Ministry of the Environment

Our mission at St. Paul’s as a Community Garden is to fulfill our moral obligation to feed those in need with the healthiest food possible. Renew our appreciation of our planet by teaching sustainable gardening practices. Teach healthy eating habits through nutritional instruction and accessible garden beds. Provide community service and outreach opportunities to our community, especially young people. Become a bridge for the community, linking schools, businesses, the health system, and the public together in a common cause of solving problems locally.

Opportunities to serve in the Ministry of the Environment

Community Garden News!
Spring is just around the corner!
A great way to enjoy fellowship, sunshine and fresh air is by volunteering in our 35-bed community garden. Last year, we donated over 1,000 pounds of produce to the Chester County Food Bank and other food pantries throughout Chester County.

You can also rent one of the beds and grow your own vegetables for a small fee of $60 for the season. All you need to supply is your plants. Soil, water, gardening tools and fencing are includ-ed with your rental. Expert gardening advice is always available by Steve Choc. Join us at the garden— it’s one of the best places to get to know the people of St. Paul’s!

The garden is a vibrant, active, and successful program due to the many wonderful people involved, and with the support of the church. We strive to be an open and welcoming place for people in the community to engage with the land and our church. We look forward to a bountiful year of change, growth and new faces. We hope to see you at the garden!

Click here to rent a garden bed and to volunteer your help.

Our mission is to engage the community in actions to grow healthy produce, connect with the land, and address the increased demand in our county for food assistance.

GARDEN SCHEDULE FOR THE SUMMER

We are meeting every Tuesday evening 5:30-7pm and every Saturday 9am-noon, excluding holiday weekends. Rain delays will be communicated by email to those on the garden contact list. Interested persons can contact Steve Choc to get added to the list of updates. The Sunset Socials are held on the 2nd Friday of each month in July-September at 6:00 pm.

Helen Heinmiller leads our compost program, and with great success! Her compost team produced enough compost to add to all of our 40+ garden beds. This is a special program that helps us be more sustainable and provide for healthier soil, plants, and vegetables!

In our continued relationship with the Chester County Food Bank, we receive seeds and transplants in exchange for donating our produce to local agencies that need food. In the past, we were able to deliver directly to the food bank for distribution. However, that program has ended, and we now coordinating our own delivery of produce directly to select agencies with the help of our great volunteers! We are currently looking at deliveries to agencies in Coatesville and West Chester.

If you live near one of these communities and would enjoy delivering produce occasionally, please let us know!

“BEE” in the news!
Did you know that St. Paul’s has our very own honey extractor? Our bees have been working hard all summer to make honey, and we ’ll harvest it using our extractor today after church in Getman Hall. Come for some cookies, lemonade and iced tea, and watch or help extract the honey from the combs. Bring a jar and purchase however much you wish of this precious local honey. Joe Choc will supervise as we take the wax cappings off of the combs, crank the extractor, and fill our jars! $12 per lb., or 75c per ounce. We will weigh the jar, fill it with any amount, and weigh it again to determine the price.

We have two active honey bee hives. It is probable that we will be able to harvest honey from one of the hives late this year. While we enjoy honey the honey bees make the honey bees are helping our garden produce more fruits and vegetables plus helping to pollinate the flowers of native plants and trees.

In addition to the benefits of the honey and higher productivity of the garden, our honeybees are adding to the genetic diversity of colonies of honey bees that are living the surrounding woods and fields neighboring St. Paul’s. This is something that research suggests is a good thing for the environment and good for wild colonies of bees.