Grow Appalachia: "Impact Appalachia", makes an Impact on local folks! ~ Jackie Waldroop

On Saturday August 27th the campus of Henderson Settlement came alive in a sea of red.
Everywhere you looked there was someone wearing a red shirt, the Kentucky United Methodist were having their event, "Impact Appalachia" showing that Kentucky Methodists Care.
I first heard about the event from seeing fliers announcing the event which were posted around the settlement.Everyone asked, What does that mean? What are they going to do?
We soon found out that it meant that people from all over Kentucky (109 Volunteers) would be coming to our little neck of the woods to work in the community, cleaning up yards, building ramps, delivering food boxes, working in the gardens and several other activities.
Matthew, Tyler and I (Jackie) were kept extremely busy because several of the volunteers wanted to work in a garden. A few of the Grow Appalachia participants were interested in having help in their garden.So Matthew took a group with him to Michael and Mary's home located in the Frakes area.
We had asked Mary if she could use some help in her garden because Michael had broken his leg earlier in the spring and hasn't been able to help Mary much in the garden so she was extremely grateful for the help.The volunteers pulled weeds and helped in the corn patch while Matthew tilled the garden for Fall crops.
Tyler stayed on campus to be of assistance to the volunteers who were going to work in our Community garden, Food Pantry garden and Senior Citizens garden. They helped harvest crops and even did a little weed eating around the gardens.
I took another group to Catherine's, Jimmy's and Bud's homes.

The group I took out were from Western Kentucky. Sue and her husband traveled over three hours to get to Frakes. Our first stop was at Catherine's garden. She is a fiercely independent woman and doesn't like to ask for help, but her dad has been sick and she has had to stay in the hospital with him and her garden has severed because of this.

Sue weed eating in Catherine's garden

We left Catherine's and went to visit Jimmy, who lives just down the road from Catherine.
Jimmy is in his early seventies and has a hard time being out in the sun for very long. He asked if the volunteers could do a little weed eating in his potato patch and could they please weed eat a path to his mailbox.

Jimmy watches as Joe weed eats a path to his mailbox

After lunch we headed for Tiny Branch which is where Bud lives. Bud is almost 92 years old and still gardening, he will tell you, "I can out garden anybody!" .

Bud is Catherine's dad ( the one who has been in the hospital) so she came with us to show the volunteers what needed to be done in Bud's garden.