Pam

Meet Pam, a lovely Cul2vate volunteer who serves with flowers! She shares the story of how she came to C2V and what led her to volunteer with flowers.

How did you start volunteering with Cul2vate?

Alright, so we found out about Cul2vate through Joey. We were going to Brentwood Baptist when he was still in Africa, and he was learning how to build the greenhouses and how to grow things inside, and he would come home and come to church and show us videos and tell stories, and the whole church was just very supportive of what he was doing.

And then when he came home from being there, back to the US, we would hear stories at church of what he was trying to build here, and the church was supporting that, like a missionary effort, and my husband has done ministry, so he was keeping it on his mind. And through another ministry called Project Connect, which my husband was on the board of at the time, he kept in touch with Joey and kept in touch with some of the people that were working with Joey.

Then a few years later, our grandson, who was 10 at the time, started becoming very, very interested in gardening and growing vegetables, and he was growing vegetables in his bedroom. Then he built himself a little greenhouse in his backyard, and he just was fascinated by it. So, when he came to visit us, I thought one of the things to do would be coming to Cul2vate, and having a tour and volunteering, so I called, and they said that we could come and volunteer.

And so Christian is his name, he and I came and volunteered one morning, and we picked watermelons with the people that were working, and they paired us up with some of the guys that were working, and we picked watermelons. It was super hot, but they taught us which ones were ready and stuff, and it was a great morning. And then Abby gave us a tour, and she could see that Christian was really interested, so she took us everywhere and showed us how they start the plants and then what they do and he was asking really good questions and she was so good with him and so that cemented my interest in it.

And then I was on mailing lists, and a couple of times I did the flower subscription, so that we could have beautiful flowers in our house. And then when I was ready to retire, I started thinking about what I would like to do with my time, and one of the things that I decided was I really wanted to move toward beauty with my time. I wanted to do things that would be beautiful, and I loved being outside, so I thought, well, what if I tried volunteering with the flowers at Cul2vate? So I looked at the website and figured out that there were specific hours when you can work outside and harvest flowers or help make the bouquets there. You can get that specific at Cul2vate, you can pick out exactly what you want to do. Do you want to work with vegetables, or do you want to work with flowers? Or would you want to work at the farm store? So I chose flowers, and I’ve been doing that either every week or a couple times a month, and I come, and I get to be outside.

And the other thing I know about myself is that if I’m doing something that I know a lot about, I always think of how somebody could do something better, because I was in charge of a lot of things, and I know nothing about farming, and so it’s very relaxing to me to come and just do what I’m told to do. And there’s no way I can know how to farm better than Abby or Adam or any of the other people that are in charge, so I love being a volunteer at Cul2vate because they know what they’re doing, and I get to help, and I don’t have to be in charge, so it’s very lovely to be here

How long have you been volunteering?

I think I’ve been volunteering here for maybe a year, I think I came last summer, and then in the winter they didn’t have flower things to do, and so I helped with the food distribution, which was also really cool to be a part of, because what I mainly did, actually, was wash dishes, big pots and stuff that they had had that were super dirty, and they never had time to do it, because they’re so busy giving away food to people that really need food. So I felt really useful, because I could do something that nobody else had time to do, and I remember having lots of volunteers that served me in that way when I was working, and so I was really glad to be able to do that for somebody else. I could watch the ministry of providing real, farm food, actual fruits and vegetables, to people who I know in food desert places you don’t get actual real fruit and vegetables, so I could see how thankful people were, and people like pastors from churches came and got boxes and boxes of food that they were going to be able to give to their parishioners who didn’t get good farm grown food very often, so it was really lovely to be in the background of that, and know that some people were going to get good hearty food that was farm grown that weekend to fill their stomachs. I was really blessed to be a part of that.

What is your favorite thing to do while volunteering?

My favorite thing to do at Cul2vate is learning to make the bouquets. The flowers are so beautiful, and Abby is so good at teaching us how to put the flowers together, and I have no skill at that, so it’s been really fun to learn where to put a tall one and where to put this color and that color, and I’ve really enjoyed being able to learn that or experience it, and then most of the time I buy one for myself, and then I bring it home, and so I get to enjoy it at home when I go home, I have loved that.

Share a fun memory from volunteering?

One time I volunteered at a little festival, or some kind of farm festival, it was one of the first times I volunteered, and I volunteered at the flower booth, and some little kids with their parent came, and they could buy each stem, and then they could put together their own bouquet. And it was really fun to watch the children choose which flowers they wanted, and then we could help them if they wanted, and just watching their parents different parenting styles, watching some of the parents just encourage their kids to get whatever they wanted, and outlandish colors and sizes, and you know, some of them are just huge flowers, and some of them are called exploding something or other, so you can picture what that might look like. So, to see the kids walking around with their bouquets, and we would wrap them up in paper, and the kids could walk around with their beautiful bouquets, was really fun. It must have been a fall festival, because the kids could also go pick out a pumpkin, and that was really a fun day.

What are you learning about yourself through volunteering at Cul2vate?

I think I mentioned it, but the one thing that I really know about myself is my tendency to see what’s wrong, and then come up with three to five ways to fix it, and feel like it’s my role is to fix it, because that’s what I did for so long at my job, and so it’s been a really good learning experience to see what it feels like to not do that, to be in a space where I don’t do that, and to see how good it feels to just enjoy doing something and let myself relax and enjoy being in a space of beauty, so I’m grateful to be here.