Crops for PROP

The "Crops For PROP" Community Garden
Lois Hyde, a member of our church family, had a vision and a passion that were connected and produced a great harvest of spiritual fruit. At a leadership meeting in late 2012, she observed:

• Our involvement in PROP, our local food shelf, revealed a real and present need in our community for a wider variety of food, especially fresh vegetables
• One of the assets of our congregation is land. We have a lot of it, almost nine acres.

That night, something like the Holy Spirit connected these two things with a passion Lois has for gardening. And from there came our Community Garden and Crops for PROP.

Many within our congregation and community have been involved in this ministry. It is a theme for how we are all "Cultivating Our Spirituality". But most importantly, we grew, literally, a ton of fresh vegetables:
2013          2000 pounds
                                                                   2014          1500 pounds
                                                                   2015          2493 pounds
                                                                   2016          2,770 pounds
                                                                   2017          3015 pounds
                                                                   2018           2407 pounds
                                                                   2019           2220 pounds
                                                                   and every pound of it was given to someone!

​Listening and identifying a need, seeing something we had to offer, and looking outside the box of what we usually do has made us Big Enough to Make a Difference in our world. In time, our garden may grow into our signature ministry, something that everyone in Eden Prairie and the surrounding area identifies with EPUMC.

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