A Garden Fresh Food Pantry

September 19, 2011

His search bring forth a tiny red pepper that he carries back inside, breaking it in half and touching it to the tip of his tongue. Howard offers the other tiny half to a Christ Child North employee, who declines with a hearty “No way” and a story about tear-inducing hot peppers.

The tasting and storytelling happens in the midst of shelves stocked with canned goods and boxes of cereal, as well as a volunteer group of high school students who have been charged with straightening and organizing. The shelves are a part of the St. Martin de Porres food pantry, a recent transplant from another Catholic Charities location that has quickly and quietly adjusted to its new home and its new community.

Its new location has brought with it not only a larger space to serve pantry clients but also the opportunity to be housed in the long-established Catholic Charities Christ Child North center. A place of community, fellowship and history, its role in the neighborhood has shifted and changed as years have past.

Today the center located on Emmet Street is host to not only the history of its own walls and past programs, but also the living history of the participants in its seniors program. Seniors have been coming to the center Monday through Friday for various activities, speakers, and meals for the past three years.

The backyard garden also began three years ago and is a part of the Big Garden, a program of the non-profit organization United Methodist Ministries. It focuses on creating community gardens in Omaha and its surrounding areas. The gardens help to engage community members, provide nutritious food and encourage healthy eating habits.

The Big Garden is also a part of the seniors’ routine and rhythm as they’ve adjusted to caring for the plants, vegetables and raised beds as part of the seniors program.

Howard began attending the program last November after he heard about it from his wife Noretta, with whom he has 11 children and 22 grandchildren.

His willingness to help however they needed quickly led to his appointment as head gardener and co-chef for the seniors’ lunches.

“We cook turkey, ribs, chicken salad, tuna salad, spaghetti,” Howard said. “We try to make everything.”

On this particular Friday the lunch table holds cantaloupe and sloppy joe’s. The food is served up as the seniors play bingo and chat about their children, grandchildren and past careers.

For Howard, his past is a big part of the activities he now partakes in here at Christ Child North. He learned many of the skills he now shares while growing up in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

“My grandparents were farmers in Mississippi, I used to work on the farm,” he said.

Along with his farm and garden knowledge, Howard started working in restaurant kitchens when he was 16, gaining the cooking experience that leads to his fellow seniors’ rave reviews of his meal making abilities.

Howard routinely picks produce from the center’s Big Garden and uses a portion of it for the project of creating food for the 15-40 seniors who share in the meals three times a week.

While he dices, chops and stirs, the other seniors gather for a variety of different programs that include educational speakers, outings and volunteer opportunities.

For participant Hazel Kellogg, the center gives her something to do after retiring from 28 years of running a children’s daycare in her home.

Wearing her light purple “Sazzy Seniors” t-shirt (pronounced sassy), she shared about her own delight in the fellowship she gets from partaking in the group that labels themselves with the Sazzy acronym of Smart, Active, Zealous, Zestful and Young.

Eighty years old and in good health, Kellogg used to have a small garden in her backyard, but with her fear of snakes she relegated most of its upkeep to her five sons. Now she’s back to gardening in Christ Child North’s Big Garden and shares in the seniors’ communal effort to dig in and grow produce.

“It’s fun to get out and pull the weeds and water,” she said. “The guys do the hard work. Well, we make them think they are doing the hard work at least!”

Kellogg, along with other seniors, also occasionally helps in the food pantry that serves community members four days a week. Seniors can also benefit from the pantry, where they receive various canned goods and kitchen staples such as rice and pasta.

Vegetables also often make their way from the garden to the pantry where the seniors and other pantry clients can take some home with them.

For the seniors, it’s another reminder of the full circle of their efforts in the garden.

“It gives us something to do,” Kellogg said. “When you grow your food it seems more important to you.”

For Food Programs Coordinator Neshelle Richards, it’s a way to expand what is available for the approximately 175 families and 370 individuals that receive food from their pantry each month.

“When I put [the fresh produce] out, it goes,” Richards said. “I have to make sure to let people know not to take too much because other people want some too.”

The pantry is open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. for anyone who brings a social security card, photo ID and a recent piece of mail. Pantry clients can come once every 30 days.

Richards also noted that people get excited about the fresh produce because it is something not normally available in the pantry, as well as being something that is expensive to purchase in stores.

As seniors call out bingo, eat their sloppy joes and jokingly fight over bingo prizes, senior programming director Christine Merrell corrals the group, disappears to find additional prizes and laughs with those gathered.

The table holding lunch also holds a basket filled with overly large zucchini picked from the garden and placed on display for people to admire.

Between the pantry, senior program, tax-services during tax season and family enrichment program, the Christ Child North Center is rarely empty, let alone quiet.

So it is that the senior’s garden has become a place for the noise and laughter to tumble outside and add to the activities that keep the seniors “sazzy,”

“First of all, it’s a place for people to congregate and to talk about the good ol’ days,” Merell said. “Most of our seniors were raised on farms, so it’s interesting to watch them out in the garden, planning what items need to be out there. The most important thing of all is that people are getting fed and they’re being given fresh vegetables that they couldn’t afford otherwise.”

It’s at this intersection that the Christ Child North garden sits. It is a place of fellowship for the seniors. It is a source of fresh produce for those who need it regardless of their age or background and it’s a part of the programs that form the fabric of a community cornerstone like the Christ Child North center.

“I was a product of this neighborhood, and I was able to get educated and take care of my family,” Merell shared. “There are people just like me and my mom in this community who are doing the same things for their families. And they are being fed by this garden.”

-by Erin Eidenshink, United Methodist Ministries staff

The 2011 summer growing season found gardeners of all ages and backgrounds digging into the dirt of community gardens in Omaha and rural Nebraska. With 50 different community gardens, the Big Garden brought fresh produce to students, families, senior citizens and neighborhoods. Vegetables grew on church properties, on raised beds in parking lots and in the backyards of non-profits and apartment complexes. For more information about the Big Garden, contact Deb Keeney at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it