Been spending a lot of time in the garden this fall. This is ever a source of comfort and peace, the dirty fingernails, muddy toes and knees, and the smell of fish meal that can only be removed from your hands after three washings. Also the salads with radish, lettuce, and tomatoes freshly picked. Even the struggles against tomato flea beetles and squash vine borers (not to mention the opossums which have consumed two chickens) have given me joy in the challenge. Our house has been doing a lot of dreaming lately about our future in agriculture and the spiritual necessity we have to stay connected to our food and to the earth. I have hopes and excitement.


Found this in the Mennonite hymnal at church this week:

God, whose farm is all creation, take the gratitude we give.
Take the finest of our harvest, crops we grow that all may live.
Take our plowing, seeding, reaping, hopes and fears of sun and rain,
All our thinking, planning, waiting, ripened in this fruit and grain.
All our labor, all our watching, all our calendar of care
in these crops of your creation, take, O God; they are our prayer.




Justin's here.
and it is very good.





shalom