Sending Gratitude to Nancy Jo’s Garden Volunteers

By Eugene Brennan

It's time to thank the garden staff, remembering all that great flavorful, nutritious produce that came from Nancy Jo's Garden last year. The breezeway Farmer's Market brought in more than $1800 dollars to the Fellowship, the garden contributing a fair share of that produce. Nancy Jo's Garden also donated over 500 lbs. of fresh produce to the Bremerton Food Line.

Thanks goes to Chalice Circles 3 & 11 for staffing the farmer's market and being such cheerleaders of our efforts. Great work was done by Chalice Circle 2 starting 462 plants for the garden, painstaking work by any measure.

Contributing to the initial ground prep--hard work we won't have to repeat--were Sam Stephens, Pat James and her daughter Cassie, Catherine Jones, Alan Searle, Nathan Emmett, and the attendees of Gold Mine 1008 and 1009.

Susan Dearth and Marilyn Hepner deserve particular recognition for donating all materials, greenhouse space and expertise for our vegetable starts and overseeing the planting of same. They also did yeoman's work shoveling manure.

Sam Stephens stands out for his unstinting work on all stages of the garden's development, from shovel work and fencing to hauling materials and planting starts. Despite not being a gardener he seemed to keep its interests always in mind.

Thanks to all those who came to the planting out party, amazingly planting out 1600 sq. ft. of beds in one morning.

The weekly tedium of weeding was done by Marilyn Drengson, Rose Wallace, Tess Burke and Lisa Johnson. In July they came to me saying they had worked themselves out of a job and would stop awhile to let the weeds catch-up. The weekly watering was seen to by Catherine Jones and Pat James, ably assisted by Pat's father, Al James. Eric Jensen contributed at many points in the garden's establishment and has been an ardent supporter.

Thanks go to Demi Rasmussen for her donation of materials and moral support, and a very special thanks must go to Kay Morgan for her more than generous gift by writing a grant check, initially for the deer fence, but which we were able to stretch, with Sam Stephens' and Brian Watson's help. Thanks to them we start this year with 26 dollars left over.

Few acts are as noble as providing food for those who need it. All of these volunteers were the "many hands" that "make light work." They have given tremendous momentum to a project that should carry on for years to come.

Eric Retzloff says it most succinctly when he notes, “What we are about is Growing Community Growing Food." A great heartfelt thanks to you all.