Holston Valley Unitarian Universalist Church

As school gets started for two thirds of my kiddos, I'm going to try to pick up my idea to profile gardeners here. We have so many beautiful people involved with our garden!

A few weeks ago I called my friend Ann -- she's the volunteer coordinator of Holston Valley Unitarian Universalist Church's (HVUUC) two garden beds at Harvest of Hope. I wanted to see what they had growing in the garden.

(Pictured below are some of the members of the HVUUC volunteers at planting time.)

Harvest of Hope is one among several social-justice projects HVUUC has going centered on the theme "hunger in our neighborhood." Ann says she has about 10 volunteers involved in taking care of their garden beds; their harvest is going to Hunger First, which is an organization with a storefront in Kingsport that gives food and certain necessities to people in need.

I asked Ann what made hunger the focus at HVUUC: The hunger in our neighborhood theme is "what we chose because of economic times right now – I’m sure there are people we don’t even know who are in need of this type of thing," she said. 

In addition to Harvest of Hope gardening, the church's Sunday school group has two raised garden beds on church property; that harvest will go to help the hungry too. They planted a whole field of potatoes and pumpkins to donate or sell to congregants and donate the proceeds. As well, they're working on a gleaning project whereby church members pick produce farmers can't get to and give that food away. 

At Harvest of Hope, the group planted tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, beans and peppers, Ann said. I'll have to check back with her to see how it's growing. 

What are Ann's hopes for the garden? "For this summer I’m hoping that people who might not have access to a fresh tomato and a fresh cucumber might be able to get that instead of just packaged or canned food," she said. "That at the height of the summer time they might be able to have access to a fresh tomato or to what we’d go down to the farmers market and purchase.

"In the future I hope that the people know that the gardens are available to them and that there’s an opportunity to learn how to grown their own healthy produce," she said.

Both HVUUC and Hunger in our Neighborhood have Facebook pages, if you'd like to look there to learn more about what they've got going on.

Many thanks to Ann and the rest of the group from HVUUC for gardening at Harvest of Hope and sharing with the hungry!