The Monday Garden, November 28, 2004, Issue 140A
Eco-gardening at its best
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These pictures are from Thanksgiving 2004 at Stamford's First Congregational Church. The church hosts a wonderful annual community dinner on Thanksgiving, free to all comers. Everyone comes, homeowners and homeless, with deliveries for the home-bound.
The church isn't ready to add pictures to their web site yet, so, for now, we'll share a bit of The Monday Garden site.
picture: Stamford's First Congregational Church, late summer 2003
One of the organizers reports for 2004: "I think we prepared over 350 meals.... 200 were for delivery, about 125 in the dining room, plus many taken home for 'leftovers' by the guests in the dining room. We had 2 trays of carved turkey as well as a lot of gravy left over (plus many rolls) but everything else was GONE!"
picture: ancient white oak, Stamford's First Congregational Church, late winter 2003-2004
It takes a slew of volunteers to make it happen, from cooks and decorators to greeters and drivers. There were about 200 volunteers this year. Interestingly, many of the volunteers (like me) are not part of the congregation but found their way here just for this event. Some have been coming back for years. We're all very grateful to the Church for giving us this opportunity.
If you've never had the pleasure of working at a celebration like this, here's what it looks like behind the scenes.
picture: Getting the plates ready, Thanksgiving 2004 at Stamford's First Congregational Church, 350 meals were made and delivered by 200 volunteers.
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picture: servers rush to get hot plates to 125 hungry guests; Pamela works magic in the kitchen and makes sure that the scraps get saved for the dogs and cats.
picture: About half of the intrepid dish washing team.
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pictures: James and Callie serving beverages; Steven mops up spills, keeping the kitchen floor from getting too slippery.
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pictures: Jack (dishwasher operator), Sue (dish washing captain); Joe (dish racker and team song leader) (picture credit: the dish washing team-- they had to get one of me) ; Linze and Jack decide work flow (or tell jokes - who knows); Andy with son Emanuel and friends James and Callie.
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pictures: Rick coming up with a brilliant way to cope with a stopped up drain; Linze deciding what's next; Joyce stacking clean dishes as fast as Jack and Joe wash them.
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pictures: Anna bringing energy to the clean up crew; Tiffany ready to scrape, Joe leading us in song
(Since I’m on the dish washing team I was able to get pictures of the whole team (except Joanna who was busy figuring out how to degrease the stoves, awesome job!); next year we'll try for more pictures of all the teams.)
Photo credits: Sue Sweeney
© Sue Sweeney 2005