Amid drought, churches draw together
LANDSCAPE CONVERSION: Students of Meher Montessori School in Monterey Park, which shares space with St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, create a garden next to the church with plants that are adapted to dry conditions. Photo by Lisa Novick
In what is supposed to be the harvest season, many parts of California are feeling the effects of the drought that has raged for most of the year.
“We don’t know what’s going to be coming out of the fields, if anything,” said Brian Malison, lead pastor of Christ Lutheran Church in Visalia, in the southern part of the Central Valley. “There were a lot of farmers in the spring who didn’t put down seed or let their fields go.”
In an area where many people are involved in the agriculture industry, people have had to make decisions about how best to limit the devastation of the drought. Sometimes that has meant not planting, because the costs of hiring workers for the harvest are too high.
