Video Contest Runner-up

This summer, we entered a video about our garden ministry to the ELCA’s ‘God’s Work. Our Hands.’ video contest. The video highlights images of kids working in the MCC garden with our very own garden theme song playing on the audio track.

We were the runner-up winner in the congregational category. Yeah team!

To see the video or for more information check out the ELCA website.

August 2 Report

Harvest Day

The big harvest season is descending upon up. Today we focused on the tomatoes that are just starting to be ready to pick and the raspberries that are winding down their season. Don’t worry all you berry lovers, we have several more varieties of berries to ripen yet, including a blackberry that doesn’t have any prickly spines on the vine!

Check out the pictures – August 2, August 4

For snack we had watermelon. Is it ever possible to have too much watermelon?

July 26 Report

Garden Lesson: Ruth and Naomi and Companion Plants

Ruth said to Naomi: Where you go, I go; where you live I will live. Your people are my people; your God is my God. (Ruth 1: 16 The Message)

Companion means friend. Our Bible verse for today comes from a conversation between two companions in the Old Testament – Naomi and Ruth. They were from different countries, but they had one person in common – Ruth had married Naomi’s son. Eventually, the son/husband died. Naomi decided that she should return to her own country to be close to her relatives. She had assumed that Ruth would stay behind in her own country. But, instead, she was a loyal companion and said, “Where you go, I go; where you live, I’ll live. Your people are my people; your God is my God.”

Just as people can be companions, garden plants can be companions too. In the garden, some plants grow well next to each other and others do not.

Sometimes plants are companions because they like similar growing conditions – sun/shade, moister/drier soil. Because they do best in similar conditions, they are found growing together and are sometimes called companion plants.

Other times, plants are companions because they help each other out – one might provide shade for the other, or one might add a nutrient to the soil that the other needs, or one might smell bad to insects that would otherwise eat the other plant. These were the types of companion plants we focused on for our lesson.

Garden Activity: Companion Plant Scavenger Hunt

The kids and adults teamed up to find companion plant pairs in the garden. They were given a list of plants. To figure out which ones were companions, the teams hunted for the plants in the garden to see which ones were growing next to each other.

Do you know which of the following are companions and benefit from growing next to each other in the MCC garden? Sunflowers, onions, potatoes, celery, watermelons, tomatoes, kohlrabi, melons. To learn more, visit the MCC garden and check it out yourself, or visit the Digging Deeper: Companion Plants section of this website.

Also, be sure to check out the book Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening.

Harvesting

Kids harvested peas and raspberries.

Snack

Tomato Basil Linguine

Tomato Basil Linguine is a true success story. Not only did the kids love it, the story about how it came to be our snack for today is a testamony to why we have our garden ministry.

Last year, during our first season of the MCC Kids in the Garden program, a family brought their three kids to participate. The oldest, who would be in 5th grade in the fall, complained at first. But soon she discovered that working in the garden was actually fun. The kids all liked working in the garden better than regular Sunday School. And they liked it so much that their mom found she could use the garden as an incentive to get the kids to willingly go to worship – if we go to worship then you get to work in the garden afterward. (We actually have several families who don’t come to worship during the summer, but they do bring their kids to church to come work in the garden.)

But this isn’t the end of the story. As the garden grew and kids started harvesting the produce, one day tomatoes and basil were the featured items for harvest. The girl was proud to have had a part in growing the vegetables. They got to take some home and when they got there, the mom said she thought she might have a recipe using tomatoes and basil.

To build on the enthusiasm generated during their time in the MCC garden that day, dinner plans were rearranged, and Tomato Basil Linguine was to be the new menu. The girl, who had never had any interest in cooking, was eager to help make dinner that night with the vegetables that she had grown and harvested.

She discovered that she loved to cook and that she loves Tomato Basil Linguine. A year later, she helps cook regularly and she asked to share her Tomato Basil Linguine with all the garden kids for snack. We were treated to a special feast and it was a big hit for all.

Summer Evening in the Garden

An evening of poetry in the children’s garden to benefit the Lussier Community Education Center.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

6:00-8:00p.m.

at the MCC Garden (7118 Old Sauk Road) [The event will be held inside in case of rain]

A suggested donation of $10 will be accepted at the event.

Join us for an evening of food, poetry, an auction of experiences, and a chance to see the beautiful Children’s Garden children from the Wexford neighborhood and MCC work on in collaboration with volunteers from the Madison Christian Community.

RSVP to Jill: jill@lcecmadison.org; (608)833-4979 ext. 207.

July 19, 2009 Report

This Sunday our focus was on getting our garden in tip top shape to show it off during the Poetry in the Garden event on July 23 to raise money for the Lussier Community Education Center. So, weeding, weeding and more weeding was our focus.

Kids also picked raspberries to add into their lemonade – big hit.

Snack – Tomato Tart

Vote for MCC Video in Contest

The ELCA is sponsoring a video contest for congregations and individuals related to the theme God’s Work. Our Hand’s.  The MCC has submitted a video about our Nurturing Soil and Soul garden ministry.

If we win, we could win a $5,000 grant to support our garden ministry.

 Winners are determined in a two-step process. First, the public is allowed to view and rate the video submissions – THIS MEANS YOU! The top ten rated submissions (as determined by the popular vote) will then be reviewed by a panel of judges for final evaluation.

 TAKE ACTION NOW (NOTE: voting ends July 22)

 You can help by taking a few minutes to register, watch the video (1.5

minutes) and then rate our submission. It’s as easy as 1-2-3!

 1. Go to www.godsworkourhands.org

 2. Register

To register, click on the “register” tab and complete the new registration form.

You’ll be asked to verify your e-mail account with an automated message sent to your e-mail inbox. Open the message and confirm your registration by clicking on the link. You will not be able to login until this step has been completed.

 3. Watch the MCC Nurturing Soil and Soul video Find the video one of 2 ways:

-search for ‘garden’ and you will find ours in the list -go to http://www.godsworkourhands.org/v/351,nurturing-soul-and-soil.html

 4. Rate the video

This is the important part, and unfortunately the most confusing.

 To rate a video, login to www.godsworkourhands.org. After watching the video, simply click on the number of stars you’d like to give the video. (Nothing obviously points you toward doing this rating. Just look for the line of stars below the video. The stars will show the current overall rating. Don’t pay attention to this and click on the number star you would like to rate the video. For example, if the overall rating shows 9 stars, but you want to rate it a 10, simply click on the 10th star.)

 One star equals 10 percent and 10 stars equal 100 percent. This is the same scale that your elementary school teachers used — the higher the percentage, the better the video.

 Once you’ve rated a video, you can watch it as much as you want, but you will not be able to rate it again. In other words, each email address can vote once. So, vote yourself, have your kids vote. Forward this email to all your friends and family, and have them vote too.

 Thanks for your vote and thanks for your support of our garden ministry!

 Our appreciation is extended to Amy for filming and editing, Annie for still pictures, Tom for the garden song, and all the children and adults who make this a meaningful ministry.

July 12 Report

Bible Lesson

Today we talked about paths – our life as a path and paths in the garden. Mark wrote “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” (Mark 1:3). In our garden, we like to have our paths be straight so it is easier to know where the paths are. Therefore it’s easier to stay on the path and not accidentally step on a plant we want to keep.

Sometimes life feels like it takes lots of twists and turns. This passage in Mark suggests that when faith guides our life, our path might be straighter.

Garden Work

The mulch on our garden paths has broken down and the weeds are growing rampant so that it is difficult to tell where the paths are in some areas. Garden work today focussed on pulling weeds in the path areas and preparing newspaper mulch path mats to redefine the paths and keep weeds down. Thanks to Rosa, Maria, Iris and Yohanna for the great photo documentation of our efforts.

Snack

Cucumber sandwiches were a big hit. Recipe

July 5 Report

We were a small but faithful bunch.

Scarecrow

One of the scarecrows needed a repair to its broken post after the strong winds the past week. We had a resourceful team bring him/her/it back to life.

Watering

We need rain! Everything in the garden is DRY, DRY, DRY! We spent a lot of our time watering as much of the garden as we could – melons, beans, lettuce, herbs, cabbage, potatoes, peppers, tomatillos, broccoli, tomatoes.

Imagine, this same week last year our lesson was about Noah and the Ark. We had a lot of flooding and evaluated the garden for damage. We had to replant many crops that were washed away by the floods. What a difference a year can make.

Peas and Strawberries

Our reward after watering was to pick (and of course eat) the first of the peas and the last of the strawberries.

Afterwards, we cooled off in the shade of a tree eating watermelon.

June 28 Report

Another great day in the garden – 15 kids and 6 adults.

Bible Lesson

Story of separating the wheat and chaff. Pastor Jeff tied the story to the garden talking about the plants we do want (vegetables) and plants we don’t want (weeds). Kids tried to see how many weeds they could pull in 1 minute. Then they sorted them to see how many different kinds of weeds they had found.

Garden Work

Lots of watering and strawberry picking. Unfortunately we had a glitch with our camera batteries (bad time to discover that the rechargeable batteries are no longer holding a charge), so we don’t have pictures to share showing our hard work. But we do have good memories of strawberries in our tummies and fun fellowship with our friends.

We are hoping for rain this week to give our garden a much needed drink of water.

Snack

African Pineapple Peanut Stew featuring kale went over very well with the kids. 13 of 15 kids gave it a 2 thumbs up!

Help needed!

Immediate Weeding Help Needed

Help! Our potatoes, watermelons, peppers, tomatoes and onions are drowning in weeds.

Any help you could offer would be appreciated. Please touch base with Pastor Jeff, Jill, or Heather to help out so we can show you where the plants are – many of these are planted as companion plants, so they are mixed together and it’s important to know what is where so we don’t end up accidently weeding the plants we really want to keep.

Don’t be scared. It’s not rocket science. It’s just that the weeds have gotten so bad that it isn’t always obvious what should stay and what should go.

Garden Help Needed July 5 through July 12

Pastor Jeff will be out of town with our youth July 5-July 12. We could use some help with the weeding, watering etc that he usually does when he is here. Contact Pastor Jeff or Heather to help out.