MSNBC has some lovely video of The Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows working with members of the congregation she serves in Syracuse to creates garden plots in the city. It’s hoped that the plots will provide healthy food this summer for Grace Church’s food pantry patrons.
Newsvine reports on the project here and writes, in part:
The Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows would not seem like an obvious candidate for the eating local movement. Growing up, she didn’t eat many vegetables and those that were on the table were “always cooked within an inch of their lives.”
“I grew up in an African-American household,” she says. “Celery root was not part of our tradition.”
Her husband also did not come to the idea naturally: a native of the Bahamas, he considered vegetables to be more of a plate decoration than an actual part of the meal.
But Baskerville-Burrows, 41, had always liked to cook, and she started shopping at farmers markets beginning around 1999. A few years later, she started reading books including “Fast Food Nation,” which includes segments about the farm practices that go into mass-produced food. It prompted a closer look at how she could find healthier and tastier food.
“I started really looking at my diet,’” says Baskerville-Burrows, who is an Episcopal priest.
These days, Baskerville-Burrows says she buys about 85 percent of her food from producers in the Syracuse, N.Y., area, where she lives. She also grows tomatoes, herbs and other vegetables at home, and this year she worked with church members to plant a garden on church grounds that they hope will eventually supply a local food pantry with fresh produce.