2023.

Community gardening has always been a bit of a personal ambition for Tim.

When he studied for his Masters degree in environmental management, he had initially proposed a project at his university for a community garden on campus. The university had ruled the project too complex, and though disheartened, he never abandoned the idea completely. It stayed at the back of his mind, and he continued to hope that one day such a project would become a reality.

Shortly after joining the parish, Tim was invited to join the archdiocese’s social justice committee. When his long-held ambition was combined with inspiration from St. Joseph Church’s food ministry for the St. Lawrence Centre, Tim began brainstorming a way that could incorporate both community gardening and the church’s charitable outreach.

“It seemed like a logical use of some of the land around the church, and with all the work the Knights of Columbus do with homeless outreach, it all just came together mentally that this was an initiative we could do,” said Tim.

With examples from other dioceses, such as the initiative of the Catholic bishops of Ireland who encouraged churches to use 30% of their grounds as “green spaces” for sustainable agriculture, as well as the emphasis of the Francis papacy on care for creation and using the gifts of the earth responsibly, its an initiative that fits well within the Church’s mission today.

While on the social justice committee, Tim was tasked to use his background and give a presentation to the parish during Lent, focusing on local agriculture and responsible uses of the land. It naturally fit to include in this presentation his concept of how the church’s land could be used responsibly and charitably, namely by providing garden beds that could supply the local Knights of Columbus council with vegetables for their food ministry.

“The presentation included slides on how we can act locally in defending the land, getting back to the land,” Tim explained. “One of my slides was just ‘planting the seed’ (if you’ll excuse the pun) on gardening, and that there is land at the back of the church that could maybe serve as a church garden. A bunch of people thought this was a great idea.”

This is only an excerpt. Read the full story in the October 2024 edition of Northern Light