Of the weekly rain-or-shine harvests at the Dunwoody Community Garden in Brook Run Park, the one last week is the most meaningful of the year.

On Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving, volunteers donated 122.5 pounds of fresh produce – mostly greens for salads and cooking, onions, peppers, and herbs – to Malachi’s Storehouse, an outreach mission of St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church on North Peachtree Road across from the park.

Most of the produce came from the from the hillside plots where the sidewalk ends in Brook Run. Some came from a member’s personal garden and Community Garden volunteers assisted families in need in picking the rest from the Garden of Eatin’ in back of St. Pat’s.

The produce was especially welcome at Malachi’s because of the large crowd St. Pat’s volunteers knew would begin lining up on line Wednesday morning for the weekly afternoon food distribution. St. Pat’s normally feeds an average of 90 families a week with an average of 4.5 persons per family. On the day before Thanksgiving they provisioned for 240 families.

In addition to the produce, St. Pat’s volunteers handed out turkeys, potatoes, stuffing, canned veggies, breads and desserts.

This is the first of several holiday season distributions for Dunwoody families in need at Malachi’s.

The annual toy distribution will be held on Sunday, December 18 from 2-5 p.m. when parents will come to the church, select toys and have them wrapped by volunteers. Malachi’s is pre-registering 400 children for the event.

While last week marked the beginning of the holiday season for distributions at St. Pat’s, it also saw another season come to an end. As families were lining up at St. Pat’s Wednesday morning, the Dunwoody Green Market was ending its annual eight-month run at Dunwoody Village. 

The market, though, did not go quietly into a four-month winter nap. Wednesday morning was cold and blustery and some vendors had to hold onto their tents as they made their last weekly sales of 2011.

The 2012 season will open in mid-April. When a date is selected, it will be announced on the market’s website. 

In the meantime, if there is a Green Market vendor you would like to continue to buy from during the winter months, you can find that vendor’s contact information on the market website.