SERVE garden adds four new beds

Tomatoes, peppers bolster food pantry stores

SERVE Executive Director Steve Mallinckrodt pulls weeds out of one of the four new raised beds in their vegetable garden Monday. SERVE is looking for volunteers to help tend the garden, which supplements the Callaway Action Network's food pantry with fresh, nutritious produce.
SERVE Executive Director Steve Mallinckrodt pulls weeds out of one of the four new raised beds in their vegetable garden Monday. SERVE is looking for volunteers to help tend the garden, which supplements the Callaway Action Network's food pantry with fresh, nutritious produce.

SERVE, Inc.'s food pantry is ripe for the picking, thanks to the donation of four new raised beds to the charity's garden.

Through donations of materials from the Fulton Kiwanis Club, plants from Westlake Ace Hardware and construction time from Matt Harder, SERVE's garden added four raised beds to grow about four dozen tomato and pepper plants last month.

"It really was a community effort," said SERVE Executive Director Steve Mallinckrodt. "It's another instance of the efforts of volunteers and the community that keep SERVE going and providing services. It doesn't happen without efforts like that."

The plants will join the squash and cucumber that were already growing in the garden as a source of fresh produce to supplement the Callaway Action Network's food pantry, which provides food for about 1,000 local families each month.

To help the tornado-stricken people of Dumas and surroundings, donations can be made to the Delta Area Disaster Relief Fund, care of the Delta Area Community Foundation, P.O. Box 894, Dumas, AR, 71639, or through the Arkansas Community Foundation, 700 S. Rock St., Little Rock, AR, 72202.