October, What a Month !

Hello everyone. This is Alex Sanders, Grow Appalachia Site Supervisor at Project Worth Outreach in Menifee County, located in northeastern Kentucky. It has been a tough month at Project Worth Outreach. The month started with our Director, Gail Mills, being involved in a serious accident and another staff member EJ Miller, our Experienced Works employee, enter the hospital at the end of the month with a serious infection.

Alex Sanders

Gail Mills

E.J. Miller

Gail was airlifted to the University of Kentucky Hospital in Lexington and has been there the entire month of October. Gail received three broken bones in her right leg and all of her ribs were broken except for two on each side. She also lost a lot of blood. She spent about three weeks in ICU and now is in the Progressive unit. Soon, she hopes to be moved into a regular hospital room before being sent to Cardinal Hill Rehabilitation Center in Lexington. She will probably be home, we hope, around mid-December. When people ask me about Gail’s condition I am reluctant to dispense much information but I always tell people how determined she is and not a day has gone by where she has not been running Project Worth Outreach from her hospital bed. Because of the broken ribs the hospital staff put her on a ventilator to ease the pain of breathing. While on the ventilator she wrote notes with instructions on what she expected her staff to do even though she knew she had trained them well. After they removed the ventilator she demanded her cell phone so she could talk to her staff on a regular basis. I tell you the first phone call I received was about 9 o’clock the night they removed the ventilator. I was not aware of this action and her phone call took me by surprise. What a great feeling to actually hear her voice. What a truly remarkable strong woman Gail Mills is and she has done a lot for our community and I believe she will continue to do so. I don’t know much about EJ’s illness since it came on so quickly but I ask you to keep both Gail & EJ in your prayers.

The month has slowly but surely gotten cooler and damper but our reports show that our fall gardens are surviving fairly well so far. We have had reports that our gardens are producing turnips, kale and several varieties of greens. We hope they continue to survive until harvest time.

It is hard to believe that our next-to-last Grow Appalachia gardening report is due next Friday. This year has surely disappeared quickly. I guess, like the old saying goes, time sure does fly when you are having fun. Speaking for myself, I have really enjoyed this year even though there seemed to be obstacles popping up at every turn. I thoroughly enjoyed working with our gardeners, the Grow Appalachia staff, community partners and the Project Worth Outreach staff. I am looking forward to the possibility of doing this again next year. Next year will be my fourth year with Grow Appalachia Gardening and my passion for this program continues to be strong and my expectations grow every year.

Everyone have a great end of the year and a wonderful holiday season and we’ll talk soon.