Parishioners reap the fruit of their labors

St. Isidore is the patron saint of farmers, so it's fitting that his Bloomingdale flock works the fields.

Tucked behind the Catholic church bearing St. Isidore's name is a prolific vegetable garden with a gracious purpose.

Last year, volunteers sent 850 pounds of fresh vegetables to two food pantries in the Northwest DuPage Walk-in Ministry. The sites, at Resurrection Church in Wayne and Lutheran Church of the Master in Carol Stream, are also part of Plant a Row for the Hungry, the campaign urging gardeners to share their harvest with neighbors in need.

"It's the satisfaction of being able to help other people," Carolyn Simek said of the fun her church group has experienced while tending the plants.

Simek and another parishioner, Gail Shulman, both of Bloomingdale, answered an inquiry in the weekly bulletin last year seeking people willing to plant an organic garden. Gathering up friends and parishioners to help - and a few landscapers one of the priests knew - they stripped sod, tilled the soil and added nutrients to get started.

The group built 14 individual gardens, each 10 by 14 feet in size, then recruited groups to tend each one. Volunteers could plant whatever vegetables they wanted at the church, which is located at the corner of Army Trail Road and Gary Avenue.

That was a little chaotic, Simek said, so they opted for a more organized approach this year: Each bed harbors one specific vegetable. Keeping everything grouped together "makes for a very neat kind of garden," Simek said.

While individuals, groups or families "adopt" specific gardens, they all wind up working on the plots as a whole. They've got a good variety of vegetables growing, including corn, tomatoes, eggplant, pumpkins, crookneck squash, beets, cantaloupe, potatoes, beans, peas, herbs, carrots, parsley and onions. They also had zucchini plants, until the groundhogs ate them.

The garden has a mix of workers. There are Sunday school classes involved, grandparents and grandchildren, a singles group, members of other parishes and a Boy Scout troop.

"It's just word-of-mouth," Shulman said.