By Lukie Pieterse, Potato News Today
This feature is part of Potato News Today’s Potato People with Big Hearts series, highlighting growers and communities who use potatoes to support people in need.
In the small Manitoba community of Pansy in Canada, a retired farming couple has quietly turned three acres of soil into a living answer to hunger, history and hope.
Melvin (Mel) Kachur, 79, and his wife Helen call their project the Garden of Eden – a labour of love that has rapidly become one of the most prolific sources of fresh vegetables, especially potatoes, for food banks and community organisations across southeastern Manitoba.
In October this year, Mel pledged to donate at least 1,000 pounds of potatoes to South East Helping Hands, the Steinbach-based food bank that serves families across the region. Standing outside a local supermarket with a cheque in hand, he summed up his motivation in simple terms: it feels right to help people and, in his words, to “help God feed his people”.
That pledge is just the latest chapter in a story that began when he retired as a federal meat inspector and suddenly found himself, as he put it, with “a lot of time on my hands”. Watching the steady rise in demand at local food banks, he decided to put his energy, land and horticultural know-how to work.
Fighting hunger with three acres and a community of helpers
The Kachurs’ Garden of Eden started in 2023 on a three-acre parcel of land near Pansy. What began as an experiment quickly became a mission. The first year produced a bumper crop, and it did not take long to realise that food banks and soup kitchens in the region could use everything they were able to grow.
Potatoes are at the heart of the project. They are the largest single harvest from the Garden of Eden and the crop most in demand from partner organisations. Alongside the potatoes, the garden now produces almost every vegetable one might expect to see in a prairie backyard: corn, carrots, onions and a long list of other staples.
To keep up with demand, Mel has steadily expanded the growing capacity. In the second season, the Garden of Eden added roughly 500 feet of raised beds – four feet wide, providing about 2,000 square feet of extra growing space that is easier for volunteers to work. Even with that expansion, he reports that demand still exceeds what they can supply.
The work is too much for one couple alone. Last summer, around ten families helped with planting, weeding and harvesting. Volunteers are welcome throughout the season, and Mel is open about the fact that both extra hands and financial support are always appreciated as the operation grows.
From the Manitoba legislature to local soup kitchens
The scale and spirit of the Garden of Eden have not gone unnoticed. In December 2024, Mel and Helen were invited to the Manitoba legislature in Winnipeg, where La Verendrye MLA Konrad Narth publicly recognised their efforts.
In his statement to colleagues, he described them as a retired farming couple who have made it their mission to fight hunger, noting the thousands of pounds of produce their garden has already provided to organisations such as Grunthal MCC, Steinbach Family Resource Centre, Soup’s On, South East Helping Hands and Agape House.
The garden’s impact stretches beyond Canada’s borders. Early in the project, sales of some of the produce enabled the Kachurs to donate thousands of dollars to an orphanage in Ukraine and to support the settlement of Ukrainian refugees in Manitoba – a link that runs directly through Mel’s own family story.
He has spoken publicly about his Ukrainian ancestors’ suffering during the Holodomor, the state-engineered famine of 1932–33 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The memory of those potato famines is one of the reasons he feels compelled to grow and donate potatoes today. For him, turning his land into a steady source of food for others is both a response to present-day need and a quiet act of remembrance.
Seed potatoes, bedding plants and a network of quiet supporters
Although the Garden of Eden is very much Mel and Helen’s vision, they are not doing it alone. Local and regional agribusinesses now contribute seed, plants and inputs:
- Seed potatoes from companies such as Kroeker Farms and Peavey Mart,
- Corn seed from Marc Hutlet Seeds,
- Vegetable seeds from firms like McKenzie Seeds and T&T Seeds,
- Bedding plants from greenhouses in Winkler and Steinbach,
- Fertiliser from the local co-op.
“Everybody wants to help,” Mel has said, noting that the mission of fighting hunger resonates strongly with both individuals and businesses in the region. The result is a tight web of contribution: one couple’s idea amplified by neighbours, companies and volunteers into a steady stream of food for families who need it.
Potatoes as the simplest way to say “you matter”
For all the logistics, the concept remains disarmingly simple. Potatoes are, in Mel’s view, one of the easiest crops to grow and one of the most universally appreciated foods on the plate – hash browns, fries, mashed potatoes, soups and stews. When he invites community members to help dig the crop each autumn, the harvest is both a social event and a shared act of solidarity with people they may never meet.
The practical challenges are real. For South East Helping Hands, finding storage space and managing the turnover of 1,000 pounds of potatoes within the limits of a single cooler is no small task. Some of the donated potatoes are likely to be shared with neighbouring food banks to make sure they are used in time.
But from Mel’s perspective, those are good problems to have. The point is to keep food moving from rows in the field to plates at the table.
Asked about the future of the Garden of Eden, he has said he wants to make it “bigger and better” each year, learning as he goes how to make the operation run more smoothly while staying true to its original purpose.
Why Mel and Helen belong among the Potato People with Big Hearts
In many ways, Mel and Helen Kachur are exactly the kind of people the new Potato People with Big Hearts section on Potato News Today seeks to recognise.
They have taken what they already had – a few acres of land, a lifetime of horticultural knowledge, community roots and a deep sense of historical memory – and turned it into a flow of potatoes and other vegetables for food banks, soup kitchens, shelters and refugee families.
There is no big foundation behind them, no marketing campaign. Just a garden, a network of supporters, and a determination that no-one in their orbit should go hungry if they can help it.
As this new series unfolds, their Garden of Eden offers a simple but powerful starting point: a reminder that in the potato world, some of the most important work does not happen in boardrooms or conference halls, but in places where soil is turned, tubers are lifted by hand, and quiet decisions are made to give away what could have been kept.
If you know of other individuals or groups who, like the Kachurs, are using potatoes to support vulnerable families and communities, I would be glad to hear from you – so that their stories, too, can be told. Please email me on lukie@potatonewstoday.com with details.
Author: Lukie Pieterse, Potato News Today
Contact: Melvin Kachur on melvinkachur9397@gmail.com
Cover image: Melvin Kachur and his wife Helen. Credit Darci Wilkinson, SteinbachOnline.com. Read Darci’s article here