UMCOR Sager Brown garden truly a community-wide effort

UMCOR Sager Brown received donation of plants for its community garden Wednesday.
The St. Mary Chamber of Commerce’s “Chamber of Health” program under the auspice of the governor’s office matches with coalitions such as Fit, Fun & Fabulous serving St. Mary Parish.
“So we partner with them, because we all want to promote healthy living,” Chamber President Donna Meyer said. “This was a project that Dawn Kaiser-Melancon started, she met with UMCOR, and this is our third garden.”
Meyer said the produce is distributed to individuals on a list for free.
“Chambers promote healthy living,” she said. “If workers eat healthy, that means they come to work. So workforce development just gets better, and they go home and eat well with their kids.”
UMCOR Executive Director Amy Fuselier said she conceived the idea when she first took her post four years ago. “It was a way for us to engage our volunteers into activities and allow our communities to benefit from it,” she said. “I pitched the idea to (Associate Director Benny Druilhet)…he kinda fought me on it at first,” she noted. “Finally the Chamber and the Rotary Club came to us with the same idea, and we said we’d give it a shot.”
Fuselier, with Druilhet’s help as a home gardener, and other persons on campus, launched that first garden.
Druilhet said the monthly food distribution to low-income elderly is supplemented with the crops harvested.
The garden plot is a bit larger than that first endeavor. “It’s a little bigger than when we originally started,” he said. “The rows are a little longer and we’ve added about four rows since our first year. This is our third fall garden, we just did our third spring garden.”
The crops include corn, okra, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and beans in spring. Fall is cabbage, collard greens, broccoli, brussel sprouts, lettuce, mustard greens and turnips.
“We have a tractor to prepare the garden, but our volunteers actually do the work,” Druilhet said. “They’re going to put all those plants in the ground.”
Fuselier thanks the community, organizations businesses and individuals for their support from sponsors to the project.