C4C Summer Bounty Festival!

On August 1st, 2009, at St. Bernardine's Monastery in Hollidaysburg, PA, the Care for Creation (C4C) project had its first Summer Bounty Festival. Around 100 or so people attended the event and seemed to enjoy it a great deal. We had plenty of food, sunshine, laughter, and the C4C music group (named "The C4C Archestra") did a wonderful job playing their repertoire of folk, Christian, and spiritual music. Fr. Christopher Panagoplos got the festival off to a great start by leading us in a prayer of thanksgiving for the gift of God's presence in the beauty of the earth and the many gifts of those who volunteered their time and energy to make the festival such a success. Shortly after the prayer, Fr. Christopher and Br. David tasted the dishes that were entered into the "best dish contest." Liz Campion took home the gold spatula for her zucchini casserole. Congratulations Liz! One of the highlights of the festival was the fire-roasted sweet corn that we served up. Several weeks ago Br. Steve and our maintenance personnel (Al and Chris) dug a pit and surrounded it with stones. They also fashioned a large "grate" out of fence material which was used to put the corn on top of in order to roast it. The corn was so delightful that it really needed no salt nor butter! Thanks for all the hard work making the pit Steve, Al, and Chris, it was WELL worth it!

The purpose of the festival was two fold. First we wanted to bring our volunteers together to celebrate a successful season of gardening and to show them our appreciation for their involvement in this project. Second, we wanted to gather people from the larger community to show them a little bit of Franciscan hospitality and to educate them on C4C and what we've been up to this summer. Overall I think we achieved both objectives quite well! It's my hope that this festival will be one of many to come. Pat, TOR