By LINN ANN HUNTINGTON
Ellis County Ministerial Alliance
At precisely 3:30 p.m., 15 sixth graders begin racing down the hill to the Thomas More Prep-Marian School’s garden.
Backpacks are quickly dropped under a tree, and the students impatiently wait for the Garden Club’s co-sponsor, Randy Brull, to tell them what to do at this meeting.
Three boys are assigned to drag the hose up to the garden; several girls are shown how to space seeds exactly so many inches apart for planting. Still other students are given hoes and rakes. Soon all the 11- and 12-year-olds are busily engaged tending to their garden.
While each of them has individual reasons for why they come to work each week in the garden, they are united in one mission—producing fresh vegetables and fruits for the St. Joseph Food Pantry.
Student Isabella Cabrera of Hays said, “We give the food to people less fortunate than us, and I think that’s important for the community.”
Adelyn Rome of Hays explained, “We don’t need the crops we plant ourselves, so we give it to other people, and I think it makes their day.”
The garden, located on the north end of campus behind the bus barn, is in its 15th year. Brull, who retired from teaching science at TMP-M High School in 2021, credited fellow teacher Melissa Pinkney with coming up with the idea for the garden.
Pinkney, who teaches Spanish at the high school, said when she first envisioned creating the campus garden, she immediately turned to Brull, who had been her science teacher when she was a TMP High School student. She said he is still the “heart and soul” of the garden.
“I am one of those whose idea of planting a garden is just going out and throwing seeds on the ground and hoping they grow,” she said. “But Randy is very exact. He teaches the students exactly how to make a very fine garden.”
That garden consists of seven beds, each about 100 square feet in size. That makes a total of 700 square feet. Student Chloe Kinderknecht of Hays ticked off the list of items grown: peppers, radishes, cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini squash, carrots, turnips, potatoes, onions, garlic, cantaloupes, watermelons, and schwartzenbeeren.
After the various items are harvested, the produce is washed. Then the first and third Saturdays of the month, the food is taken to the food pantry. Pinkney, who volunteers at the pantry, said, from her observation, two of the more popular items with the pantry’s clients are the potatoes and onions.
“I think we are unique from many of the other food pantries in town because we provide a variety of fresh produce,” Pinkney said.
All the produce is grown from seeds, she said. The tomato plants started as seeds planted in boxes in her classroom last March. Each year when the weather turns warmer, the boxes are moved outdoors to the garden.
About 10 of the students worked in the garden all summer, Brull said, “because that’s when the major growing season is.”
Pinkney said this year’s garden will wind down in late October before starting back up in March, and the cycle will begin again.
The Garden Club is open to any TMP-M Junior High or Senior High School student, but this school year the membership, so far, has been entirely sixth graders, Brull said. The club meets from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays, with bathroom breaks and water breaks as needed. That was also the schedule over the summer.
Student Jace Leiker of Hays said he started working in the garden when he was in third grade alongside his older brother who was then in high school. “I like to know that I’m helping out people, and I like to be outside, and I like gardening,” he said.
While some of the students are returnees to the Garden Club, others just joined this school year.
Linus Shubert, who lives outside of Hays, is one of those. He joined because “I like to help get food to the St. Joseph Food Pantry and just have fun and make a garden.” He added that in the past when he tried to grow pumpkins at home, the goats his family raises ate all his pumpkins. He grinned as a classmate noted, “You won’t have that problem here.”
Pinkney said the food the students grow is important, but she can also see them learning other things, such as math, science, and teamwork. The students also enter their crops in the Ells County Fair each year. So, they learn how to organize their entries.
This year they received three purple ribbons, two blue ribbons, and a white ribbon, she said.
Each week, at the end of the club meeting, the students are allowed to take home some of the food harvested that week if they wish. For some of the students, this has meant trying new foods.
Cantaloupe got a thumbs up, but the green peppers got a thumbs down from at least one student. All the students agreed, however, that “the carrots are super!”
Student Trey Brungardt of Hays said, “I like to have the food, and I like to garden. And I like to help people who need food and who can’t afford it.”
The students also ask lots of questions: Why do potatoes grow in the ground instead of on top? How do you know when a cantaloupe is ripe?
And then there is the big question. While the children accept the fact that some people in Ellis County don’t have enough food to eat, why is it that way?
The St. Joseph Food Pantry opened in 2001. It is located behind St. Joseph Catholic Church, 215 W. 13th St., in the former Kennedy Middle School building’s cafeteria and is open from 9 a.m. to noon the first and third Saturdays of the month.
Operated under the direction of the St. Joseph Pastoral Council, the pantry “provides free food and diaper support to people in need,” the church’s website said.
More information about volunteering at the pantry, receiving items from the pantry, and donating is available on the website and from the pantry’s coordinator, Renee Michaud, at michauds@ruraltel.net.