Katie’s Krops is thrilled to announce that Fall Creek Farm & Nursery in Oregon is donating 700 blueberry bushes to help us feed the Lowcountry! On Saturday March 3rd, we will be having a planting party & we need lots of amazing volunteers to come out and help us plant to feed families in need in the Lowcountry. Please join us, invite your friends and come have some fun while making a huge impact on hunger in the Lowcountry!
When:
Saturday, March 3rd
Time:
10 am until the last bush is planted
Where:
Pinewood Prep School Garden
End of Willow Oaks Lane
Summerville
Who:
Everyone is welcome to come out and help. Please wear closed toe shoes, long pants and clothes that you don’t mind getting a little dirty. Garden gloves are great too!
B.Y.O.S – Bring Your Own Shovel!!!!!!
RSVP- Katie@KatiesKrops.com
Planting the Seed of Change: How One Teen Will Feed Cancer Patients in Need
Planting the Seed of Change: How One Teen Will Feed Cancer Patients in Need
Thirteen-year-old entrepreneur Katie Stagliano turned a 40-pound cabbage into a community garden that feeds hundreds of families each year. Now after learning that ‘Everyday Health’ host Ethan Zohn’s cancer had returned, Stagliano wants to do something in honor of him and cancer patients in her area.
By Katie Stagliano
During the first season of Everyday Health, hosts Ethan Zohn and Jenna Morasca visited Katie Stagliano, founder of Katie’s Krops in Summerville, S.C. The 13-year-old began a community garden after her 40-pound cabbage won top honors in her elementary school class’s contest. After three years, Stagliano now has 11 satellite gardens, which also donate food to local shelters and families in need. (Catch the Everyday Health episode featuring Katie’s Krops on Dec. 17 or 18 on your local ABC station.)
After hearing that Zohn’s cancer had returned, Stagliano became inspired to do even more. Here, she checks in to tell us what else she’s got growing.
The holidays are a time when a lot of people are donating to soup kitchens and giving toys to those in need. I think that it is amazing how much support these people get during the holiday season: Food baskets on Thanksgiving, coat and jacket drives for the cold winter months, and toys for Christmas. This means a lot to families, especially those with young kids, who have trouble providing for themselves.
But what a lot of people do not realize is that hunger does not end after the holidays. People will still wake up hungry January 1st.
Appearing on Everyday Health was a huge honor. Since the show first aired in September, we have started cooking and serving dinners at Summerville Baptist, a local church with a huge dining hall. Word has spread across the community, and we have had huge crowds. Our first dinner alone had 60 people, and at our last dinner, 95 meals were served!
I believe that because of the challenging status of our economy, more people are falling on hard times. We get calls every day from families asking for fresh vegetables and food or for the date of the next Katie’s Krops dinner. I am thrilled that Summerville Baptist Church believes in our mission and has agreed to fill the void of no longer having a soup kitchen in my community by allowing us to continue to prepare healthy, fresh, and hot meals to anyone in need in 2012.
Everything Happens for a Reason
I have found that sometimes life is like a puzzle. All you need are the few missing pieces for it all to make sense. And this year I found those missing pieces in the people I met.
I had the great privilege to work with Ethan Zohn on Everyday Health. He is a cancer survivor and is so full of life, so much fun, and so determined to live life to the fullest.
I also met Mark Hertlizch, a survivor who fought cancer all the way to the football field. Mark is a player for the New York Giants, #58. While he was at Boston College he was diagnosed with bone cancer. Mark had been an amazing football player at the college and he was determined to beat cancer and play again. Mark did just that and now he plays for the Giants.
Harper Drolet was an 11-year-old girl who lived in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. She battled cancer twice, but, unfortunately, during her second fight Harper passed away. Her memory lives on and her spirit lives on through ‘Hugs for Harper,’ which raises money to help fund pediatric oncology research.
And finally, our family friend and neighbor, Miss Susan, is a breast cancer advocate. She approached us before Thanksgiving, asking if we had any food she could pass along to breast cancer patients, some of who are even homeless.
Why did I meet these people? What did I learn?
Just as I knew there was a reason I grew my 40-pound cabbage, I know there is a reason that these people came into my life. In 2012, I will continue to fight hunger one garden at a time, and I will continue to put the pieces of the puzzle together and see where they will lead me.
Planting the Seeds for a New Garden
I learned what I think most of us already know — that cancer is a horrible disease. Cancer takes a toll financially on patients and their families. Often caregivers are forced to give up their jobs to care for their loved ones. The financial burdens of the disease can be overwhelming and, as a result, families battling cancer sometimes struggle to put food on their tables. When you are fighting any disease or caring for someone in the fight of their life, proper nutrition is of the utmost importance.
That is when I put the pieces of the puzzle together: Katie’s Krops would start a vegetable garden to provide cancer patients and their families with healthy, fresh produce.
Katie’s Krops mission is to grow vegetable gardens to feed people in need, and I can see no greater need than growing produce to provide nutritious fruits and vegetables to cancer patients and their families. In 2012, I will start a Katie’s Krops garden dedicated to feeding people who are fighting cancer. The harvest will provide patients with healthy produce, and it will be a tribute to honor those who are battling this terrible disease and those who have passed because of cancer. The pieces of the puzzle are coming together.
If you would like to help with the gardens dedicated to cancer patients, learn more about Katie’s Krops and our mission to fight hunger one vegetable garden at a time, or find out how kids ages 9 to 16 can apply for a grant to start a Katie’s Krops garden in their community, please go to KatiesKrops.com.
Last Updated: 12/14/2011
The Katie’s Krops Garden Dedicated to Cancer Patients
I learned what I think most of us already know — that cancer is a horrible disease. Cancer takes a toll financially on patients and their families. Often caregivers are forced to give up their jobs to care for their loved ones. The financial burdens of the disease can be overwhelming and, as a result, families battling cancer sometimes struggle to put food on their tables. When you are fighting any disease or caring for someone in the fight of their life, proper nutrition is of the utmost importance.
That is when I put the pieces of the puzzle together: Katie’s Krops would start a vegetable garden to provide cancer patients and their families with healthy, fresh produce.
Katie’s Krops mission is to grow vegetable gardens to feed people in need, and I can see no greater need than growing produce to provide nutritious fruits and vegetables to cancer patients and their families. In 2012, I will start a Katie’s Krops garden dedicated to feeding people who are fighting cancer. The harvest will provide patients with healthy produce, and it will be a tribute to honor those who are battling this terrible disease and those who have passed because of cancer.
We are now trying to locate an area to plant our garden in Boston. If you have a suggestion, have land we can borrow or would like to help make our first Katie’s Krops Garden dedicated to cancer patients a reality please contact us at Katie@KatiesKrops.com.
" We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day. ~Edith Lovejoy Pierce
2012 is that next book, and there is nothing written in it yet.No inscription tells how the year will be, our actions will shape it, so 2012 should be amazing. Tomorrow, on our first page will be our grantees. I’ll be calling them up to tell them that they are the newest members of the Katie’s Krops family.
And this year, as I looked through the applications I was stuck, yet again. There were so many amazing ones; so I decided to give out not four grants but five. I wish I could give grants to everyone who applied. I know that they put so much time and effort into their application.But as I am picking applications for next year,I hope to award more!
Another story to grace my book is a cancer garden that we will be planting in the spring. I know that cancer puts a financial strain on families and I would like to help with that. Fresh vegetables are very important to a healthy diet, especially when fighting disease, so I would like to make sure that patients have them.
We are so excited thatSummerville Baptist believes in our dream and mission and have put us on the calendar for every third Thursday of the year for a Katie’s Krops dinner. It may only be one day a month but with no soup kitchen in Summerville, every little bit helps. Our dinners have become a very special way to connect with the individuals that benefit from Katie’s Krops and I am thrilled that the dinners will continue in 2012.
Finally, we have our amazing forty-eight foot greenhouse at Mr. Bob’s Farm. I am really excited to see what we can grow in there, even in winter; a luxury we have not had yet. We will be able to feed even more people in need. Thank you Mr. Josh, Mr. Klint and Mr. Aaron our new friends in Colorado!
So as we close our book for 2011, we open another one up, filled with exciting trips, opportunities, and being able to feed people in need. I can’t wait to see what 2012 has in store!
Get the delicious ratatouille recipe featured on an episode of the ‘Everyday Health’ TV show. Nutritionist and chef Ellie Krieger shows how easy it is to cook a quick, healthy dinner packed with veggies.
We are thrilled to announce that in 2012 Katie’s Krops will be hosting monthly dinner for anyone in need of a hot & healthy meal on the 3rd Thursday of every month. The dinners will be held at Summerville Baptist Church in the Fellowship Hall. Dinner will be served at 6:00 p.m. To go meals are available on request. All dinners will be based on what is available to harvest in the Katie’s Krops gardens. Families are encouraged to come. There are activities for children and all dinners are healthy & made with love by the Katie’s Krops crew. If you have questions about the dinners, would like to volunteer or would like to make a donation to continue to make these dinners possible please contact Katie@KatiesKrops.com.
When I set out to offer grants to other kids across the United States to start gardens to feed people in their communities I struggled with who to select. I now look back and know I picked the perfect students, the perfect school and the perfect teacher in Georgia. I am so proud of what they have created! Their community is so blessed to have their support!
We were so excited to receive the money for our Fall garden. My class had fun taking our Field Trip to Lowe’s. We were able to purchase supplies and materials to build our greenhouse and coldframes for the Fall and Winter. We are happy to now be able to have a way to feed the homeless throughout the Winter months. Habitat for Humanity Restore supplied all the old windows for our project. Thanks to Katie’s Krops, we have built a wonderful addition to our garden.
Katie Stagliano never imagined that the 40-pound cabbage she grew for a school contest would have planted the start of an inspiring non-profit that’s stamping out hunger one vegetable garden at a time.
By Sharon Tanenbaum
Katie Stagliano caught the gardening bug early, thanks to her family’s garden in their backyard of their Summerville, S.C., home.
“It wasn’t that much. It was like a few tomato plants, a pepper plant, and a lettuce,” Katie says of her “salad garden.”
Of course it may not seem like much now to this ambitious seventh grader, who turned her passion for planting and picking into a thriving non-profit organization that manages nearly 20 gardens to help to feed the homeless and hungry through local shelters and soup kitchens. The group, Katie’s Krops is featured on the next episode of Everyday Health airing October 1 or 2 on your local ABC station.
And it all got started with a not-so-small cabbage.
Planting the Seed of Change — Literally
When Katie, now 13, was in third grade, her school participated in the Bonnie Plants’ Third Grade Cabbage Program, which provides students with cabbage plants to grow to win a $1,000 scholarship (and bragging rights, natch).
“We planted it and treated it like every other plant in the garden,” Katie recalls. “But it ended up growing to be so much bigger than every other plant.”
In fact, the cabbage (an O.S. Cross variety, known for producing giant heads) ultimately weighed in at a staggering 40 pounds — and won Katie the contest.
But after the initial cheers and congratulations, there was the question of what exactly to do with a 40-pound cabbage plant. After all, serving it to Katie’s own family of four — or even her classroom — would result in a waste of perfectly good and wholesome food.
