Church in Community Through OnSite Gardening

I've had some conversations with Pastor Vernon over the last couple of months concerning various models of doing gardening in the "New Hope" Setting/Opportunity - Missionally.  I've been a commutarian gardening thinking person since the 60's when my beloved christian great uncle gave me a copy of mother earth's news and warned me that there were some things in it that weren't very christian but that it was very excellant.  Having been exposed to the models of urban gardening through scandanavian cohousing since on my commutarian journey, I've thought a bit about Lower Paxton and environs and New Hope.

My proposal is about the people of the church by family groups helping others in the community at large.  This OnSite Gardening First Step is about helping others, not ourselves, it has lots of opportunity for extension, but for 2010 it is about Christ in us for the other.

I see using the square foot gardening method at some location at NewHope, hopefully on the worse ground/soil there is, as this is a way of redeeming poor ground.  I encourage you to check out the link and buy the book if the web site perks your interest, it costs $12.97 at amazon.  The various families would assemble on a saturday to all be instructed how to build their squares and fill them with good soil.  This is the key, you don't worry about the soil that is there, this is a raised bed that you put six inches of known good soil into.  In some sense this guarantees success and is a reinforcer.  I'm unsure what the style of New Hope would be at this stage, but asking them to bring $10 for the materials wouldn't be out of order, this is an initial commitment.  To reinforce this commitment I would have the organizer have signage for each square with the family/group name.  These squares should all be in one area and surrounded by plastic deer fence.

The organizer of this effort should acquire the "generic" seeds and distribute them to each family to plant in half of the squares.  these seeds choices are based on a discussion with the recipient organization(s), ie what do they want to distribute.  The recipient organizations in my mind are the central penn food bank which NEVER has sufficient fresh foods (this is the wholesale track), and/or an end site like the Harrisburg BIC (this is the retail track).  In the other half of their squares they can put in what they want.  most will simply do the "generic" seeds in the other half of their squares - that would be my estimation.

It is possible that the scale for fresh vegetables is too small for central penn, that is what the organizer should find out; however, having a relationship with them is a good thing, as I suspect that New Hope will be running its own food pantry in the coming years.

Square foot gardening is something that I practice, and is an interesting psychological artificat, somehow no square with its attendant weeds ever appears overwhelming, unlike my father's 100x100 garden which ALWAYS appeared overwhelming, even when I was instructed to "just weed the beans".

Months ago I roughed out a budgetary spreadsheet.  I know someone who would underwrite that so I would use the $10 as commitment and funds for "other things" and "other opportunities" that arrive with this gardening and other gardening projects.

Summary:
   - gardening for others
   - gardening by family groups
   - donating vegetable outcomes to pantry for the poor efforts by others
   - gardening onsite
   - stay laser beam focused on goal/process for 2010, expand and mutate for following years so
     as to create a finite success that becomes part of the living narrative of New Hope