Garden Installation and Harvest Dinner

As previously mentioned, Sun Ministries was awarded the Known and Grown STL Microgrant, which targeted "projects in North St Louis that develop or improve environmental stewardship practices for farms or gardens."

Fresh Starts Community Garden is already a great community garden. It consists of about 60 raised beds, is fenced, has on-site water, and boasts a fully stocked tool shed. It also has several fruit trees, berry bushes, and lots of native wildflowers.

Amy and Jason Calahan (and their children) have begun gardening there to incubate the Harvest Fields Project, which aims to combine agriculture and ministry in order to promote community, healing, and provision, as well as lay the groundwork for the Farm at Sozo Valley Ranch.

Our goal with the grant was to support the local ecosystem as well as the gardeners. We installed four birdhouses - two for bluebirds and two for chickadees - to help reduce pest pressure. We also installed a bird bath and a bird waterer to support the birds and convince them to stick around.

We also installed a Little Free Library, made of recycled plastic. It is filled with books about gardening, cooking, ecology, social justice, as well as some poetry and lots of kids books. We also included three books written by Sun Ministries executive director, Dr. Terry Goodwin.

We hoped to have everything installed in time for the garden's Harvest Dinner, and we barely made it. The last book arrived just two days before the dinner. That morning, Amy and Jason both had a volunteer shift at Earthdance Organic Farm School. They left their shift, picked up their kids, and met their friend at the garden to start installing.

The Harvest Dinner was a blast. So many different kinds of people gathering in the same space, to celebrate community and the miracle of gardening.

The best thing about this project is that it will remain to encourage all the future gardeners at Fresh Starts. It lets us be functioning members of our own local ecosystem, giving and nurturing instead of taking.

Even a project this small needed tons of help. We are deeply grateful to the following:

• Known and Grown STL for the grant opportunity and for all you do to support sustainable food systems. Extra special thanks to Chris Wimmer and Nicki Morgan for taking the time to meet us in the garden and talk through the project (and for helping me believe I'm not crazy for wanting to farm).
• Seed St. Louis for the generous support you already provide to Fresh Starts Community Garden, and for the helpful book suggestions for the Little Free Library.
• Missouri Department of Conservation for advice on which birds to attract, and for the informational literature that also made it into the Little Free Library.
• Earthdance Organic Farm School for providing free kids' books for the Little Free Library.
• And especially to Ms. Rosie Willis, garden manager, for being such a wonderful human being and making a space where all these amazing things can happen.

If you'd like to learn more about the Harvest Fields Project, or donate books for the little free library, contact Jason Calahan at jason@sunministries.org

You can donate directly to the Harvest Fields Project by visiting https://www.sunministries.org/give and selecting "harvest fields project" in the dropdown menu.