Church farm helps stock pantries

Church farm producing 1,000 pounds of fresh produce weekly for Chesterfield food pantries

If you take a quick glance as you travel Hull Street Road near the Hicks Road intersection, you may catch a glimpse of activity that might seem out of place in the Chesterfield suburbs. On Saturday mornings around 8 a.m., dozens of volunteers gather at a working farm located on the campus of Mt. Gilead Full Gospel International Ministries.

The Mt. Gilead farm is internally known by church elders as “Seedtime and Harvest,” which is a biblical reference from Genesis 8:22. However, some local food banks are calling it something else — a godsend.

While the farm started as a small vegetable garden in the beginning of 2019, it has grown to more than 10 fields on a corner of the 86-acre church property. With the summer in full swing and help from about 25 regular volunteers, church officials say it now regularly produces more than 1,000 pounds of fresh, fully organic produce each week, which it donates to the Chesterfield Food Bank and Petersburg's Hope Center food pantry. So far, Mt. Gilead has produced and donated more than 15,000 pounds of food since creating the farm.

“The idea was to start with a small garden with just a few vegetables that we could donate to the Chesterfield Food Bank as a ministry,” said Amie Carter, Mt. Gilead’s Executive Media Director. “Now, we have teams of volunteers collecting our harvest and filling our delivery trucks every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday morning. It has become something supernatural!”

Besides the crew of regular volunteers, different ministries from the church are also assigned to help out each month. It has even become a teaching outlet for the church’s youth groups.

The farm was the brainchild of Mt. Gilead parishioner “Captain” William Dugger, Sr., who still oversees all aspects of the operation, including training new volunteers to help with the growing bounty, which includes more than 15 varieties of vegetables like cabbage, okra, onions, melons, corn, and broccoli.

“Once Captain Dugger got permission to start the original garden and we started producing the first crop of vegetables for donation, the farm really blossomed,” Carter said. “He spends a lot of time teaching new volunteers the entire process. For many of our younger volunteers, they are used to grocery stores. But when they

learn the process, and put a seed in in the ground, and see what can be produced with rain and a lot of hard work, it’s eye opening.”

While 1,000 pounds per week is indeed impressive for the allvolunteer effort, Dugger and Mt. Gilead have bigger plans for the future of its farm, including more fields for produce, poultry and eggs,

and greenhouse improvements to keep up year-round production for the food banks and pantries it serves.

“One of our biggest goals, however, is to grow our training program for new volunteers,” Carter said. “With more people understanding the process and gaining the knowledge to start their own gardens at home — that’s the ultimate victory.”