Farm Update

So much happens every day at the farm I can hardly keep up. Here’s the short of it since the last update.

• I created some makeshift shade for our overheated chickens a while back with a tarp and some fence posts. Between the wind and chickens it has been hard to keep it up. Plans are in the works for a more permanent solution.
• Dr. Stroope came to teach a class on missiology. Very interesting to have that conversation with non-seminary types. Lots of good conversations.
• Finally got a handle on the education garden. Mulched four of the beds really well to prep for fall planting. Trying to get all the irrigation working. Making plans for the fall when students and new farmers will be working there.
• Finally started read Scripture, Culture and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible, and it is amazing.
• I attended a workshop for Waco ISD on pollinator gardens. It was primarily geared for teachers, but I got some free plants and good ideas for starting our own garden to attract pollinators and beneficial insects year round. (Side note: I also attempted my first dumpstered meal, but was totally unsuccessful. Apparently it is a skill that takes some practice.)
• Had an excellent class on plant diseases in which we learned how to make a horn out of a squash stem.
• Our friends have been dreaming about a bus that could be turned into a lean mean sustainability machine to educate the masses. The Want Not Wagon is one step closer to a reality now that they have acquired a real honest-to-goodness bus. Praise Je-bus

The thing I feel like I have learned lately is how little I know. I also feel like farmers often don’t know that much more than me. Mainly they’ve been experimenting longer and already made the mistakes I’m making. It’s both encouraging and discouraging to realize how little I know and how little anyone really knows about the mysteries of nature. That leads me to believe that good farming is a lot more about listening and looking, neither of which I do enough of yet.

Sounds a lot like the spiritual life. So much of the journey is recognizing how little you know and how little even the wisest of us knows. Living into that mystery is what really drives us forward. It also means that listening and looking to others is a lot more important than spouting what we think we know.