gracious harvest

Gracious Harvest Grows Food in Downtown Cary

gracious harvestCary, NC — If you’re not careful, you’ll miss it – the Gracious Harvest Community Garden across the Waldo Street parking lot from the First United Methodist Church in Downtown Cary. First started in November of 2009, the Garden is now well-established and producing a bounty of food for the community.

Gracious Harvest Community Garden

Thanks to the hard-working people who spend their Saturday mornings first tilling, then planting and weeding. Now, the volunteers are harvesting fresh organic vegetables. It is a community garden in the true sense of the word. The bounteous harvest is shared with neighbors in our community who are in need, our congregation, and outreach ministries.

Sandy Shanks shared that a group from FUMCC and the community established the Gracious Harvest Garden in 2009. She said, “Community gardens are unique because they bring together people who share a love of growing things in a way that allows them to share the responsibility of maintenance.”

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To Your Health

As we learn more about the benefits of organically grown produce and the downside of gardening with pesticides and herbicides, organic community gardens are popping up in many metropolitan areas. A friend of mine who lived in New York for several years helped maintain a garden that was grown on top of an apartment building! It is a grass roots movement.

Emily Thomas shared, “A healthy diet can open up so many doors, and I’m grateful to be a small part of that movement!” Her husband John Thomas agrees. “There’s something wonderfully refreshing about being able to get out and work in a garden in the middle of Cary and to have all that work go toward providing fresh produce to those who need it.”

Emily said, “I think the Garden is an amazing mission opportunity because you can actually see and touch and taste the results of the hard work, and know that you’re providing something life-giving for those who would have a hard time getting it otherwise.”

“I always feel God’s hands helping us to produce organic vegetables for needy people,” said Lucy Milks. “The vegetables are really healthy. In a grocery store they would be much more expensive than non-organic, and hard for cash-strapped families to afford. So I know God supports our Community Garden. Just go look and you can see God’s handiwork in the wonderful bounty that is there.”

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Story and pictures by Lori Barmer of First United Methodist Church Cary.