MACON, Ga. — When you hear about a ton of food, most of the time, people are just talking about a lot food.
But at the Brookdale Community Gardens, they literally have a ton of food this harvest season.
Rev. Jake Hall of the Brookdale Community Center says that the impact of this produce is going to go far.
“What we have found that this is nourishing on many levels,” Hall said.
The Brookdale gardens reaped in 2,000 pounds of fresh produce, which will feed the people who rely on the Brookdale Resource Center.
The center was opened in January 2021, and it started as a warming center for people who did not have adequate heat to stay warm during the colder winter months.
But the Brookdale Resource Center has expanded its breath to help homeless people find homes, get jobs and get on their feed.
The garden’s summer harvest led to a crop of green beans, squash, cucumbers and watermelon.
Plus, it has given people in the community an opportunity to volunteer and help make a difference by utilizing their green thumbs.
With the harvest, the cost of running the Brookdale Resource Center has decreased, but Hall also hopes that it contributes to the soul of the community and the people the Brookdale Resource Center serves.
“Not only has the cost of providing food to our residents at Brookdale dropped by nearly half over this time, we’ve been able to provide a kind of nourishment for the soul,” Hall said.
Hall says that the garden is playing its part in addressing homelessness in Macon, and the Brookdale Resource Center expects the costs to run the center to continue to drop as the garden generates more produce.
So you could say folks in Macon-Bibb County are reaping what they sowed with this community garden.