I think about food too much. I think about cooking and shopping and growing food. I think about putting together meals each week for our mid week prayer-soup supper or for Sunday lunch or Sunday potluck meals. I would like to think my obsession with food is the result of living 9 years in Africa. I witnessed too many emaciated children days away from starvation and hungry adults standing in lines waiting on small daily rations of cornmeal and beans in refugee camps. I value the life giving qualities of food. Some of my fixation results from the contrast of my Africa experience with the reality of America. In spite of the abundance of food day and night here, our nation may be in danger of nutritional starvation. Whatever the reason for my obsession with food, the fact is: I love to eat and I love to cook and I love being connected to our earth through the growing of food.

Randolph County is experiencing record unemployment these days. In addition, there is an increase in the number of people participating in subsidy programs. The local food pantry is struggling to keep up with the daily demands for food. In an effort to address the reality facing our county, Quakers here are thinking more about food these days. Winchester Quarterly Meeting (a gathering of 16 churches) has chosen a project to designate one Sunday per month in each meeting as “Food Pantry Sunday”. This funnels a steady and regular supply of food into local pantries and addresses this growing need in our community. It is wonderful to see the amount of food being given to the food pantry, but I am more excited about the opportunity we have as a Quarterly Meeting to work together to address a very real and urgent need.

But giving to the food pantry is just a small seed in the garden of need. Another obsession I have is improving the health and nutrition of the food available through our local food pantries. Poor nutrition leads to unhealthy communities that battle obesity and illness. And that contributes to the health care crisis confronting our nation. These concerns were the seeds that inspired the Presbyterians and the Friends to grow the Compassion Garden: a small urban garden between our two parking lots that grow tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers and raises money for a Compassion child overseas. The Compassion Garden in turn planted seeds that inspired a group from our community to this year form a community garden. The YMCA offered 5 acres of undeveloped land to be used for community garden plots and the Presbyterian Church developed some unused land next to their manse. We are currently taking applications for plots. Anyone is eligible, from the novice gardener to the more experienced green thumb. A local nursery is planting seedlings to offer this year at a reduced price, our meeting is providing funds from their Ed Best Trust Fund to buy gardening tools and start up costs. Ed Best was a local grocer who at one time sold almost all of the vegetable seeds in Winchester before his store closed in the 1960’s. His only son, John, died in a prisoner of war camp in Germany during allied firebombing in 1945 and the Best Trust was left to the county’s hospital, school and the Friends Church. It seems appropriate to use their financial legacy to once again promote gardening in our county.

I do not pretend a community garden will solve the problem of food insecurity or poor nutrition facing our county. I doubt many needing the services of the food pantry will go to the work to sign up and plant a garden plot. But a community garden will plant some seeds that I think could change our community. A community garden will encourage social interaction; it will improve the quality of life for people in our community through physical exercise and improved nutrition. A community garden will provide productive green space and will reduce the food budget of families that participate. It is reported that for every dollar spent on seeds and plants yields a gain of $25 in produce. A community garden could create income opportunities and economic development for those who choose to participate.

The Community Garden will encourage tithing of produce from the community garden into the food pantry system and that will provide fresh, locally grown healthy food to be available to improve the nutrition of our county. I hope the example of gardening will inspire many to reconnect with the earth and to think more about food and more about producing what we eat. Growing food in a garden or in a community garden lessens dependence on processed food and fast food. And in a world where many hunger, I pray a community garden will help make sure some in our world will have enough. And that “enough” contributes to peace, health and well being.

As many people in our world face unstable economic times ahead, I want my obsession with food to plant seeds for good in the world. I am hearing about many communities encouraging people to “grow and extra row” in their local gardens for food pantries. The evening news last night reported that even the President has agreed to plant a vegetable garden on the White House grounds. What a difference this example and the extra food could make for food pantries, families, and communities struggling to meet added demands placed on them by our recession. Growing an extra row could plant seeds for peace and wholeness in our world. If my thinking about food makes a small difference in our county, then maybe I’m not thinking “too much.”

(I spoke to our local hospital’s missions committee yesterday about the Community Garden project. This article and what I said were adapted from an article I wrote for The Advocate, the United Society of Friends Women International magazine.)