How to live on a farm

First get some hens 

and then 

add a hive a bees 

and make a garden with peppers and beans 

and plant some flowers. 

And then spend hours 

weeding. 

Feed the goats

and the horse, of course.

Sow some sunflowers 

for the bees. 

After the peas 

are picked 

plant some pink and purple corn 

and spend the morn 

mourning over the deer damage. 

Pull up the root 

vegetables – carrots, turnips, radish— 

and watch the shoots 

of nut grass take their place. 

And when it is hot, hot, hot 

absolutely do not 

venture past the porch, 

with a cool drink 

and time to think 

of getting ready for winter. 

Retreat to the kitchen 

and pickle and jam and can 

all that you can. 

And rejoice in abundant life: 

the earth rife 

and ripe with all that is needed…. 

even when it is not weeded!

 

Connectedness

The Overstory was part of my summer reading. It is an epic tale about …trees: all their parts from root and seed to crown, their impact on people, their tenuous place in our world. It is a story of activism and engagement, love and loss, life and death. Above all, I think, it is a story of connectedness – how the trees are connected to one another and how humans are connected to trees and each other. 

Just as I finished the book, I read a news article about staghorn ferns. The ferns connect and communicate with each other, fulfilling different functions depending on where they are located on the trunk of the tree. The ferns high on the tree have developed fronds that direct rainwater into the centers of the other plants; those lower down have spongy leaves that collect that water; and some of the ferns don’t reproduce at all but seem to exist just to store water for the rest. Researchers call this kind of collective behavior eusociality. It is usually seen in bees and ants, insects that live together in colonies and have developed sophisticated divisions of labor. Scientists are increasingly aware of interconnectedness in the natural world. Within and among species, the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Insects, ferns, and trees connect and communicate and protect themselves. 

Long ago, a poet-priest wrote this: 

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. 

We are not isolated; we are connected to all of life, all of nature. If a tree falls and dies, we are diminished somehow. And we are only beginning to understand our connectedness and how essential it is – for the trees, the ferns, the bees and the ants. And when they suffer, the bell tolls for us, too.

 

Smoke from a distant fire

There is a song from back in the day about betrayal and lost love with these lyrics: “Your eyes have a mist from the smoke of a distant fire.” I was thinking of that song when I was out weeding the garden. Our skies have been hazy this week, and the air this morning smelled faintly of smoke. Huge fires burning out of control in Oregon and other places west have generated smoke plumes that have travelled the width of the country, blown on easterly winds all the way to us. We are breathing the ashes of dead trees 3000 miles away. We are breathing the effects of climate change. Our eyes have the mist from the smoke of a distant fire, but those distant fires are not so distant after all.

 

Sunflowers!

The field of sunflowers has bloomed and faded. While they were in their glory, we cut great bunches of the sunflowers for the house and for church. And the bees were all over them! The conventional wisdom has been that sunflowers don’t have much to offer the bees, certainly not the nectar that they are seeking in these hot summer days. But research from NCSU shows that a diet of sunflower pollen can dramatically lower rates of certain infections that plague honeybees and bumble bees. The bees apparently don’t subscribe to conventional wisdom! They know instinctively what is healthy for them. And it was healthy for us, too, to have those cheerful blooms nearby.

 

Bounty!

Send out your bread upon the waters, 

for after many days you will get it back. 

Ecclesiastes 11:1 

My Daddy was a farmer. He loved the land; he loved growing things; he loved his neighbors. And few things made him happier than giving away his crops. He planted and watered and worried over his corn so he could give it away to others. He opened his field of peas to anyone who wanted to pick them. In his last years, the whole point of his farming was to share with others. 

And I am the recipient of his generosity. Almost every week this summer, one friend or another has arrived on my doorstep with something from their gardens: blueberries, blackberries, corn, squash, cucumbers, cantaloupe, watermelon, okra. We have had more than enough, and I have made jelly and jam and pickles. Now when someone arrives with bounty to share, I can share, too. Daddy cast his corn upon the neighbors, and after not so many days, it has come back to us!

A Party!

We had a small dinner party for the first time in a very long time.  It was lovely, and we started preparing for it far in advance of the date.  We invited some folks who didn’t know each other but we thought would have common interests.  We planned the menu, shopped, and prepped.  We cleaned the porch, arranged flowers, got out the silver and the crystal (to go with the pottery plates!).  When the evening arrived, we were ready to welcome our guests and celebrate being together.  We had a great time!

Our experience makes me think that worship ought to be like a dinner party – something we look forward to, plan and prepare for, a celebration of being together.  We might think about including new people, inviting those who don’t know each other to come together in fellowship.  And how wonderful it would be to make it special, to bring out all of our best – singing voices, generous offerings, fervent prayers – rather than treating the occasion as just another day.  

 

There is always the hope and possibility that worship will transcend the ordinary, that something wonderful will happen.  When we prepare ourselves, when we anticipate the holy, we are more likely to see how God is always present.  

 

And worship is not like a party that we give for God, but the reverse:  Worship is a grand feast that God has prepared for us.  Every Sunday we are invited to “taste and see that the Lord is good.”  Every Sunday we are welcomed to God’s great banquet, where the best of everything is waiting for us. Every. Single. Sunday!

More on Brooding

Miss Evelyn Glisson lived in a little house near our church.  She was the teacher of the Primary Sunday School class, which was first and second graders as I recall. Although it has been a very long time, I still remember one of the songs she taught us:

Over the ground is a mat of green;

Over the green, the dew;

Over the dew are the arching trees;

Over the trees, the blue.

Dotting the blue are the scudding clouds.

Over the clouds, the sun.

Over the sun is the love of God,

Brooding us every one.

 

I’ve never heard that song anywhere else, and I don’t know where she learned it.  I could remember the words because of the layered picture of creation.  And I love the hierarchy of love that it describes.    

 

Our Sunday School teacher had no children of her own, but I suppose we were her little brood.  And all those years ago, she taught us that we were God’s little brood, as well.  Thank you, Miss Glisson!

My Broody Hen

 

Chanel -- who was not broody but was willing to pose!

I’ve been keeping chickens for three years.  In that time, we’ve had dozens of eggs, endless amusement, and one broody hen.  There is no rooster in residence, and so there is no possibility of biddies.  But she did not know that.  She gathered her little clutch of eggs, one of her own and several from the other hens.  And she began to sit.  And sit.  And sit.  

 When a hen is sitting on fertile eggs, the eggs will hatch in about three weeks.  During that time, the hen rarely leaves the nest, even to eat and drink.  She sometimes plucks out her own chest feathers to cushion the nest.  By the time the eggs hatch, she has weakened and lost weight. 

 

A broody hen may sit indefinitely without intervention.  A hen can die if left to brood.  It is a powerful instinct, something that rises up in that bird’s brain and compels sacrifice in order to bring something new to life.  But we intervened, took her off the nest (she was not happy…), and separated her from the others in a crate for a couple of days. When I put her in the crate, she started drinking water and eating right away.  When she returned to the flock, she was her old self.  

 

I’ve been thinking about my broody hen.  In many folks, there is an instinct to bring newness to life, even if the act of doing so is costly.  We sacrifice; we go without; we keep at it.  But sometimes the new idea, service, program, whatever, will not hatch no matter what we do.  Not all that we nurture is fertile. Our instincts, powerful though they may be, are not always productive.  Not every instinct needs to be acted on.  Sometimes we need to get off the nest, have a little something to eat and drink, and rejoin our flock.  

 

It is also good to remember that in the beginning, when all was waste and wild, the Spirit of God brooded over the waters.  God moved over nothingness and called up life and breath and being.  The world was hatched under the infinite wings of the Spirit. And under those same wings, those covering feathers, I find refuge (Ps 91:4) and comfort and new life.  And I need not brood about anything!