Grace's Creation Care Blog

The Seeds are here!

2012-01-16T18:33:00.000-06:00

Seeds of Change packets are ready for pickup. Come by and get yours on February 12th after the 8 and 10 o'clock service in the Parish Hall. A seed swap is also planned. Don't like the flower packet you received? Swap it out with someone who would love to have flowers!

Battery recycling going strong

2012-01-13T17:03:00.000-06:00

After a short interruption with our battery recycling program (The plant we used stopped accepting single use batteries) we are back in track.
In 2011 our ministry diverted almost 100 lbs of batteries from the waste stream. We also recycle cell phones and rechargeable batteries through a program called 'Call2Recycle'. The bucket to leave the batteries.

Christmas Light recycling update

2012-01-06T23:36:00.000-06:00

Grace was one of 200 drop off points. The barrel had to be emptied several times. What a success!

A Green Advent Calendar

2011-11-10T14:09:00.000-06:00

Green Advent Calendar

Feeling especially close to nature this year? Not wanting to contribute to the immense environmental burden, each holiday brings? Check out this Green Advent Calendar by Earth Ministry.

Recycling Christmas Lights

2011-11-10T13:56:00.000-06:00

Your Creation Care Ministry is teaming up with St. Louis Green and Operation Food Search. Recycle your Christmas lights in the barrel in Albright Hall and the proceeds of the sale of the raw material like the copper wires will go towards Operation Food Search. Visit their web site to learn more!

Our Fall Crop from Gardens of Grace

2011-11-05T12:39:00.000-05:00

Our Fall Crop is here!
Blessed to grow and happy to harvest, our Grace Creation Care Ministry team members collected the first abundance of fruits and veggies. The parishioners were delighted to get their hands on the freshest food ever! The donations collected reached over $100! Thanks to the generosity we were able to send this amount to our local foodpantry, Kirkcare. We are looking forward to have a second harvest soon. If you are interested in helping out with the Gardens of Grace, send us an email at: gracecreationcare@gmail.com We would love for you to sow seeds, tend to the crop, even if you have no experience. Neither did we!

Sunday school plants seeds

2011-09-12T09:58:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Sue Nixon and her sunday school class, the children were able to plant lots of lettuce and radishes last sunday. This will make a great addition to our broccoli, kale and snap peas. We are hoping to donate the produce and show the children how easy it is to plant vegetables!

Community Garden update

2011-08-23T12:59:00.000-05:00

After a great start with lots of baby tomatoes, the squirrels won the race and canned each one of them. We also lost our corn, that Charlie planted each by hand! Sorry about that. Our basil though blossomed and we turned the ship around by making St. Basil's Pesto. The donation income from the pesto is a great relief to pay for our irrigation system and to plant a fall crop. See above.

Creation Care Ministry Team mentioned in Kirkwood-Webster Patch article

2011-04-20T11:00:00.000-05:00

We are so blessed to have a wonderful article published on the Kirkwood-Webster Patch website about our green team. Take a look!

Earth Day is on Good Friday!

2011-04-13T14:40:00.001-05:00

22nd Annual St. Louis Earth Day Festival

You are invited to “Be the Change” in honor of this year’s

Earth Day celebration on Sunday, April 17, from 11 a.m.

to 6 p.m. on the Muny Grounds of Forest Park.

Enjoy two stages of live music, cultural performances,

local food and hands-on activities for the whole family at

the 22nd Annual St. Louis Earth Day Festival. Over 200

artists, educational exhibitors, food vendors, businesses

and organizations will share how they are “Being the

Change”, and how you can too!

Community Garden Details

2011-04-13T13:40:00.000-05:00

With the idea of a community garden a year ago at one of our Creation Care Ministry meetings, came also the big question of: How are we going to go about this? St. Matthews in Warson Woods was a great help in terms of example and viable information. They have now 6 plots 4x8 sqf and have been through one successful growing season. Our parishioner, Charlie Moley, was incidentally looking for an Eagle Scout Project and decided on a community garden. How perfect is that? A wonderful God incident, is what I call it! We will follow the square foot garden approach as much as we can since it's the easiest way to grow lots of food in small spaces.
Our soil will be a mix of compost (hopefully free horse manure), peat moss and vermiculite.
We have raised some monies to start us on the building of the structures. We are planning on 4 4x8 raised beds on the south side of the playground by the handicap parking.
There are still lots of open questions which we will address at our next meeting, this Sunday, April 17th at 11:20. Please come and join us. Brainstorming makes it possible!

THANK YOU for your donations to the Community Garden

2011-04-13T13:30:00.000-05:00

A big thank you to Charlie Moley, who created a superb poster to present in Albright Hall for sponsorships of garden plots.
We have raised over $450 that way! The congregation is really excited and will be blown away but all the produce God will grow. We are so blessed to be able to do this with all the help we are receiving from the congregation, the vestry and interested community members. Plant sales also went well. The Holgates and McDowells received over $400 worth of donations for their tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, basil and many more species! We still have to raise more donations, since the irrigation alone is quite costly.

Community garden Planting Schedule

2011-01-26T14:53:00.003-06:00

Here are some quick dates for planning put together by Rob Holgate. Not sure we will plant all of these but here is the info anyway. These are based on the average last frost date for STL of April 7th. These dates may precede some suggested dates by a week or so since we are working with raised beds which warm up more quickly in spring.

The week of:

Feb 7

Start eggplant, peppers inside

Feb 14

you could start some lettuce inside if you want to, to do higher maintenance early starters (watch for frost like a hawk) and then do another planting every 2 weeks.

Feb 21

start tomatoes inside

Feb 28

Plant outside: peas, spinach(and every 2 weeks),

Mar 7

plant lettuce outside (and every 2 weeks after)

Mar 14

Plant outside: carrots, radishes, (and every 2 weeks after), also onions, chard

Apr 4 (week of average last frost)

Put tomatoes out, plant dill out

stop plantings of spinach

Apr 11

Plant out: beans (bush beans more every 2 weeks, pole beans bear continuously so only plant once), cucumbers

Apr 18

Put eggplant, peppers out

Plant out squash, melons

Apr 25

plant okra out

stop successive plantings of lettuce, radishes in a bit, carrots and bush beans can go on for 4 more weeks if anyone is still not tired of plantingThe harvest:

May 1

will have us in the middle of spinach, radishes, lettuce, chard harvest

Jun 1

will have us in the middle of carrots, chard, peas, summer squash, cucumbers and the start of the beans

Jul 1

will have us in chard, beans, squash, 1st eggplants, 1st peppers, 1st tomatoes

10 % Challenge - we did it!

2010-10-28T10:51:00.001-05:00

National Headlines among Churches: The 10% Challenge

Approx. 250 congregations from 38 states entered the Interfaith Power and Light challenge. The IPL was initiated through Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco and provides over 10,000 congregations with sustainable resources to help lower the carbon footprint in faith communities all over the States.

Our very own Grace Church entered the 10% challenge. We displayed our ongoing efforts to reduce our energy and waste impact in our church buildings through comprehensive measurements like energy audits, light sensors, changed light bulbs, recycling and the vision to significantly reduce our energy bills by replacing our 45 year old Heating and Cooling system!

Grace made it into the finals and 5 random winners received a cash incentive of $10,000. While we were not among the recipients of the money prize we have been awarded with the 10% Challenge Certificate that we will proudly display as soon as we receive it. Congratulations Grace, we made national headlines by protecting our fragile home, God’s gift to us.

Movie event a big success!

2010-10-28T10:49:00.000-05:00

THANK YOU to all who came to our first Diocesan wide movie event.

‘The Human Footprint’ by National Geographic presented a challenging display of our impact on God’s planet. Our Grace Creation Care Ministry (GCCM) Team did a fine job hosting this event, providing popcorn and cider to more than 35 parishioners from different churches throughout our Diocese. Several eco friendly household alternatives were displayed and the Cathedral bookstore provided many sustainable options from jewelry to green Bibles. This event was co-hosted by our Diocesan ‘Green Team’ – SustainAFaith. Its members include Kay Faddis from Emmanuel, Webster, Kelly Carlson, Associate Priest at St. Peters, Ladue and Barbi Click from the Cathedral. A big thanks to all of their hard work!

Bishop Smith on Caring for planet Earth

2010-07-13T11:28:00.000-05:00

Reflections on Sabbatical
includes a very heartfelt observation by Bishop Wayne Smith, that, if all the data are truth regarding climate change, how then shall we live? He mentions that he enjoyed reading 'Eaarth' by Bill McKibben.
Please read the article and share your thoughts on this blog. I would like to suggest that we read 'Eaarth' as a group and offer a discussion evening later in the fall.

The Presiding Bishop and the Oil Spill

2010-05-27T13:22:00.002-05:00

Please take some time to read Presiding Bishop Schori's comment on the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Electronic recycling in St. Louis until 10/2010

2010-05-24T13:52:00.001-05:00

Monthly drop-off location for electronics in St. Louis: From February until October:
E-cycling collection site:  Chesterfield Valley Athletic Complex on the Parks & Recreation Buildingparking lot, 17891 North Outer 40. Items can be dropped off every 4th Saturday of the month Feb-Oct from 10-4. No fees, a donation to cover handling expenses is appreciated.

Accepted Items: - Computers, laptops, monitors, printers, cables and peripherals (keyboards, mice etc.)
- Networking equipment, telecommunications, phones, clocks, etc.
- TVs, VCRs, stereos and like audio/video/satellite/cable equipment
- Home electronics, blenders, toasters, etc.
- Washers, dryers, dishwashers, furnaces and A/C equipment
- Electrical, cabling, and communication machinery and equipment
- Lawn equipment, tools, old mowers, tillers, etc.
- Old motors, transformers, and all electrical equipment
- Car and lead-containing batteries
- CDs, VHS, DVDs, cassettes, DAT, and all types of software
Business and residents can also request a low-cost pick up service.  All donations are tax deductible.
For more information: rdavis@witsinc.org    314-382-1650   www.witsinc.org.

Recycling batteries and cell phones

2010-04-22T12:11:00.002-05:00

We have a new service at Grace: Call2Recycle is a voluntary program that recycles rechargeable batteries and used cell phones.

Population, Politics, and the Environment

2010-04-21T12:33:00.000-05:00

Warren Davis shared this video with me. A must see from our very own St. Louis faculty.

Kilowatt Ours

2010-04-21T12:31:00.000-05:00

I would love to show this at Grace and Diocesan wide. Emmanuel saw this screening and they loved it! It's a wonderful example of how to avoid building power plants by simply conserving energy and reducing our wasteful usage of our resources.
Please check it out!

Sign up for the community garden

2010-03-31T09:52:00.000-05:00

For those interested in helping with growing vegetables and fruits for our community at Grace and beyond, we need people with knowledge, working hands and open hearts. Are you excited about growing tomatoes and cucumbers? The Vestry at Grace has addressed a possible community garden. We need a group of willing minds to come together and discuss and work on such a projects. Please leave a comment if you are interested. This is a wonderful and exciting opportunity!

Good Composting Info (click here)

2010-03-22T18:08:00.002-05:00

I have lived, composted, and gardened in several states and these Ag Extension websites are the best place for state specific info on what really works (who cares what the TV show says works in Florida or Ca for example). Missouri's website has really good info.

Laclede gas customer rebates

2010-03-15T15:12:00.000-05:00

Get great financing by paying off your new energy efficient water heater or gas furnace through your monthly gas bill.
Laclede will give you rebates and help install the new appliances.

Rebates for home and commercial customers using natural gas by Ameren

2010-03-15T14:57:00.001-05:00

Ameren has funds for anyone who wants to reduce their gas utilities by obtaining energy efficient furnaces, water heaters or thermostats.
Please see the link for more details.
You have to be an Ameren Natural Gas customer though.

Diving deeper into a topic

2010-03-15T14:37:00.001-05:00

Dear Colleagues,
I find your enthusiasm for the community garden wonderful!
We will have a lot to talk about at our next meeting this Sunday.
Let me suggest to you a thought that I have seen in other churches with green teams.
Different people have different agendas and some are more into one green topic than another. Therefore some congregations have divided up their green team ministry in multiple genres. For example, the most common topics in green congregations are:
-Community Garden
-Recycling and composting
-Faith and sustainability (educating the parish to reduce their carbon footprint with movies, books, Eco events, other resources)
-Energy conservation (mostly building related)
-Green purchase policy (buying energy efficient products like CFL, LED or recycled paper for our bulletins, fair trade products for coffee hour and events)
-Genesis covenant (remember the Episcopal convention signed the legislation to reduce all church related carbon emissions by 50% within 10 years)
and whatever else is important to us.
So please pray and think about where you would like see yourself. Of course multiple seats are an option!

Community garden coming to Grace? Why not!

2010-03-11T16:58:00.001-06:00

Please see Jim Davis' comment on a possible community garden at Grace. This is a wonderful opportunity to do so much more with our lot than just parking. I know that many of you were interested in this, so keep the comments coming.

"Jim Davis: This is green-related... I asked (at Tuesday's Vestry meeting) if anyone was interested in working along with me & Denise Miller to get started on a 'Community Garden' on our property. I'm just beginning to do some research on what all is involved. Really could use an energetic semi-retired person (with time) to help implement this idea. The thought is: we'd grow vegetables and donate that produce to needy places around St. Louis. Interested?"

Have blog, will use it.

2010-03-06T21:49:00.005-06:00

This can be a very useful tool to share ideas and post links quickly and efficiently without sending around a bunch of e-mails. Please post at least one comment to check if this works for you. Thank you!