St. Isidore’s Acre

MADISON  Christopher Caulfield was having fun doing something new last month: crouching down to sow various types of seeds into several trenches alongside each other that stretch the length of part of the year-old St. Isidore’s Acre garden at St. Paul Inside the Walls here.

Today Caulfield, co-director of the Music Ministry at St. Paul’s, the diocesan evangelization center, has been enjoying the feeling of “getting back to the earth” — getting his hands dirty as he works to cultivate the seedlings that started to sprout on their journey to becoming a bountiful harvest of fruits, beans and vegetables. During this growing season, from April to October, 16 St. Paul’s young adults, including Caulfield and his fiancé, Ashley Hernandez, have been working the earth of St. Isidore’s Acre to grow, harvest and enjoy their own produce, as they also cultivate a deeper understanding of how God expects all to care for his creation.

“There are few manual jobs left. Now, people mostly work in offices and schools. There is something satisfying about getting down in the dirt and working with my hands and also nurturing something from the beginning and seeing it through,” said Caulfield, a doctoral student in biomedical engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark — work with computers that he calls “mental and theoretical.” “I have no real experience gardening, except for weeding for my mom on Mother’s Day. This is tangible — right in front of you. Plus, Ashley and I work well together and, through this work, are learning more about mankind’s stewardship of the earth,” he said.

The 16 young adults started this year’s garden project by tilling the soil of the three plots of the 2,100-square-foot St. Isidore’s Acre next to the mansion that houses part of St. Paul’s. The endeavor recently received graces from God when the two priests at the evangelization center blessed the garden and two new greenhouses on May 15, the feast day of St. Isidore of Madrid, Spain, the patron of farmers. A farmer himself, he was known to have supplied the poor with food. He died in 1130 and was canonized a saint in 1622.

“The idea was to create space where St. Paul’s could bring the community together to learn about gardening and Catholic social teaching, principally caring for God’s creation, and to become more closely connected with sustainability and all that goes with it,” said Stacy Nolan, diocesan co-minister to young adults at St. Paul’s, who devised the garden and then started it last year. “To be able to grow your own produce and — no pun intended — get back to the root of where the food comes from and how to care for the plants, how to harvest them and cook them — that’s an exciting thing for people in our garden. They are learning more about farming, themselves, each other and God,” she said.

This summer, St. Isidore’s Acre will invite children from parishes in the Diocese, entering grades 5-8 in the fall of 2019, inside St. Paul’s walls for its first-ever summer camp, from Monday, July 22 to Friday, 26. Each day, from 9 a.m. to noon, campers will have fun engaging in activities about Catholic social teaching, learning how to plant and harvest in St. Isidore’s Acre and the greenhouses and enjoying games and crafts, said Nolan, who draws on her experience as a volunteer on a farm for this new ministry.

St. Isidore’s Acre and its rows and rows of seedlings — and new greenhouses nearby — promise to yield a colorful array of produce throughout the growing season. They include lettuce, onions, peppers, tomatoes, corn, basil, rosemary, carrots, cabbage, cucumbers, okra, zucchini, broccoli, arugula, radishes, and some Asian greens such as bachoi and string beans, which are growing on tall ancient-looking columns behind the garden. Each participant is required to pay a small fee for seeds and supplies and agree to work two hours each week to get their share of the produce, Nolan said.

The process calls on participants to till the soil, plant the seeds or transplant sprouting plants from pots into the ground and feed them. Different crops will be ready to harvest at different times of the growing season. Last season, gardeners sold some produce at barbeques and after a Mass at St. Paul’s, Nolan said.

“Ten young adults came back from last year, while the rest are new at gardening. Last year, there were ups and downs — some crops made it; others didn’t. So this year, they are all working to yield stronger crops,” said Nolan, who gave two talks about Pope Francis’ encyclical, “Laudato Si” at the start of this growing season.

The group installed a deer fence around the garden and two movable greenhouses that hold potted plants waiting to be transplanted, thereby extending the growing season and supplies for the winter. Jane Devlin, an active St. Paul’s member, made a donation for the greenhouses in memory of her parents, Marie and Al Panza. Conducting the blessing on May 15 were Father Paul Manning, St. Paul’s executive director and diocesan vicar for evangelization, and Father Pawel Tomczyk, diocesan director of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults and Youth Ministry and chaplain at William Paterson University, Wayne.

“St. Isidore’s Acre is the result of three sources of inspiration — the enthusiasm and expertise of Stacy; the encouragement of ecologically friendly initiatives by our recent popes St. John Paul, Benedict and Francis; and my own semi-rural upbringing on a small family farm in Ironia,” said Father Manning, who ardently supports the ministry. “I am thrilled that our young adults are putting Catholic social teaching to work through St. Isidore’s Acre,” he said.

The cost of St. Isidore’s Acre’s Summer Camp is $175 per child or $125 per child if there are two or more per family.