Kids in the Sunday Children’s Program at St. Barnabas’, Leeland harvested and sold a crop of potatoes this fall, donating the proceeds, about $200, to a church-run farm in Monrovia, Liberia.

“We’re working on the Millennium Development Goals,” said the Rev. Larry Harris, rector of St. Barnabas’. “So when we looked at the first goal (eradicate extreme poverty and hunger), our idea was to plant potatoes, sell them to the congregation and give the money to the church in Liberia, because the church has a farm.”

The Monrovia church was chosen because the grandparents of two of the children, Nadia and Natalia Cooper, belong to the Anglican church and operate the farm.

“Everybody liked the idea,” Harris said, so St. Barnabas’ approached a local farmer whose land (which is leased from the Seaton Belt Trust) abuts the church to see if he could spare a few rows.

“He said, ‘Sure, take all you want,’” Harris said, so one morning in late April more than 20 children, ages 3 to 13, gathered in the field behind the church to plant potatoes.

The children planted 50 pounds of seed potatoes – cut so that each piece had an eye (the eyes sprout to produce a vine) – in furrows six to eight inches deep, and piled earth on top. They worked in the field on spring and summer Sundays, mounding soil over the potatoes.

George Hincliffe, a seminarian from the Diocese of Florida, lent a hand with the watering during the dry summer months. “He kind of kept things from getting away from us,” Harris said. And a number of parishioners, some of whom are cultivating plots of their own, also lent a hand.

Despite being planted a little late – St. Patrick’s Day is traditional – and a summer drought, the crop yielded about a half bushel of potatoes. The children measured out about 20 four-pound bags of potatoes (augmented with some Amish potatoes) which they sold for $10 each.

A check was presented to James Cooper, who was in the U.S. for a brief visit, on Nov. 14.

“Kids these days are exposed to conditions in the rest of the world that they are really motivated to do something about,” Harris said, explaining that thanks to modern technology, today’s world really is a smaller place. “What we’re trying to do is get everybody to see that the church is your ally. The church is where you work on this stuff.”

The Anglican Communion provides an immediate connection to the world, he added: “You don’t have to lift the lid very far to see that you’ve got grandparents right here in your own congregation that have a farm in Liberia.”

As well as providing a tangible way to fight hunger, the potato-growing experience enabled the children to learn some basic farming skills and to connect with St. Barnabas’ rural history.

“The heritage of the parish is rural, agricultural,” Harris said. “When I came here 30 years ago, a good number of the congregation were farming.”

The land the parish is using is still an active farm field, where corn and soy beans are cultivated in rotation. In previous years, the crop would most likely have been tobacco.

“It’s using the culture of the parish,” Harris said. “It’s about using your own resources, and in the process, they’re going to come out with some skills as they do the farming that they can use for the rest of their life.”

The children of St. Barnabas’ have already started to plan for next year’s potato crop. They’ll plant earlier this year, and hope for a more bountiful harvest.

“A garden requires some work,” Harris said. “No doubt about that. But you’ve got to nurture it. You’ve got to nurture this stuff.”

Lucy Chumbley is the editor of Washington Window, the newspaper of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.