Pictured here is Paulding FFA officers left to right Riley Noffsinger, Shannon Hale, Courtney Luderman, Sydney Reineck and Jen Stahl with students from Ann’s preschool standing in front of the community garden.
By: Reporter Sydney Reineck
On Friday July 13th, the Paulding FFA chapter had Ann’s Bright Beginning daycare help their officer team with some gardening at the Paulding FFA Community Garden located at St Paul Lutheran Church. The kids helped weed, harvest herbs, tie up tomatoes, and plant more radishes to be harvested and donated to the locale food pantry. They also played games and tried fresh kale chips and ate fresh zucchini muffins for snack.
The Paulding FFA started a community garden at St Paul Lutheran Church, the Paulding FFA would like to thank the church for providing the space for this garden. This is the second growing season for the garden. The community garden started when three chapter members returned from a leadership conference in Washington D.C. where they were challenged to create a product through a living to serve plan. The members choose the garden and wrote several grants to help building and maintain the garden. The member plant, maintain and harvest the produce each week. The produce is donated to the local food pantry. Last year over 400 pounds of produce were donated. Each member has a week throughout the summer where they weed, water, pick, and do general upkeep of the garden. The vegetables planted at the community garden are donated to the local food pantry every Wednesday and Saturday. New this year a recipe book was developed, so people can have recipes ideas of what to make with their fresh produce. The chapter was very excited for Ann’s day care to come to help learn about the garden and to maintain this beautiful garden for our local community. The Paulding FFA is very excited to continue this project and donate fresh produce for others to enjoy.
