Planting Charity and Growing Justice

 

by Derrick Weston

 In 2019, while I was living in Baltimore, I worked with HopeSprings, a ministry that equipped congregations to work with people living with HIV. Part of the work involved partnering to provide healthy meals to folks living with the illness. As a gardening enthusiast, I proposed shortening the food distribution chain by growing some of what we provided to our clients. One of our partner congregations told us about a community garden that might suit our needs. The Rockrose garden had been planted over a former quarry (“rock rows”) and became a place where community members could adopt a plot and grow their own food. A sizeable portion of the area was designated as the “charity garden,” and I was given access to begin pursuing my wildest urban farm dreams. That was in the winter of 2019.

 The pandemic hit just as I was beginning to plan for spring planting. The garden hadn’t been tended for some time. It was very overgrown, with some of the most stubborn weeds I’ve ever encountered. What’s more, I was on a deadline. The woman who used to tend the space moved to Florida, but she still wanted to stay involved. Her plan was to start dozens and dozens of sweet potato slips, which she would then ship from Florida to Baltimore. From there, it would be a mad dash to get them into the ground before they wilted or rotted. Hindsight being what it is, I now realize this was insane. But after a few weeks of being cooped up indoors, weeding a half-acre by hand and rushing to get a plant I was unfamiliar with in the dirt felt like an escape.

 By the grace of God, one church showed up for me in a big way. I was friends with a woman who, at the time, was the associate pastor of Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church. She mobilized a group of volunteers who were as stir-crazy as I was in the early COVID period. Every day, a new bunch of volunteers of all ages showed up to weed and mow the area. When the sweet potato slips finally arrived, we raced the clock together to get them into the ground. We lost some to rot, but the overwhelming majority of the tiny plants weathered their interstate trek, none the worse for wear.

 We rejoiced on the day we planted the last sweet potato, then realized we still had plenty of space to play with, “play” being the operative word here. There was no blueprint to follow. We began imagining what the space could become. We planted greens, squash, tomatoes, and carrots. We began cleaning out an abandoned hoop house, already dreaming about the next season. We planted pollinators along the fenceline. As the months passed, we connected with other organizations addressing the spike in hunger caused by the pandemic and started donating what we grew. We worked with Govans Presbyterian Church to provide produce for their weekly meal, which opened its doors to all in the community.

 Largely through the efforts of a volunteer named McKay Jenkins, the space took on a life of its own. We maintained a regular rotation of volunteers, and we also hosted classrooms and community groups seeking ways to contribute during that uncertain season. We invited congregations not only to volunteer but also to worship in the space. Something had shifted for us, and the space became holy ground. We were never happy with the “charity garden” label. By the next year, McKay began referring to it as the Rockrose Food Justice Project.

 Six years later, the space still provides food and educational experiences, but it also offers something more. Tucked away in what feels like an urban oasis, where you are surrounded by trees yet can still hear the interstate, the former quarry provides a sense of community and purpose. You feel it as you enter, a sense that a small part of God’s dream for humans and Creation is coming true. Certainly there are struggles: being dependent on the city for water during dry seasons, rising urban temperatures that have already shifted our growing windows in this short time, and figuring out exactly how to co-exist with groundhogs who think we’re planting just for them. Despite all of that, it is a space where I feel most like myself. In Genesis 2, God charges the human formed from the earth to give back to the earth from which he came. I’ve never felt more connected to that mandate than in our little slice of urban agrarianism.

 

Derrick Weston is the director of theological education and formation at Creation Justice Ministries and a steering committee member of Presbyterians for Earth Care living near Pittsburgh, PA.