all i want in life is to be a farmer.

Here’s why, in the words of Gene Logsdon in his book The Contrary Farmer:

 

The garden is the only practical way for urban societies to come in close contact with the basic realities of life….To feel the searing heat as well as the comforting warmth of the sun, or to endure the dry wind as well as the soothing breeze; to pray for rain but not too much rain; to long for a spate of dry weather but not too long; to listen to the music of nature as well as the rock beat of human culture; to know that life depends on eating and being eaten; to accept the decay of death as the only way to achieve the resurrection of life…these are all part of an education that the industrial world hungers for but cannot name.

 

i do hunger for reality.  and for roots.  i want to buy a little place far away from the Grid, and buy nothing but oil.

i am alive.

i just had one of the best mornings that i’ve had maybe ever.  after my first work week (i loved it…feel a little like a fish out of water…but i think it’s going to be good), i got up this morning (since when did 7:00 am become “sleeping in”?  oh yeah.  this week.) and drove out to Johnson’s Backyard Garden, a local 120-member CSA, where i was going to do a work-share, which means i work and they share. 

produce, that is.  lots of veggies para mi.

 

as i picked little, stickery cucumbers off their vines, smelling the cantaloupes on the next row, i wondered, how have i lived without doing this? 

i love the dirt.

 

then i got to pick squash and zucchini.  (i want to open a restaurant called zucchini’s.  what do you think?)  then eggplant…  so beautiful.  like glossy purple jewels hanging thick on green and mauve plants.

 

then i rode a tractor!  will and jeff, two interns who work 6 am to 4 pm on the farm Monday-Saturday, recruited me to help them plant some little eggplant plants fresh out of the greenhouse.  i got to ride on the sweeeeeeeeeeeeetest tractor, called a transplanter, and drop little plants into the holes that the tractor poked into plastic and then filled with water.  it looked like this:

only i was where the guy in the picture is and jeff was where the girl is.  but it was so fun.  and i got to pick jeff’s brain about horticulture, agriculture, and austin culture.  good times.

 

then i got some amazing veggies i’m going to live on all week…squash, onions, cherub tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers…

 

and THEN i went to mandola’s with aunt chris and camille!  aunt chris treated me, even though i was dirty from working, and we ate eggplant-zucchini-goat cheese pizza and talked for two hours.  aaah.  thank you, Jesus.  for everything.

dave sliker is a genius.

Doing my work assignment, transcribing for Dave Sliker…I’m blown away every Friday morning.  He’s talking about Ham, Shem, and Japheth and the continual insistence of Israel [ie, Shem] to try to be like the other nations.  He shows how that evolves in the minor prophets, and my ears perked up when he started talking about agriculture. 

Check this out:

“[Israel was] benefiting in an economic way with trade that divorced them from agriculture, that got them into prosperity and got them into trouble.  They are divorced from an agricultural dependence on God; they come into a trade system that blesses them financially.  They divorce themselves from God.  They become fully apostate.  And they become almost fully indistinguishable from the other nations.” 

 In other words, farming is godly.  I knew it.

germinate.

I want to farm. 

I can’t help it. 

I want A farm. 

This season is just too much for me…everything coming up green, spring showers, warm sun again.  There’s something in my heart that can’t be content with urbanity.  I’m hungry for the soil.  I’m sick of pretty fingernails.  I miss puppy skin, warm eggs from the henhouse, the smell of a horse, Texas mud, big trucks, bluebonnets, mockingbirds. 

radical.

Reading through Paul’s letters to the churches—that Paul who was the least of the apostles but was called as a minister of the Gospel to make known the great grace also given to him—I am struck by the notable absence of direction concerning  things that take up real time. The battlefield is the mind and heart. It isn’t flesh and blood against which we war. There is little to no direction from Paul or any of the other writers of the New Testament about what we are to do. Their instructions are directed toward who we are to be.

All the exhortations and the high calling of our faith, all the promises and every mystery of God and godliness, can be and must be applied to any sector of society and every occupation within which we find ourselves, whether through our pursuit of God-given passions or the necessity and proactivity of our circumstances. A humanistic viewpoint might assert that we all have to spend our wearisome days doing something to keep us fed and clothed and respectable, and so we might as well do something we enjoy. That sounds a lot like Ecclesiastes, too. Find meaning in your work: but to do that you must kick it into gear yourself and get yours, because no one else cares. There isn’t anyone who’s going to promote you unless it’s you.

And then we encounter our Shepherd. We look up and find there’s a Lover inviting us to a banqueting table. Somehow, some way as we try to catch up with the story that seems like it’s many chapters ahead of us (and we’re dyslexic), the Storyteller Himself smiles up at us through an unlikely Word. He meets us at the kitchen sink, in a puddle of our own tears, or in the wishy-washiness of someone else’s heart breaking ours. He says, It’s okay. I’m here. That’s what He always says. I’ve got you now. I always have. With a Voice that sounds surprisingly like home, He calls our hearts and says, I made you. I delight in the way I made you. I don’t want you to be like this other person. Be you. Let Me love you. And love Me as yourself, fully yourself.

For example, I have a strange love of farming. I don’t know what to do with it. But I love it. For me, there is nothing like being outside under the blazing sun planting seeds, pulling weeds, watering by hand with an unruly hose, and pulling gorgeous, organic squash off the vine. There is no literature more delightful to me than landscaping books full of fresh ideas or books about new methods of bringing sustainable agriculture to Africa. I love the smell of a greenhouse.

I could try to convince my heart that this seed of joy must die and be pounded into the ground and I could go get a job as an accountant. And my friends with expensive accounting degrees that inexplicably love numbers and find the order of perfectly balanced books exhilarating could pound their gifts into the ground. They have to try hard not to shake their fingers at a harsh taskmaster that makes them go into the fields and live the simple life. But what is drudgery to them is almost-guilty pleasure to me.

On a more pointed note, I could try to convince myself that the spiritual, pleasing thing to do—the high calling—is to raise support and spend my days in an auditorium, praying ceaselessly and going into the depths of the unsearchable scripture. It seems so indisputable, that I would find favor with God if I gave up all my loves and personality and relationships to seek Him fulltime. I will do it, if He says it. There is an ache in my heart to be the heroine of my life, and if the heroine is an intercessory missionary, then that’s who I want to be. But, somehow, the more I get to know Him, the less I believe all the mantras I’ve heard so long about “giving up my life” to serve God. However all those preachers meant it, I interpreted this circumstantially.

What it means, I’m beginning to be convinced, is my flesh, my sin nature, and all that which is opposed to God. I have loved sin. I have hated what He loves. So have you. And our struggle is to die to that natural inclination and become vivaciously alive to the Spirit of God living inside us, working mightily within us to will and do His good pleasure. In that way, oh, how I want to give up my own ideas of life to serve this beautiful One who became the Servant of all! Then the radical lifestyle of prayer, fasting, giving, and serving becomes a flow, a true river springing from a pure heart. ‘Radical’ ceases to be boxed-in as a synonym for ‘full-time minister,’ whether that means youth pastor, intercessor, worship leader, or missionary. ‘Radical’ is defined by the interior life, the core beliefs of the heart and the communion with God that takes place where no one else has entrance.

a fist.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-ed-farmbill5nov05,1,572978.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

Seriously, this is important.

Read the article above. When I think about this situation, and the wealthy agribusiness investors who are getting paid by the government while smaller farms shrivel up and die, words kind of well up inside me and never make it out in an intelligable way. Ineffable–that is how I feel about the state of subsidized farming. And about the way it makes waves [toxic waves] all the way to Sierra Leone, Uruguay, and Mongolia. Toni Morrison, who I generally don’t quote, did express my feeling, though: it’s like a fist in my chest just waiting to release its forefinger like a skinning knife. Hey, she said it, not me.

The worst part is, this is one issue. A very big issue, but I’m sure you could tell me about the issue that makes you aware of a fist in your chest. Orphans, domestic violence, AIDS, illiteracy, economic development, loneliness, heartbreak, depression… It goes on and on. I just don’t understand how so many who have vast resources (i.e., most of America) can just watch it all go by. How do they watch it all go by? Why can’t I?