Summer is upon us!

This was the first meal without our regular student volunteers, which was sad in many ways. The students add so much to the meal not only in manual labor help but with their positive energy and humor. Nonetheless, they will be back in August! It was a great night for spaghetti and meatballs with all the rain and cold weather. Also, cobbler made it's return! This made many happy. Also we are slowly making our way through the huge supply of Girl Scout Cookies. The St. Paul's UCC was a HUGE help not only with serving but set up and clean up too!

Three words: Girl. Scout. Cookies.

I knew it was going to be a good day as I loaded approximately 7 cardboard boxes full of girl scout cookies into my car and headed to Milton.  With my cookies added to the collection on the counter, it was almost impossible to see out into the dining area from the kitchen.  Brothers from Phi Psi helped with the set up, so I was able to offer my services in the kitchen with Lynn.  My duties included pouring multiple packets of peas into a pot and then joining the grilled cheese assembly line.  Once the thick slices of bread had been coated in butter and had cheese between them, they were ready for the stovetop grill.  Now, an important thing to acknowledge about the grill is that it has exactly two settings: off and incinerate.  Inevitably, a few of the sandwiches were burnt (or as Lynn likes to say "Cajun-style") before Stacey came to the rescue.

Now this is when Garyn, Nat, and I escaped to the pantry to date and sort canned goods (yes, it was as fun as it sounds).  Upon returning to the kitchen, I am asked to peel apples, which was awesome because it just so happens that when I woke up this morning, I prayed that I would get a chance to peel and slice apples at Community Harvest today.  A few minor hand cramps and a valiant team effort later, and the apples were peeled, sliced, and ready for the freezer.  They have an exciting future as cobbler awaiting them next week.  The cobbler has been a HUGE hit (to say the least) at Community Harvest these past few weeks.  I propose we start selling "Stacey's Street Cobbler" to the world.

In other news, Mark did extremely well bowling.  Bridget claims he won the competition, and he definitely has the trophies to prove it.  I would like to see him enter a girl-scout-cookie-eating contest after tonight's performance.  Brothers from Chi Phi showed up to help serve and clean up, which is always appreciated.  Overall, it was another successful night at Community Harvest.

Back from Spring Break!

After a wonderful week of Spring Break, we’re back at Community Harvest!  And man, is it good to be back.  The ever-surprising (and delightful!) variety of music from 102.7 is setting the mood in the kitchen and food prep is underway.  On the menu is Haddock, which has been patiently awaiting its debut down in the freezer.  The fish is accompanied by spinach and cheese mashed potatoes, fresh salad, and peaches.  And for dessert, Stacey’s famous cobbler will get the peeled and sliced apples out of storage.  The freezer will be a lonely place after this meal…but, as always, not for long!  After spending some time preparing the food, we are all feeling the heat, but it’s nothing a few minutes in the cool breeze outside the kitchen can’t fix!

It’s not long before some of our regular friends make their way into the kitchen.  Mark and Bridget are eager to share how many bags they filled at the store today, while Eddie shows off his great bowling scores.  Helen welcomed me back with a Wal-Mart lanyard and a milk chocolate Easter bunny.  And I just remembered that I never saw my milk chocolate bunny again after letting Mark have a look at it – I blame myself.

Delta Gamma sorority sent a few members to help serve food, Phi Psi picked up cleaning duty (giving me an excuse to avoid drying dishes), and Kim stuck around to help fold up tables.  It’s amazing how quickly we fall right back into the groove of things.  I can’t imagine doing anything else with my Mondays!

Cheese, Cheese, and more Cheese

Break has been wonderful, but we are feeling a little off our groove this week. Garyn and I arrive late because of our class schedule this semester so the kids from across the street already set up the tables. (I will sorely miss setting up with them all.) Danielle is still figuring out her schedule which is keeping her on campus this week. Carly is studying abroad this semester and Angel can't come until later. I miss our old team; its not the same without everyone from last semester. But some new people have joined us as weekly set up help, which is exciting!

We meet Lynn in the kitchen and after catching up on breaks, we realize we have a problem-- what in the world do we make tonight? One of the things about a soup kitchen that most people do not think about-- bulk amounts of strange ingredients. When you open the freezer to a ton of frozen peas, walk into the dry good room to find some cans of soup and random vegetables, and the refrigerator to a couple gallons of cheese and need-to-be-used-right-now salad vegetables, what do you make? Between keeping a tight budget and accepting all kinds of donations, we often end up with an eclectic collection of food. Lynn and other volunteer cooks spend hours trying to come up with balanced and nutritious meals each week using what we have. This week-- grilled cheese. The manager of the bison came to make about 200 Bucknell-style Texas Toast Grilled Cheeses, which were absolutely delicious. That finally made a dent in our cheese collection, and the rest was thrown into a salad. Add in a couple huge cans of chicken noodle soup, and we are in business. The peas can wait until next week.

It is so good to see everyone again; all the community members are so glad to have us back. They ask all about school, classes, families, and what we did over break. I remember how much there really is a sense of community here. I am having so much fun finding out how everyone's holidays were, and what they excited for for this year. A few people did not make it this week, so I am asking their friends how they are doing. We had a pretty good turn out despite the cold weather-- just under 200 people, so there was still enough for seconds.

Everyone is finishing up, and more volunteers from ADPhi come to help with clean up, which is much appreciated. We finish up and hop into cars to jump back into the swing of the campus life of meetings, classes, and homework. I realize that Community Harvest is such a wonderful break in my Bucknell routine-- it is good to be back.

Community Lifestyle

For the past two weeks, the kitchen of community harvest has been jammed packed with students. The entire management 101 company, Community Lifestyle, has been volunteering here as part of the service sector of the company. Each management 101 company has to choose a service project to which all the profits of the company go and Community Lifestyle chose community harvest. The company's VP of finance volunteered for Community Harvest before and pitched the idea to the company. Casey Coffman said the entire company was behind the idea. "No other company has ever chosen Community Harvest before. It was exciting to do something new". After contacting Lynn to see what community harvest needed, the company agreed to try and buy us a new, and much needed freezer.

Yet the company wanted to do more than just buy the freezer. Casey explained that they wanted to make a lasting impact on community harvest, but not just on the kitchen, but on the people. They company wanted to meet and get to know the people they were serving. After much brainstorming and hard work, the company planned to bake bread for community harvest as well as volunteer helping with dinner for two weeks, all funded from a loan they took out that will hopefully be repaid by their sales.

Casey and the rest of the company's service sector was a little nervous about the baking bread day. They had to bake on a Friday afternoon and Bucknell students normally do not give up their Fridays. However, they had a great turn out and the company really enjoyed working together to pull off making dozens of loaves of bread. "It was a lot of fun and a really good experience," Casey comments. The next week they started to come to the Monday dinners. The first week they threw a Fall Festival. The company secured a ridiculous amount of apple donations from Dries Orchard, causing the kitchen to literally overflow with tasty fall apples. They also bought pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, and apple cider from Weis and decorated the dining hall with streamers and fall leaves. This week they are putting on a game night. So along with balloons, more streamers, and games, the company also bought amazing cupcakes and muffins to celebrate. But perhaps more importantly, the company continually brings a heart for others. Even just in two weeks of volunteering, each member of the company has relationships with the people here. "We did not want to be a ghost donor," Casey said."We wanted to get to know the people and have them get to know us." There is no question in the minds of the people here that these students care about them, not just throwing money to some service organization. Company C really gets it; they really get service-- its not just about the money; its about building relationships and sacrificing time for the joy of others.

Casey explained that the experience has been great for company bonding. Working together towards achieving a clear and common goal of helping a specific community has built strong purpose, trust and accountability between the members, a necessity for a successful company. In fact, their service together has created such a positive dynamic between the members and such a strong sense of purpose that the company was the only company to pull off a proposal and plan that passed on the first review.

In order to meet their goal, the company needs to pay off their expenses as well as make $520 in profit to pay for the new freezer. In order to do they need to sell 230 tanks at $15 each, and they have sold 185 tanks so far. The tanks are white and twitter themed, with 'Bucknell Lifestyle' on the front and a host of funny Bucknell traits on the back, all in the wonderful colors of blue and orange. The company is hoping to sell more than 230 tanks so that they can donate the extra money to help with weekly food expenses.

a real community harvest

Community harvest-- perhaps this is an understandable name for a soup kitchen, but after working here for a few weeks I am wondering how exactly it applies. A harvest is an abundant gathering of the fruit of one's labor after months of planting and growing. A community harvest is the gathering of produce from an entire community's labor.

Is that really what goes on here? There definitely is a community. Danielle, Garyn, Carly, and I form the community of students that are here each week to set up tables and chairs, cook food for over one hundred people, serve, and then clean dishes, tables, and chairs. And each week our community serves a very specific commmunity. Yet the dinners do not seem to be a gathering of the produce of our community's hard work and labor. We buy food from Parkers Dining at the discounted price they give to service groups. The bread and food we send home with families each week are two day old donations from Weis. Where is the gathering together of produce and resources from our community? Sometimes it seems that as a community of students we do not have much to add to this harvest. We do not have money. We do not have food to bring. We do not know how to write grants to fund the kitchen. We gather a lot of community service hours for being here, but are we really needed? Do we really add anything?

But maybe we bring produce to this harvest in more subtle ways. Last week we served cookies for dessert baked by the Delta Gamma sorority. Each week a different group from campus comes to help serve (last week it was the ChiPhi fraternity, this week the Social Justice Residential College). Garyn has time and organizational skills which keeps our pantry stocked. He also is tall (6' 4" to be exact) and reaches all the pots none of us can get. Carly is well connected on campus which allows her to organize the volunteer groups that come to help serve each week. She also loves to stay behind the scenes and service unnoticed, so she makes the coffee, tea, lemonade and juice, and prepares the desserts. Danielle is a creative problem solver and loves talking to people, so she announces the start of dinner and comes up with ways to save money. I have enough energy (even if only from the latte I just chugged) to advertise the dinner to the community and to work with the kids from Bethesda to set up all the tables, chairs, napkins and silverware. In this way, Community Harvest really is a harvest of the produce of our lives as students. Community Harvest happens each week only because we come together with the fruits of our lives to create a harvest which we in turn use to serve others.

Back at School; Remembering Service!

Promptly upon return to this beautiful campus, the craziness of Bucknell descends. The lull of summer flees as excitement for the new year reaches a peak, old friends pour into dorms, and you swear this year is going to be even better than the last one. Only two days in and clubs begin year long planning, professors assign work with a fury, meetings pile on, greek life dives into rush, and suddenly your google calendar is a stressful mess of colored time blocks. In the midst of over-committment, excitement, and a campus full of friends, it is very easy to forget about the world beyond the Bucknell Bubble. Community service and volunteer work become another thing on the to-do list, another way to feel good about yourself, another thing in the way of the weekend. Your scope becomes completely absorbed with yourself--your friends, your classes, your activites, your schedule. The hurt and despair of others seems far away and any desire to truly serve those in need fades in the face of the Bucknell grind.

There are some experiences at Bucknell, however, that break through the bubble. Community Harvest is one of them.

Each week, four or five Bucknell students meet at the Milton United Methodist Church to set up tables and hundreds of chairs, put out silverware and napkins, and cut bread. Preparation can seem slow, even tedious, and the students are always tired. But this is what service is. It is not picturesque or extraordinary. Service is so often the small, unnoticed things done for others-- an idea so easily forgotten amidst the dramatic nature of university life.

The volunteer group for the week pours in, final preparations are made, and then the community members arrive. The need of these people is so clear in dress, walk, hygeine, health, and countenance; toil and grief is clearly written on their faces. And yet, there is something very beautiful here. As everyone chats while standing in line for hot drinks, there is a powerful strength and joy seen in every story of trial and pain, trials I have never dreamed of experiencing. And these stories do not stand alone; the community here is real. Everyone's stories, joys, hurts, and struggles are known and the support here is deep and transparent. The meal is ready and the Bucknell students and volunteers begin to serve one table at a time. As students sit to eat with the community, it is clear that the Bucknell students are not simply here to fulfill community service hours or flesh out a resume; they are part of this community. They love these people, and the people clearly love them back. Updates and support are easily exchanged as meatball subs and baked beans are enjoyed. How is Kim dealing with her dad's recent death, did Danielle enjoy Denmark, Bary made it back safely from his trip to see his sick mother, when is Jude's cast coming off, how is Sue doing with paying her rent, is there anything we can do for Margaret this week, how did Garyn's test go, Carly is making it through rush. There is no shame here. Life is hard, struggles are real, joy is constant, faith never fails-- and all this is to be shared and bore together. This open and honest dialogue is not experienced on Bucknell's campus.

And this dialogue, it seems, is the heart of community harvest. Yes, some students set up chairs and prepare food to give others. But at the table, it is all equal. We are all living life, with each other, holding each other up in whatever way we can. These people want to share their past despairs as much as they want to know and help you through your current ones. I am astonished at these people's strength, hope, and dedication. I am encouraged by their faith. I am reminded of how much joy there is to receive in all situations. Their stories ask me why it is that I live--the answer that extends far beyond grades, success, fun, and career. It is interesting-- the moment you focus simply on serving others and not building your resume or self worth is the very moment that you find yourself being served by those you came to serve.