Farm Fresh

I’ve always heard if you don’t use it you lose it and that would be an appropriate description of the biological propensity for farming I inherited from my ancestors. Although she mostly grows her vegetables in pots today, my mama can produce as fine of a garden as you will ever see. My Grandaddy Sam, her daddy, plowed behind a mule to grow what was needed to provide for his family, and he successfully did for decades. The only thing I can grow consistently is my waistline, which I’ve successfully done for decades. That being said, I have undertaken an ambitious goal. I’m going to make my own tomato sauce from tomatoes that I grow myself. True blue, farm to table, all natural, organic — and any other fancy label that makes the price go up that you want to attach to it — tomato sauce.

Maybe I need to back up a little further. I have always wanted to grow a garden. I can’t really say why, but I have. Maybe it’s a touch of nostalgia. Although we never had one when I was growing up, I did spend time for several Summers on Gunter Ridge helping harvest from the “garden” belonging to my great Uncle Thomas — is it still a garden if it is over an acre? Wouldn’t that be a small farm? I won’t pretend those were fond memories as they mostly involved being hot, dirty, itchy, and bored. My Big Mama used to put out a garden behind her house and I did love to sit on her front porch and break and shell beans while she told stories of her childhood. Once, when my boys were little, we put out one at my parents house on Chicken Creek because we felt like the boys “needed to learn.” I do remember fondly the spread of food we had one Saturday when everything was coming in and mama and Jade spent all day in the kitchen cooking it all. That was also the year mama and Jade and our good friend Lisa made homemade Mexican tomato sauce — you probably just call it salsa. Perhaps it's because I am a proud purveyor of all things Southern, and I guess I just feel I can’t really claim the label of authentic native son until I have earned my gardening merit badge.

Maybe I’ve gone back too far, let me start two years ago. With our boys grown up and moved away, Jade and I had a little more time to ourselves and decided we were going to plant a small garden in raised planters. During my time in Florida I had developed quite the green thumb, having successfully grown thorns, thistles, weeds, and sand spurs all around the house in both Summer and Winter. Seriously, those things are indestructible — weed eaters, weed killers, digging up root balls, nothing could stop those things. There were plenty of times I thought to myself, “Thanks a lot Adam!” (Genesis 3:17-19).

Seeing as how I obviously have a natural gift for growing, we decided to try something we could actually eat. I built us some boxes, Jade repurposed a rubber maid tub for a compost bin and…..that’s about as far as we got. There was a surgery and then her mother’s cancer returned, and as they say, life got in the way. We did get as far as putting top soil in the compost box and throwing all our organic scraps into it, but otherwise it sat untouched on a gardening table in the back yard for the next year. But then life happened. I don’t mean life got in the way. I mean life happened. Life sprang forth unplanned, untouched, and unexpected, but not unwanted.

One morning I noticed a little shoot of something green growing from one of those holes. Curious, I began to watch it each day as it grew bigger and bigger until one day I was able to discern its identity because of the appearance of an undeniable little yellow bloom. It was a tomato plant. Apparently we had tossed some left over Roma tomatoes into the compost box and a little seed, despite no attention from any human, and against all odds, did what God created it to do and began to grow. For a moment I thought about doing all sorts of things like watering it and adding fertilizer and pesticides, but ultimately I decided the Lord had given and if He saw fit He would take away. This little tomato plant had done just fine without my help and so I decided to stay out of the way, well, almost. I did at least turn the box where the rain water could fall on it. God planted, God watered, and God gave the increase. The next few months were filled with an almost embarrassing amount of joy as I cheered on this little plant that could, watching it grow and grow, climbing up plant stands and across a little fence. The day I saw my first tomato it was all I could do not to run around the neighborhood sharing the good news like a man who just found out he was going to be daddy. The day i picked my first ripe, red, juicy tomato I was nearly as overwhelmed as the day I had my first child. Like Jonah from the Bible, I did nothing to make it grow, or help it along, and I was saddened when it was time for it to go. I know it’s silly, and there are far more important things to worry about, but for months I counted it as one of my blessings, or as I’ve come to think of it, as one of God’s little graces that He places in our path each day to sustain us on our journey.

Ok, back to the future. I had a bit of deja vu when we first got settled here in the Pleasant Valley. As I walked around the property I came across two pear trees — partridge not included — and a plum tree. The pear trees are covered in little green fruits, just beginning to form, and the once purple flowered plum is now loaded with little fuzzy plums. I know less about fruit trees than I do tomato plants, but walking out and checking on those forming fruits has become a daily ritual.

Somewhere between an unplanned tomato plant and pleasantly surprising pears, we decided to put out a true blue, bonafide, real garden. With a little help from one of our benevolent bishops, we now have a nice plot of freshly turned Alabama earth eagerly awaiting seeds. I have no doubt that we will have good time planting squash, okra, peppers, beans, corn, potatoes, tomato plants, and cucumbers — did I mention I’m going to make my own pickles too? I just started eating pickles about three months ago and man those things are good. I also have no doubt that there will be times I grumble and gripe about how hot it is, or how my okra’s not making, and that the only thing I seem to be growing is weeds, but that is all part of the process, and that is all part of life.

The most commonly used metaphors for life used in Scripture revolve around agriculture. Think about it for a second: the Bible starts and ends in a garden, we’ve got parables about seeds, planting, and harvesting, cursed fig trees, God regularly refers to Himself as a husbandman — which is just King James English for farmer — and He considers His people His vineyard. There are a plethora of passages to choose from to illustrate this, but I want to share with you my three favorites.

When the exiled Israelites were finally allowed to come back home, Isaiah promised that they would be able to “take root downward and bear fruit upward” (Isaiah 37:31). I find a calming kinship with that passage, though it wasn’t really addressed to me or my situation. Home is a complicated concept for me. Wherever we have lived we have worked hard to make it home, but at the same time, my true home will always be the Tennessee Valley, “no matter where I lay my head” — to borrow a line from the Sand Mountain boys. As such, I spent the better part of a decade in a self imposed exile from my home, with faith that in His own good time, the Husbandman would plant me here again, and He did. Now I’m focusing on growing roots and bearing fruits.

What are those fruits? That’s where my second favorite planting passage comes from. Paul explains that those who walk in the Spirit produce the sweetest fruits. “Now the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22-23).

Am I bearing those fruits? This is where my final favorite planting passage becomes important. The Husbandman works in us to cultivate fruit, but sometimes there are pests, diseases, and dead limbs that have to be addressed first. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit” (John 15:1-2). An unhealthy plant/tree/vine won’t produce good fruit, so He gets down in the dirt with us to root out the weeds, kill the pests and heal the diseases of the heart. That was the whole point of the “incarnation” (God in flesh). God descend from His lofty and holy existence and humbled Himself to take on flesh, so that He could get His hands dirty through sweat and hunger and thirst and fear and loneliness and exhaustion and pain and suffering and death. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

He went to the earth and became like us so that we could ascend to the heavens and be made like Him. “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body…so it is with the resurrection of the dead…The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:36-38, 42, 47-49). Like all of mankind, He was planted in the earth, dead and buried, and yet, like a seed that dies only to burst forth with new fruit bearing life, He was resurrected so that we could be too.

Right now this quarantine has left us feeling like we are planted in a pot instead of a garden, but that’s ok. Maybe our faith or our hearts aren’t healthy and they need a little extra time and attention in the Husbandman’s green house. Perhaps we need to be separated for a season so that the diseases and pests that plague our faith, souls, and churches can be eradicated, leaving us healthier and better able to bear much fruit. In His own time the Husbandman will transplant us back into His vineyard together. Until then, do what God created you to do and grow where you are planted.