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Children plant summer garden, donate food to God’s Storehouse

BY SUSAN ELZEY, Special to the Register & Bee, Published: August 23, 2009

In a departure from what they said was their usual summer of watching TV and playing video games, the kids in the Younger Youth Group at Mount Vernon United Methodist Church spent much of their summer digging in the dirt, pulling weeds and picking beans.

The group of about 15 youth in the fourth through the seventh grades, led by Beth Bauman, director of youth ministries, planted and tended a garden, then donated the food — more than 1,000 pounds of it — to God’s Storehouse.

The garden space was donated by Harry and Margaret Milam on their Halifax County farm. The youth traveled approximately 35 minutes twice a week to work in the garden about four hours each time, aided by parents, grandparents, and younger siblings.

“I knew this age would enjoy the garden, so I asked them, and they were enthusiastic,” Bauman said.

Some of that enthusiasm from April had waned in August after hours in the sun and dirt, but the kids endured to the end. “I’m glad it’s over,” Abby deAristizabal, 11, said. “It was my first experience with a garden that big, but I liked delivering the food to God’s Storehouse.”

Patrick Woodard, 13, said it was the first time he had gardened and actually had success in getting anything to grow. “And I liked being able to see my friends,” he said.

Kate Newell, 10, enjoyed the fruits of the labor — going out to the garden and being able to pick something different every time. However, “I didn’t like the weeding and picking the string beans,” she said, adding that the bugs “weren’t that bad.”

The children grew a wide variety of produce for their first time — corn, squash, watermelons, green beans, tomatoes, zucchini, okra, green peppers, and cantaloupe.

Margaret Milam said the idea grew out of a “Triangle Group” program Mount Vernon does in which three couples get together and eat dinner. “We had a group out to the farm for dinner and Beth and Harry came up with the idea,” Milam said. “The kids’ garden was three or four rows several hundred feet long. The dirt is mostly red clay, so we had to add some top soil and something organic around the plants.”

Milam, a Master Gardener, said that she tried to be out there most evenings to sure to mix some fun in with the work. “We fished down on the Dan River and ate watermelon,” she said. “We also hiked down to the river and picked blackberries along the way.” She said she thought the kids did “very well,” especially with their willingness to pull weeds.

Kathryn Waters, 13, also remembered the fun of running through the cornfield and hiding from each other.

It was a lot of hard work, though, Bauman said. “It was not an easy job, but they really buckled down and worked like Trojans,” she said.

During the dry weeks of the summer, the kids even had to carry big buckets of water down the rows to water their plants.

In the end, however, donating the food to God’s Storehouse made all the work worthwhile. “One girl said it made her feel good to know that their hard work had helped hungry people,” Bauman said.

DeAristizabal said that when she saw the people lined up at God’s Storehouse to get food, it made her feel sad.

Becky Wales, executive director of God’s Storehouse, said that the Mount Vernon youth did a “tremendous job” with the produce. “The vegetables were beautiful and were a nice extra for us to give out to our clients,” she said.

With the last few tomatoes and beans still trickling in, plans now are to repeat the project next summer. The kids said they would be willing to tackle the garden again, even though one young girl said, “Please, not so many beans next time.”

Other youth who participated in the garden were Campbell and Harper Scollo, Nikolas Wright, Thomas and Carolyn Fortney, Tristan Woodard, Brendan deAristizabal, William Gourlay, Max Brande, Lily Hungarland, Mac Newell, Kyla and Sydni Lipscomb, Tony Ayala, and Brooke Blessing.