Saint Patrick’s Garden Hits “Ton for Hunger” Goal

Volunteers at the Garden of Eatin’ at Saint Patrick’s Episcopal Church have reached their “Ton for Hunger” goal before the year is even at the halfway mark.

With almost two weeks left in June, Dunwoody’s well-known urban farmer Pattie Baker and other dedicated volunteers have grown, collected, or inspired the donation of 2,011 pounds of fruit and produce worth $10,055. The food has been donated to Malachi’s Storehouse, the food pantry at the church on North Peachtree Road.

Organic Farm Consultant Rod Pittman put the garden over its goal when he arrived at Saint Patrick’s last Wednesday afternoon with 50 pounds of cucumbers he raised at the Veggie Patch Farm in Commerce.

   The donated food, said Baker, comes primarily from four sources:

1. The Community Garden.  Nicole Maslanka, who leads the Food Pantry Team, said the Community Garden has donated more than 1,000 pounds of food to Malachi’s this year. She receives help from a host of volunteers, including Tracy Gilchrist, who heads the Harvest Team.
2. Supermarkets and independent ethnic groceries. David Skoke, a resident of East Lake, leads this effort. Skoke met Baker, who led the founding of the Community Garden, when he was a student at Georgia Perimeter College. He said he gleans a variety of produce from a Whole Foods on Ponce de Leon Avenue and an ethnic grocery in Decatur. Dunwoody groceries, he said, already had organizations they were donating food to when he approached them for donations. “I’d love to get to the point where I need a beat-up van to haul all of this stuff,” he said.
3. Home gardens and the Norcross Community garden.  “The latter has been a small but important outreach,” said Baker.
4. Saint Patrick's ‘Garden of Eatin’”. Baker is the inspirational leader of this effort and receives help from numerous volunteers, including members of the Community Garden and the church, others who are members of neither plus the food pantry clients themselves, who harvest from the garden on Wednesdays.

That work, said Baker, is a “journey (that) is a living miracle. What on Earth is really possible? she asked.”

The Dunwoody Community Garden remains locked in a tight race to be a second-round winner in the Edy’s Fruit Bars Communities Take Root contest.

Edy’s will award fruit orchards to 17 winning gardens in four rounds of voting. Four second round winners will be named at the end of the month. Four more winners will be named on July 31 and the final four winners will be announced on August 31. Orchards were awarded to five first round winners May 31.

The Bridger Community Garden in Bridger, South Dakota, is in first place in the second round and appears to have a safe lead.

The Community Garden and two other gardens -- Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco and Fondy Food Center in Port Washington, Wisconsin – appear to have an edge over their closest rivals – St. Ambrose Parish in Brunswick, Ohio and Woodland Community Land Trust in Clairfield, Tennessee – for the other three second-round slots.

As has been seen in the voting, though, no lead is safe.

To support the garden, visit here and follow the prompts to vote. A voting shortcut is to go to the Leaders tab on the main page.  You can access the Dunwoody garden voting site from this tab.

Remember, you can vote once-a-day on each of your email accounts.