Seed and Feed - Harvest

Remember last June's "Seed and Feed" project of a number of youth of the St. John's area, Newfoundland and Labrador? Well, it is now harvest time.

Already, the youth and their parents have harvested 20 sacks of potatoes (50 pound sacks), approximately 60 pounds of carrot, bottled 80 litres of beet, boiled down turnip tops to fill 15 bags and gathered a sample of turnip, chard, peas, beans, and quite a number of tomatoes. The vegetables were divided evenly and distributed by the group to three local food banks, as well as The Gathering Place, a drop-in centre for the poor in the St. John's area and operated by the Mercy and Presentation Sisters. For their Thanksgiving Dinner celebration, the guests were served a dinner including the newly harvested vegetables of the Seed and Feed project.

Members of the group commented that their greatest enjoyment was "seeing the amazing harvest" as well as the "experience of working together with adults as one community toward the common goal of helping those in need".

They had spent the entire summer tending to their garden, holding weekly weeding sessions, tripping to Middle Cove to collect capelin as fertilizer and then harvesting the crop in late September.

In the near future, the group will gather to review the experience and do some preliminary planning with a hope to repeat the project next summer.

The project was an initiative of two parish youth groups and the Archdiocese of St. John's, under the leadership of Sister Mary Tee, coordinator of the Mercy Centre for Ecology and Justice, assisted by Sister Maureen O'Keefe.