This Week's Prayer Needs

Rain

This week's prayer needs

Please pray that:


We get our irrigation system up and running between now and Saturday.


We figure out how to get 400 tomato plants and 100 pepper plants from Darby Creek Nursery to the garden.


That we get those tomato & pepper plants planted properly and that we get our squash/zucchini  planted too.


That God's love  unmistakably  shine through  the Hilliard Summer Lunch Program.

The Spring Crop Is In

God blessed us with a wonderful spring crop--3,751 Lbs. of mustard greens, turnips, arugula, kale, beets and strawberries.That is far more that the 1,500 Lbs. we expected. To put it in perspective, we usually don't harvest that much until late July/early August.  God has truly blessed us.


Here are the details of what was harvested and where it went.

A BIG day coming up on Saturday..

We have a big day coming up at the garden this Saturday, 5-19—We've got to get 400 tomato plants and 100 pepper plants in the ground!

We'll start at 8:30 AM and keep going until all the plants are in. Please come by when you can and help for as long you can.

We're at UALC's Mill Run campus, located at 3500 Mill Run Drive in Hilliard.

Thanks!

A Very Good Start

God has been amazingly good to us this year. That is true on several levels.


The weather could not have been better. We were able to plant in early March, we've had rain whenever we needed it, wonderful conditions to harvest in, and it hasn't been so hot as to make our crops bolt to any significant extent.


We've been blessed by an infusion of new folks. God gas answered our Luke 10:2 prayers, and we hope he continues to do so. That has not only helped us get the work done, but more importantly, is  blessing us with new relationships.


We've been blessed with very abundant harvests.  We've harvested 3,311 pounds so far this year, more than a quarter of our total goal for the year (12,000 Lbs.). To put that in perspective, we didn't harvest that much until late July of 2010, and the middle of August  in 2011.  Here are the details of what God as blessed us with and where it has ended up:

We don't say this to boast. The the contrary, we point these things out to bring praise to God, who made all this happen. It brings to  mind how the Hebrew prophet Joel described God's graciousness:

Surely he has done great things.
²¹ Be not afraid, O land;
    be glad and rejoice. 
Surely the Lord has done great things. 
²²     Be not afraid, O wild animals,
    for the open pastures are becoming green. 
The trees are bearing their fruit;
    the fig tree and the vine yield their riches. 
²³ Be glad, O people of Zion,
    rejoice in the Lord your God,
for he has given you
    the autumn rains in righteousness. 
He sends you abundant showers, 
    both autumn and spring rains, as before.
²⁴ The threshing floors will be filled with grain;
    the vats will overflow with new wine and oil.

Help!

We need your help with a very pleasant problem-- God has blessed us with a much larger spring crop than we expected, and we need help getting it harvested ASAP in order to get our summer crop in on schedule. 

To give you an idea of what we're dealing with,  we expected about 1,500 Lbs.  for the entire spring crop,  we've harvested more than 2,200 Lbs. this past week, and we're only about half way done.

Please consider helping  harvest at either or both  of these times:

- Saturday,  May 12,  8:30 AM until Noon.

- Wednesday, May 16, 6:30 PM until 8:30 PM.

You don't need to stay the whole time either day—any time you could contribute would be appreciated. 


The garden is on Upper Arlington Lutheran Church's Mill Run Campus,  3500 Mill Run Drive in Hilliard, just east of the building.

All  of the harvest  goes to hunger relief programs serving Central Ohio.  As Luke  10:2 says, "the harvest is plentiful,"  so please help us get it to the hungry ! 

Combined Bible Study & Harvesting Session--Wednesday 5-9 at 6:30 PM

We're going to hold a combined  Bible study & harvesting session  this coming Wednesday, May 9, at 6:30  PM at the garden. 

If your interested, please read Matthew 13:24-30 & 36-43  before you come.  We'll discuss it as we harvest together in small groups. Several versions of that passage can be found at the hyperlink.

See you there!

P.S. we harvested another 827 Lbs. of greens today. That takes us to 1,978.4 Lbs for the year. We didn't harvest that much last year until the end of June.  

GOD IS GOOD!

"The harvest is plentiful..." (Luke 10:2)

God really blessed us today. He blessed us with very good workers—Linda, Cynthia, Kelly, Glenn, and Jasmine. He blessed us with very pleasant weather to work in. He blessed us  with 1,151 Lbs. of produce (details below), far more than we expected. That resulted in His love being felt in several very  palpable ways.

   New relationships were formed. New folks got involved in the garden and we all got to know each other in the process of doing God’s work together. The garden formed a relationship with another hunger ministry, the combined neighborhood kitchen run by the St. John’s and St. Dominic’s Roman Catholic parishes on Columbus’ near east side.

  It fed a lot of people. Most of those crops went to hunger ministries feeding folks in Columbus’ Hilltop, South-side, and Near East Side neighborhoods.

  The rest of the crops helped struggling folks get on their feet. Some went to help DOMA, an organization that helps women escape prostitution, by providing some of the food for a fund raising dinner. Others will go to recent immigrants involved in a local English as a second language program. That is God at work, and we were blessed to be part of it.

This Week's Prayer Needs

That we have enough workers to thin/harvest our spring crops and get our summer cops in. See Luke 10:2

 That our greens don’t bolt in this heat.