OUR STORY

House of the Harvest began in August of 2015 as a school food pantry, ran by the Student Council at Sparkman Middle. Jennifer Walker was a seventh grade science teacher and sponsor of the Student Council. Her husband, Adam, was a PE teacher and basketball coach at the school as well. The project began as an opportunity for the students of Sparkman Middle to serve their own. It was a need at the school, although nobody knew exactly how big.

The winter of 2015 was extremely cold by Alabama standards. The exceedingly low temperatures and ice forced school systems to close for multiple days at a time. All of this led to a large number of students leaning on the support of the tiny cabinet in the corner of Jennifer’s classroom. It wasn’t long before that little cabinet was tapped out, creating opportunities for the teachers of SMS, local churches in the community, and other organizations (namely the Manna House in Huntsville) to get involved. Soon phone calls were coming from all the Sparkman family schools with families of students in desperate need.

All of this led to a delivery service ran by the Light church, where Adam and Jennifer attend. The church would meet at SMS every Wednesday night, pack food boxes, split up and deliver the boxes to the front door of the students houses. The group did this for about five months.

Shortly after this, the Harvest Volunteer Fire Department would donate their old facility on Wall Triana to the Walker family and their mission. House of the Harvest ceased to be a delivery service and became an actual physical location on November 1, 2015. Adam and Jennifer paid $1 for the location where House of the Harvest currently sits in the Harvest community. Since that beginning, House of the Harvest has been open every Saturday to serve breakfast and groceries to anywhere between 150-225+ families.

If you are interested in reading more about the details of this story you can order Adam’s book Two Fish through Amazon by clicking here.