Produce: Go For It!

Hyacinth Bean Pod

There are green beans, sweet potatoes, a few ripe tomatoes, a lot of green tomatoes, watermelon, and some peppers in the Community Garden. Stop by and pick what you need.

Folks from the neighborhood have been invited to pick out of the garden (two families have taken us up on it), and kids who live around the church have done a good job of finding the watermelons (we're glad they did), but there are a few left. As Shakespeare wrote, "the race is to the swift."

For salsa fans there are plenty of Rutgers (sorry, Hogs fans) variety tomatoes available for salsa verde, for frying, or for that infamous green tomato pie that is really good. You may also find some eggplants. Again, help yourself.

The picture above is of a hyacinth bean pod. Feel free to pick these for inclusion in salads or Asian soups. Do not eat the dry beans but by all means collect the pods for replanting in your own gardens next Spring.

Our Fall clean-up is going well. We're about a day or two away from finishing up our work in the Community Garden and then, we'll move on to the Children's Garden. By Thanksgiving at the latest both gardens will look spectacular and be ready to rest over the winter.

If anyone has some composted chicken manure we will be very grateful to get it. Thanks to everyone for your terrific support of our Creation Care mission!

Outreach and Communications!

Drawing of Alexander Bell's first telephone

We're very excited about expanding our church's outreach efforts to bring as many people as we can to Christ. Some of these efforts will include updating our website, developing protocols for Facebook and Twitter, and consolidation of our various e-mailing lists into LISTServ formats.

When our Wednesday Night Contemporary service is fully back on the weekly schedule, we will promote it by placing videos of the services on YouTube, and showcasing the talents of our young people and visiting guest artists and preachers. We think these efforts, including podcast capabilities, will really enhance the visibility of and vitality of our programming for youth and their parents.

Although our initial focus is on electronic communication, we will also review, edit, and enhance our print communication, like brochures, etc. so that we have attractive and informative information to hand out to visitors and at civic events or fraternal organizations.

Included in our efforts will be acting on plans for a new church sign, and developing a strategy to consistently access free local media.

As Disciples, we have an exciting and deeply meaningful church experience to offer Berryville and the surrounding communities. If you would like to help shape and develop our new outreach and communication efforts, please stop by and talk with Pastor French about your ideas!

Preparing for Fall

A large pile of mulch ready for transfer to the garden's pathways.

The Community Garden is being prepared for fall. Basically, this involves three tasks: 1) weeding and cleaning rocks from beds; 2) Applying a deep application of mulch for water and weed containment, and; 3) planting a fall cover crop like oats or vetch. Be sure to stop by and check out our progress.

We have the Community Garden about 1/3 mulched and about 3/4 weeded. It is starting to look pretty good. The mulch pile pictured above has disappeared, and as soon as another pile shows up we'll continue. Once the Community garden is fully mulched and weeded we'll move on to the Little Sprouts' Garden.

Cardboard makes an excellent base for garden bed foundations.

Thank you, everyone, who donated their cardboard boxes to the garden. If you have more, bring them over to the church and just toss them over the fence. We'll take them from there.

Working in the garden is a real blessing and helps our gardeners structure their days along a commonly recommended Christian way of structuring a Christian lifestyle: reading and studying holy books, prayer and meditation and, manual labor. We are grateful that fellow Disciples have given us this wonderful opportunity.