The Holy Redeemer Sisters spend hours each day gardening or caring for animals at the Redeemer Valley Farm in Bryn Athyn, according to a staff report from The Tablet.

The garden features both individual plots and a two-acre community-supported garden. The produce that is grown there is either donated to local food banks or sold at a farmers market.

Mercy Sister Leslie Porreca helped set up the garden and now she spends most of the day there – at least when she is not working as a licensed therapist. For her, gardening is a labor of love.

She also finds extra meaning in the planting, watering, weeding, and harvesting process.

Gardening provides “a very spiritual experience for me every day,” she said, as she spends half of the summer tending and providing support to the plants.

“That’s really such a basic relationship,” she said. “It’s kind of how God is with us, guiding us, supporting us, nurturing us,” she said, adding that the whole process is faith-filled and healing, particularly through watching seeds develop and bear fruit.”

Read more about the farm in The Tablet.

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