The Country Club Christian Church holds a semi-annual all-church volunteer day called “Grace at Work” (GAW) and at a recent GAW day, volunteers helped construct a community garden at Grace United Community Ministries to honor the late Reverend Sharon Garfield, who passed away in 2014 from ovarian cancer.

From the GUCM website:

“Reverend Sharon Garfield, was the founding Executive Director and heart of Grace in the early years. Under Rev. Garfield’s leadership, Grace responded to the needs of NE KCMO by providing shelter for battered women, establishing one of the first soup kitchens in the metropolitan area, helping to find low-income housing, providing reading tutoring for children, and setting up a food pantry and clothing closet for those in need.”

Volunteers prepared the site by mowing the area, measuring distances for raised beds, and weed barrier cloth was laid down while 8 raised beds were assembled.

Once everything was measured and the weed barrier cloth was tacked down, the raised beds were placed in an even grid and filled with 10 cubic yards of organic soil.

After everything was in place, the crew laid down 8 bales of straw and the Reverend Sharon Garfield Memorial Garden was born!

Future plans call for an orchard of fruit trees and berry bushes along with an installation of a 1550 gallon water tank in November of 2017. To cover costs, two grants were awarded through KCCG to cover 6 of the 8 raised beds and 90% of the new water tank!

GUCM will use the garden to continue to focus on education for our kids in our summer programs, and for adult/community education & involvement.  The produce grown at the garden will be shared by the summer program kids, by kids in after school tutoring programs, and distributed through their on-site food pantry. Additionally, produce will be used in the preparation for their weekly Saturday Community Meal.

Nice work Grace United Community Ministries and all the volunteers involved!