With Michigan’s unemployment rate at 15.4 percent, the number of hungry people is increasing as well. Churches have long taken up collections of non-perishable foods for local and their own food pantries, but for many of the hungry, fresh fruits and vegetables are out of the question. Fresh produce often isn’t available to food banks, and the cost at grocery stores make it prohibitive.

Responding to this dire situation, and understanding that fresh foods are healthier alternatives to processed and packaged foods, many congregations in the Diocese of Michigan have started or expanded community gardens in which they grow and give away the yields to their hungry neighbors.

These are some of their stories.

St. Paul’s, Brighton

St. Paul’s, Brighton, has developed a community-based program of environmentally sustainable gardening to provide fresh produce to Gleaners Community Food Bank of Southeast Michigan and Fish & Loaves Community Meals Program.

G3 (God. Growing. Giving.) is a subcommittee of the St. Paul’s Peace & Social Justice Committee and involves growing a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables at the church and at Emrich Retreat Center, a property of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan.

“Gleaners provides free food to approximately 900 people a month in Livingston County,” said Joannée DeBruhl, director of the program. “Fresh produce is desperately needed and our intention is to do something that impacts our community especially during difficult times.”

“Our auto workers, from blue collar to white collar, took a hit, and the gardens have given a little bit of hope to people, when everything is crashing down around them,” Parish Administrator and church member Jenny Ritter said. “They have purpose and are able to contribute and it doesn’t cost but a little bit of time, with great reward.”

In five weeks this spring, volunteers put in 32 five-by-15-foot beds at St. Paul’s and Emrich Retreat Center. On May 30, planting day for the G3 Garden Project, a group of 24 volunteers gathered to plant the gardens. “A total of 704 seedlings and 1,882 seeds were planted,” said DeBruhl. “We moved 67,500 pounds of compost, 3,680 pounds of manure, and 280 pounds of peat moss one wheel barrow at a time.” The church has already delivered more than 16 pounds of produce to Gleaners.

The G3 Garden Project includes a pair of “Listening Benches” on the grounds of St. Paul’s. “The idea behind the ‘Listening Benches’ is to give the many people who walk by the church a place to rest and to listen for God,” said Deon Johnson, rector at St. Paul’s. “People have a lot of things on their hearts and minds right now and our hope is to create a place to recapture a bit of spirituality in the heart of downtown.”

The project has “opened up so many doorways for people to volunteer their talents, from the church and the community,” said Ritter, from watering and weeding to delivering food several times a week. The parish’s Daughters of the King plans to bake zucchini bread to raise money for the congregation’s well building project in Malawi Africa. A volunteer-staffed booth at the Brighton Farmers Market raises funds and awareness for the gardens and the well.

“Farmers are donating some of their fresh produce left over at the end of the day,” Ritter said.“We’ve started something here.”

St. Barnabas, Chelsea

The garden at St. Barnabas began three years ago when “some of the people decided to get out from behind the four walls of the church and begin to live the Gospel in an outward way,” said member and garden volunteer David Glasser. “We decided being a small congregation, the only thing that made sense to do was plant a garden.”

When volunteers began digging up the lawn, putting up a fence and planting the garden, “it spurred other people in the community to start thinking about what they could do to alleviate hunger,” said Glasser. The City of Chelsea has donated space, students at the high school are talking about starting a garden on school property, and a number of other faith communities got involved.

“It’s kind of mushrooming, which is really good,” Glasser said. “Each church has land to put to use growing rather than cutting and fertilizing it.”

The church had been donating all its produce to Food Gatherers. This year it joined forces with Faith and Food, and is growing the food the organization requested: hardier vegetables that last longer, such as squash, broccoli, cabbage, beans, and Roma tomatoes, which don’t bruise as easily as other types and are good for cooking.

“A number of us in Chelsea have our own gardens, being a rural community—some with acres, some with little plots. We plant a few extra rows for donation,” said Glasser. Other people who have walked by or seen the garden sign have dropped off produce from their own gardens and Glasser is happy to take it—he even picks it up at people’s homesif they ask—and drop it off at Food Gatherers, which is near his office in Ann Arbor.

Everybody in the congregation takes part in the process, said Glasser, from caring for the garden to delivering the produce. “Some people donated plants, some helped during planting. They do whatever they can do.”

In the winter, the congregation collects canned goods and “keeps this whole food ministry going,” said Glasser. “It doesn’t matter how small you are; if all small churches put something together we can make a huge dent. That the goal.

“It’s really important for us to get out there and meet people as Jesus did,” he added. “He met their physical needs. That’s an important part for us as people of faith to do:care for physical needs and spiritual needs.”

St. Peter’s, Detroit

St. Peter’s Manna Community Garden got its start in 2007, later in the season than most gardens, when a neighbor came by and proposed starting a garden at the church. “She lived across the street so she took care of it mostly. Not a lot of other people were involved,” said Em Jacoby, church member and gardener.

The next year the church joined the Garden Resource Network in Detroit, which operates through the Greening of Detroit. For just over $20 a year, they received all the seeds and seedlings they needed and some of the lumber for the raised five beds they built. “If you want to start an organic garden in Detroit it’s very cheap,” Jacoby said. The raised beds are particularly necessary because the soil is contaminated with lead and other chemicals. Still, it was mostly St. Peters people helping out, and not many at that.

This year, however, Deacon Helen Brewster began organizing the neighborhood to get involved with the garden. “She went door to door with flyers, we had a potluck meeting, and five or six people from the neighborhood and 10 from St. Peter’s came,” Jacoby said. “We started the garden this year with that meeting, where we developed a list of guidelines that most community gardens have.”

Additional beds were added this year with soil from Georgia Street Community Garden, and compost from Greening of Detroit. There are four flower beds, each four-by-two-feet, and 10 produce beds, each four-by-eight-feet. The gardeners together decided what to plant; and they chose lettuce, kale, cabbage, onions, tomatoes, bell and hot peppers, cucumbers, and nasturtiums and marigolds to keep insect pests away.

“We have lots of loose leaf lettuce—three pounds so far with more to grow,” said Jacoby. “There’s lots of kale, bush beans are coming in, broccoli, and some strawberries.” Volunteers from the church and the neighborhood weed and water.

The soup kitchen, Manna Community Meals, will take the tomatoes, onions and potatoes. “We’ll process that for them, freeze it or can it, chop it, for use in soups,” said Jacoby. “Otherwise produce is used by street harvesters from the soup kitchen; people who work in the garden can use it; and the potluck at St. Peter’s every Sunday usually has at least one dish from our garden.” Anyone walking by who sees something is ripe is invited to pick it and eat it.

“The idea of manna is food from God. If we don’t use it while it’s there, it rots. You can’t store it up,” Jacoby said. “We’re helping the soup kitchen and growing this food, but we have to make sure it is shared and distributed in a timely way, because it’s there when it’s there and then goes bad. When it comes to the garden, that’s important to think about. If we fenced off the garden and only let the volunteers come in, I think we would waste a lot.”

Jacoby said she is just one of many people who think, “‘We have all this space in Detroit and we have a lot of hungry people. Why not put the two together and do something for both?’ It’s important to share with all people, not just those who can afford to shop at the grocery store. Giving it to people who can walk to the garden from the street and put it in their soup is really important.”

St. James, Dexter

St. James, Dexter, started its garden last year when the director of Faith in Action, the local interdenominational agency that helps needy families, mentioned to church member Jackie Shock that its clients appreciated fresh food, in addition to canned and boxed items.

“For many years the need in this end of the county was not talked about, but Faith in Action’s services have increased 75 percent over last summer,” Shock said. “Now it’s an acknowledged need.”

Shock talked to the church’s outreach committee to gain their support for a garden. With the church’s sunny front yard, “smack dab in front of the parish hall,” Shock thought, a garden would do well, and it would likely be an effort the parish would get behind. She was right.

“From the youngest to senior citizens, the garden, which is probably 20-by-35-feet, has engendered lots of support. This year we have 15 to 20 adults who volunteer, and again as many children,” Shock said.

At planting time, some plants were donated by members, others by local farmers and gardening shops. Members help weed and harvest at the end of church on nice Sundays in the summer, and take turns watering as well as dropping produce off at the food pantry. At the offering during the service, children bring up produce they’ve helped plant and pick.

The St. James gardeners planted what Faith in Action asked for: tomatoes, green peppers and hot peppers are “biggies,” Shock said; as well as bush and pole beans, and this year squash, melon and kale. Radishes “the size of small apples” were ready to be picked in early July. “This year we’ve extended the garden so that it touches the back wall of the parish hall for vining plants.” Volunteers also built a fence this year, with netting on the inside to keep out digging animals, and they applied for a grant from the Chelsea Garden Club to help pay for it.

“[The club] does grants for people doing community gardens, and they said they would not do churches. But because we are giving all the food to the community food bank, they accepted our application,” said Shock. “The fence has been a stretch on the parish budget. [To help with the cost] our families can buy a section of fence, and put their name on that section.

“Most people walk right by and don’t notice the garden, but we know that the community we help feed is very appreciate and Faith in Action is very appreciative.”

Church of the Incarnation, Pittsfield Township

Garden coordinator Peggy Herron brought the idea for a garden at Incarnation to the congregation after she attended the first Faith and Food organizing meeting.

“The representation by Growing Hope and Food Gatherers really touched me,” Herron said. “I wasn’t aware of the number of people in Washtenaw County who used food pantries as a means of getting the food they eat on a daily basis, and the fact that Food Gatherers has been such a wonderful community resource and they are in an economic pinch and their budget has increased so much. I felt this was something we could do to help and it wouldn’t be a stretch to make it happen. A 20-by-20-foot plot—we knew we could do that.”

Volunteers laid out a 15-by-50-foot section and within that constructed eight five-by-12-foot raised beds. They planted items from the Food Gatherers list—foods that are more “shelf-stable,” Herron said. Weeding and harvesting takes place on Sunday. As for watering? “We’re still working on a system,” Herron admitted, adding that she is putting together a rotating schedule.

So far they have harvested five pounds of collard greens, which were donated entirely to Food Gatherers. Broccoli and squash will be ready next, then the Roma tomatoes. “But I think we will end up donating 70 percent, with 30 percent made available to the congregation.”

Holy Faith, Saline

For Holy Faith, Saline, the launch of Faith and Food came at just the right time. “We had a visioning effort for the upcoming year, let people know about the program, and right away they were interested in doing it,” said Rick Wales, a member who is active in the garden.

Outreach is important to the congregation, Wales said. “In this area, as in many areas in Michigan, [the economy] is tough and it’s hard for people to get what they need. One of the areas Food Gatherers identified as the hardest thing to get is fresh vegetables. Like everyone, low income people want to eat healthier. With Food Gatherers coordinating this list, we can help people get the vegetables they need and want and can use.”

Although the congregation has a “nice-sized piece of property,” they decided to start small and planned a 20-by-40-foot plot in the front of the church, where it was easier to bring water to the garden. Merilynne Rush from Faith and Food educated volunteers on the ins and outs of a community garden. They cut and stripped the sod, and brought in compost donated by the City of Ann Arbor.

“We chose not to go with raised beds because we had a larger space to work in,” said Wales.

A planting day in mid-May got all the seeds in the ground, and the garden’s first batch of collard greens was ready to be picked in early July. While four or five people are “heavily involved,” the rest of the congregation is invited to sign up to weed or water, a week at the time. “We have tools and the people just come if it is their week.”

Children are involved, too. They planted pumpkins and flowers that were donated to the garden in a small space set aside just for them.

The congregation decided to give 100 percent of the yield to Food Gatherers. “The requirement is 50 percent, but this is a learning year for us,” Wales said. “If it goes well, we’ll get bigger next year and maybe let people have their own plot there. For this year, everyone was really excited about the program and wanted to donate all of it.”

Even members who are not part of the garden project are excited to hear about its progress, said Wales. It also has been well received by the community. The church participated in community garden tours organized by Faith and Food July 22 and August 1, “so the community is going to be more exposed and get to see some of these operations,” said Wales. “It’s getting a lot of attention, and people are relating to it like the Victory Gardens in World War II.”