The concept "Sheep to shawl”, taking something given to us by God and molding it into a finished product that can be sold, is alive and well at the Anglican Parish of Upham. This spring the "Sheep to Shawl" Youth Group got together at the rectory and with the help of The Rev. Marian Lucas-Jefferies and adult members of the parish, tilled the soil, fertilized it and planted seeds. Over the summer the children waited for their seeds to grow. Although the squash did poorly other veggies grew beyond belief, cucumbers being one of them.

One adult, a mother in the parish, Bernadette, came up with the idea that the children could make pickles from God's generous abundance, cucumbers, and sell them, donating all the money to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. Other people in the parish donated supplies for this project, bottles, spices, a lot of sugar, onions, peppers and vinager. Other parishioners had extra cucumbers in their gardens and donated them as well.

And we went into production. We had veggies everywhere, the double sinks were filled at least four times to overflowing, the kids lined up, organized by Kim, an adult volunteer, the older children cut open the cukes, the younger ones scooped out the contents and then some older kids chopped everything up, it worked like a charm and there was a job for everyone no matter how little or big you were. The next night , with the help of Wendy, another mother, all the children arrived again and began the process of stuffing the jars and pouring the vinegar and spices over everything. In the end, we produced over 50 jars of pickles.

One of the bottles donated was absolutely huge and the children set that one aside for someone very special, the bishop. There was a lot of giggling from the children over this idea but it was with mutual agreement from all of the kids that our bishop would be given the privilege of buying this paticular jar upon his visit to the parish that coming Sunday. Some of the pickles were bought by the local seniors group, many were sold at our monthly parish breakfast and most were sold to others in the community keeping with the concept of The 100 Mile Diet. The eagerness of these children is humbling, they have no money of their own, no vehicles, they are just kids with eager hands and hearts as big as the world and they want to help hungry children through CFGB, so why not let them?

Whats next for the youth of this parish you may ask? Stay tuned as the kids will be taking on another venture and they are chomping at the bit to start.

Oh!!!! And by the way, we still have half a dozen bottles left. Pickles anyone?

 (Written by Bernadette Fowler)