It Doesn't Happen Very Often in Virginia But All of Us Old Timers Know It Can

Virginia has always been not only my home but one of the more interesting states. Most people know Virginia as one of the most significant states of the confederacy where most of the major civil war battles were fought. Located south of the Mason-Dixon Line, Virginia is part of the southeastern quadrant of the United States—a land of extensive pine forests; paw-paw patches; tobacco and cotton fields; friendly if they know you, coon hunting, beer drinking, laid back country folk who speak with a funny “suthun akceeunt” ; and a place where the winters are-uh- usually mild. The western side of the state extends into the Appalachian mountain ranges and valleys where the elevation is a little higher and the climate a little colder than the rest of the south but generally not nearly as cold as way up “nawth wheyuh dem yaan-keees leeuv.”

Our winters are usually characterized by 3-5 inch slushy snows which melt off in a day or two or those wintry mixes of SS&FR (snow, sleet, and freezing rain) which come about once a week. Between this it is not that unusual to have short shirt sleeve days even in the middle of January.

Yet I remember hearing as a child stories told by older folks of snow so deep it was over the fences. Now that I am rapidly moving into that “older folk” category, I too can tell similar stories to my grandchildren. There was the “blizzard of March 6-7, 1962” when around three feet fell and paralyzed the Shenandoah Valley for a week. In 1966 we got a 14 incher on a Saturday, six more inches on Wednesday, and another foot the next Saturday plus a hard blow for the next two days which pretty much packed full the 5-6 foot deep trench created by the snow plows earlier in the week on the road through our farm. My dad and about four of my brothers spent a whole day with a medium sized tractor with a rear mounted blade and several grain scoops shoveling out the road so we could get a tanker truck in to pick up our overflowing milk. I still vividly remember the truck high snow banks scrubbing both sides of the truck as it squeezed through.

Since we have moved to Glen Eco Farm we have seen at least two 18 inch snowfalls and the most memorable 30 inches that marooned us in 1996. Christine was stranded in town for a couple of days that time and we ended up walking our recently acquired herd of about a dozen Hereford beef cows the ¾ mile down the road to the empty barn at the farm where we used to live because I couldn’t get hay to them at home.

After about five years in a row in which we hardly had a snowfall worthy of a good snowball fight, the winter of 09—10 has proved it’s mettle in cold weather and heavy snow. Early December brought us a nice six inch fall. On December 18-19 the “blizzard of 09” rolled through Virginia and left two feet at our place as Christine and I floated through the Louisiana bayous and strolled the beach on the Mississippi gulf coast. We came home to knuckle whitening cold for the next two weeks and a good melt off and a three inch rain with local flooding in mid January followed by two nice snows (six inch and four inch respectively) towards the end of the month. Then it happened again!

I was glad I respected the weather forecasts on Thursday February 4 as I pushed myself through the pain of Lyme disease to wrestle two large round bales up the steep snow covered hillside with my big tractor and after a lot of spinning and sliding, I finally managed to dump them into the hay feeder wagon parked along the edge of the woods on the upper side of the upper hayfield. This would give the cattle more than a week’s supply of hay and nearby shelter in the woods if another big snow comes.

All day Friday and Saturday it snowed—and snowed—and snowed! Boy was I ever glad I didn’t have to be out slogging around in a manurey barnyard, climbing silos, and milking cows. It was nice to have Bud Driver around to do some driveway scraping with the Ford tractor before the snow got too deep and to tend the chickens the farthest distance from the house. I did have to venture out to carry a few buckets of feed and water to the young chickens behind the greenhouse and to pull snow off the one standing hoop house. One of the church neighbors appeared Friday night and again on Saturday afternoon with his new Kubota 4WD tractor to open our driveway. I think he was having fun. A sensible estimate would be that we got a good two feet of new snow. Some people not too far from us claimed that we got 30 inches of course. I just know that when I walked out in it, it was up to my knees and my knees are a little higher than the average man’s.

It was awfully nice to be able to slip back into the house, stomp the snow off my boots, flop into the lazy boy recliner, flick on the floor lamp, read a nice nature book written by an Amish farmer with a passion for bird watching, and to watch the falling snow through the picture window.

Tonight I checked the weather forecast and another winter storm warning is up for Virginia. They are calling for up to another foot around here tomorrow and Wednesday.

Trotten Hard Cider at School

The last two stories I posted here were on the subject of illness. I have been wanting for some time to post some stories from my past and get away from this subject but somehow the theme of illness crept into this one too. However there were no doctors involved and telling it from the perspective of forty five years later gives it a considerably different spin. I hope the reader will enjoy reading this one as much or even more than I enjoyed writing it.

Every year as the days get shorter, the kids go back to school, the air gets that invigorating and nippy coolness commensurate of autumn in Virginia, and the harvest season begins its downward trek towards the dead and delightfully dreary doldrums of winter, my thoughts invariably go back to the days of my childhood when—sooner or later, Dad would gather up a half dozen or so glass gallon vinegar jugs or better yet, the old 20 gallon oaken vinegar barrel, and have them filled with fresh pressed apple cider at the local mill.

Apple cider in those days was not like the pasteurized and sometimes syrupy apple juice currently sold as cider since the USDA successfully instilled in the minds of the American public the fear that a little deer poop in the cider might make it lethal for little children. Deer poop or not, unpasteurized apple cider contains sufficient bacteria to give it that distinctive flavor that marks it as real cider several days to a week after it has been pressed. A real apple cider connoisseur will of course immediately recognize the superior taste of the fresh unpasteurized product and how a few days of aging will make it even better.

We were a large family of seven boys and one girl so it didn’t really take that long to put down five gallons or more of fresh apple cider before it “went too far”. “Went too far” of course, was that vague designation of cider that had either gotten to taste too much like vinegar or had developed enough alcohol content to “knock you on your butt” if you drank too much. We were a conservative Mennonite family which had grown up with the dictum that “a tablespoon of wine or rum used to flavor a fruitcake” was absolutely verboten! But somehow good Mennonite church going folks like us could get away with occasionally having a stash of slightly hard apple cider in the cellar or the back shed. It never really occurred to us that cider that had not been completely cleaned up in a week’s time and had gotten to that fizzy and yellower stage, most likely had an alcohol content equal to or greater than most beers. Never mind, frugality was enough a part of our culture that we must not throw it away. If the delightfully aged cider was in a glass jug we usually went ahead and drank it up. If it was in the barrel we would drink it as long as we thought it was safe and then leave the rest to go to vinegar. This was the stuff I really liked!

It was Halloween night in the year 1962. Most of us boys were into our teenage years and I was in the ninth grade. That was the year that Dad had decided to drag out the wooden keg which had been stored behind the kerosene tank in the cellar and have it filled with cider. As best as I can recall we had already gotten cider in glass jugs for drinking and his intention was to allow the cider in the barrel to go to vinegar. Unbeknownst to him sometime during the several years while the keg was in storage next to the kerosene tank someone had spilled some kerosene onto the keg while filling the tank. The kerosene had soaked into the wooden container and as the cider gracefully aged it acquired an interestedly different flavor.

I don’t know who had gone down to sample the cider but apparently they had noticed the off flavor and had brought the keg up from the cellar to the back porch. I do remember several of my brothers complaining about the funny taste and entertaining some discussion about whether or not we should consider throwing it out. I could taste a little kerosene but it wasn’t that bad. Otherwise the cider was at the perfect stage of fizz and bite and I didn’t really mind the extra flavor. So that evening as I did my algebra homework, I kept on going back to the back porch and getting myself another nip.

I crawled out of bed the next morning at the usual early hour of 5:30 AM and helped to do the chores of feeding and milking the 40 head of dairy cows. Then I came in and wolfed down the usual breakfast of two eggs and toast, three or four pancakes, and a big bowl of cereal washed down with another glass of my beloved cider, and dashed off to the school bus.

The first class of the day was in the woodworking shop, my favorite. I was at the wood lathe thoroughly engaged in transforming an old discarded bowling pin into a nice table lamp. I hardly noticed when sometime near to the end of the class period a little jab of pain shot somewhere down in my lower guts. Now farm boys usually don’t get excited about such things so I just went on to the next and least favorite class, Algebra I.

It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes after settling into the algebra class that a much stronger pain surged through my innards and reminded me that all of that cider I had been drinking might have something to do with it. When an even harder pain hit about five minutes later I stared at the minute hand on my watch (showing twenty minutes after ten) and realized that this thing just might get serious!

As I looked around the room I began to realize the predicament I was in. Being the shy boy that I was, I had always chosen the desk in the farthest corner of the classroom from the doorway to the hall, at the back of the room next to the windows. To make matters worse, the school had recently made this stupid rule requiring anyone needing to leave the classroom during a class session for any reason to secure a pass from the teacher in the form of a wooden paddle on a leather thong with the room number engraved on it. Upon granting permission to leave, the teacher was to give the student this paddle which was to be carried with him all of the time he was out of the classroom and returned when he came back.

As I contemplated the real possibility that I might have to make a dash for it before the end of the class, I realized that had I been smart enough to choose a desk near the door I could have been out and gone before anyone knew what was happening. Now I would have to run to the front of the room, and cross over by the teacher’s desk in front of the entire class in order to make it out the door. I wasn’t about to stop and explain to the teacher in front of all my friends why I needed to leave the room so urgently and to get that dumb paddle! So my only alternative was to scrunch and squirm and hope that I could hold it til the end of the class.

As the pains kept getting more frequent and stronger I bore down with ever more determination until that blessed bell finally rang and I was up and out of there like a rocket off a launch pad. I fled down the hall to the first boy’s room which seemed like about a football field’s length in distance, but the instant I opened the door I realized that luck was incredibly in my favor.

Right straight inside the door from the hallway was a row of toilet stalls. Some hoodlum had seen fit to rip off the privacy door to the toilet stall nearest to and facing the hall door. Evidently whoever had done this deed had thought it would be really cool to be able to enter from the hallway and to get a direct visual shot of someone on the loo as soon as they opened the door. Little did that hoodlum know that he had done this favor just for me. All I needed at that instant was the path of least resistance provided by that open stall. I was hardly through the hall door until my body was into a reverse spin and my pants were a falling. In the same nanosecond that my bare bottom touched the seat, what felt like a big wet cork the size of a baseball exploded from my nether end.

A minute or two later the hall door opened again and two guys came in and began lighting up cigarettes. One in particular swaggered in sort of an Elvis Presley like style directly in front of me as he held his weed between thumb and first two fingers with the last two fingers extended. He would glance at me occasionally out of the corner of his eye as I sat there totally involved in blowing out the rear and trying my best to ignore him. After about five minutes or so they finished their smoke and left. I remained on the pot, continuing to purge as long as I could, and finally as the bell rang signaling the beginning of the next class, I decided that it was now safe to get up and go. I sneaked into the next class, a little bit tardy but unnoticed.

Once more about ten minutes into the class period the pains returned with a vengeance and I found myself again surveying my emergency escape plan. I was in the same dire situation as before—sitting near the back of the classroom and in even deeper trouble. I knew that I had already blown the first plug and that the possibility of a really serious accident now loomed more eminent than ever! This was Miss Driver’s third period English class and she was really cranky about enforcing that room paddle thing! If I didn’t make it through this crisis there would be no way that I could ever live this thing down! Don’t ask me how I ever made it to the end of that class period! It had everything to do with a shy 14 year olds shear determination to avoid getting into an unimaginably embarrassing situation, no matter what.

The final bell rang and I shot out of the room again, this time deeply grateful that I was only a door or two up the hall from that wonderful boy’s room with the open fronted toilet stall that had served me so well less than an hour earlier. I made the much shorter dash and made the same landing on the same pot. About a minute later just as I was really “cutting loose” the hall door opened and right on cue my two smoking friends walked in again. The one who swaggered like Elvis stopped bold in his tracks, his mouth fell open, and with eyes as big as saucers, he stared straight at me and gasped. “Have you been setten thur since I was here last time? Gaw wood die-eee-yum! You mus reee—uuly have thuh sheee—yuts!”

The next period was lunch hour followed by home room study hall. I dared not eat lunch that day and I made darned sure that I knew exactly where the doors to the boy’s rooms were as I walked to the remainder of my classes. By now getting through the classes was not nearly as bad, but I did have to continue making “the dash” at the end of every class. By the time the final bell rang dismissing classes at the end of the day I made my last trek to the BR before getting on the bus. I was then good for the 45 minute bus ride home plus the quarter mile walk down the side road from the bus stop to our house before going inside and giving it my final shot for the day. By then I felt thoroughly cleaned out and I couldn’t resist getting off the stool and peering into the bowl. What I saw there looked a lot like what one would have blown out his nose with an average cold. I knew that I was on the road to healing.

I never remembered what was done with the remainder of that kerosene tainted apple cider.

End of Year 2009 to Family and Friends (Jan 4, 2010)

This past year has been an unusual one filled with a mixture of good and bad news, joy and pain, anticipation and disappointment. I will begin by sharing the positive things first, then the bad things. I feel badly about writing about the pain but it was a big part of my life this past year and can’t be simply passed over and ignored. Hopefully out of the difficulties will come blessings which will touch others and spare them some of what I have been through?

Despite periods of drought and one late freeze the market gardens produced bountifully except for a few of the minor crops.

We successfully grew three good crops in succession in one 690 square foot high tunnel (unheated greenhouse structure). I transplanted a variety of lettuces into the tunnel in mid March and had good quantities of top quality lettuce at the market by mid April. I had seeded carrots between the lettuce rows as they were transplanted and there was a wonderful crop of carrots coming out by mid June. The middle row of carrots on each side was harvested first and that space was immediately filled in with late started tomato plants which yielded most of their crop in October and even a little into November.















Normally the open field tomato crop is finished by late September. Considering that the area covered by the high tunnel was not large, (enough to park four average sized cars bumper to bumper) that translated into a tremendous amount of production per unit of area.



In 2009 I made good on my promise to try grafting of tomato plants and was partially successful. The grafts that took went into the high tunnel between the carrot plants in mid June and granted me bragging rights on good quality heirloom tomatoes at the market in mid October.

We were blessed this year by the presence of a top notch intern (a college friend of our son Hans) who supplied bounteously the energy that I didn’t have for working the farm. He even tackled (and finished) during the fall, the stone veneer job on the basement walls of the house, including putting down the slate on the south end patio. He also gets the credit for procuring a couple of borrowed incubators and hatching a batch of chicks which are now growing in the garage.



Both the blackberry and raspberry crops produced exceedingly well thanks to relatively dry weather during their bearing seasons and functional drip irrigation. Also the muskmelons ripened during the dry weather and, thanks to the walk in refrigerator, were mostly successfully marketed. The ones that over ripened or didn’t quite make the cut were either turned into nice orange yoked eggs or deposited into the neighbor’s mailboxes. Those who thanked me graciously for the first one, got one or two more.

We didn’t flub on winter squash this year and (believe it or not) the cauliflower--which did not look as good coming out of the greenhouse as last year’s crop--and then socked into the rows of a weak stand of edamame soybeans, still came through and produced a decent crop. We started getting rain after the cauliflower plants were in and soybean seed which had not germinated during the previous month of dry weather came up and nearly choked out much of the cauliflower. Fortunately we were able to harvest out enough of the earlier germinated beans in time to keep the cauliflower going. A little later we landed a deal with a newly opening white cloth restaurant in town to buy a regular supply of fall cauliflower, broccoli, potatoes, winter squash, Chinese cabbage, Japanese turnips, mizuna, and arugula through December.

Now for the bad news!

After a full year of alternating persistent and acute suffering, beginning with dizzy spells, panic attacks, extreme fatigue, and chest pain--progressing to peripheral nerve pain--and then going on to wide spread muscle pain, weakness, and cramping accompanied by frequent headaches, I was clinically diagnosed with chronic late stage Lyme disease by a Lyme literate doctor in Rockville MD on December 29, 2009.

I now realize that the illness had most likely begun with mild symptoms several years ago and had begun to get more serious by December of last year when I first presented for medical consultation. There followed several trips to the local hospital ER and a three day hospitalization in mid February. All of the heart diagnostics offered by the hospital, several chest X-rays, a CT scan, brain MRI, two brain EEGs, and two pulmonary function tests, along with several urine and blood tests were done throughout the year. In August a hair sample test revealed evidence of heavy metal toxicity and I underwent 12 weeks of EDTA chelation therapy treatments. I saw a string of specialists including an internal medicine specialist, a heart specialist, an allergist, a pulmonary specialist, and two neurologists, all of whom could make no specific diagnosis and tried me on a variety of drugs intended for symptomatic relief. None of them worked with significant effect.

The MRI (done in March) was the only test done which revealed possibly significant abnormalities (scattered bright spots in the brain) and the report included a prompt to evaluate for possible multiple sclerosis or Lyme disease. The first neurologist denied MS and ordered a basic blood test for Lyme. When that test came back negative I believed him and trusted his declaration that Lyme could be ruled out on the basis of the test results. Seven suffering months later I read a magazine article about several persons’ experience struggling with Lyme and learned that standard blood tests for Lyme usually come back negative for persons who have had Lyme for an extended time and do not serve as a reliable diagnostic tool. It was at this point that I suggested to my primary care physician that it might be necessary to revisit the Lyme disease issue. A follow up search in the following weeks on numerous internet sites relating to Lyme disease, plus an opportunity to briefly pick the brain of one doctor outside of a consultation, supported the ideas that there are few if any accurate diagnostic lab tests for Lyme and that there is an apparent scarcity of doctors (including specialists) who are truly knowledgeable about the diagnosis and treatment of this complex disease once it has gone beyond the early stages. My primary care doctor supplied me with a reference to the doctor in Maryland who saw me last week. That doctor has ordered expanded tests not only for Lyme disease but also for several other infective bacteria known to be transmitted by the tick that transmits Lyme, and for various other specific blood chemistries affected by Lyme. In the event that these tests should fail to nail down the diagnosis, he will then fall back on the initial clinical diagnosis based on my symptoms and my response to treatment which has already been initiated. My prognosis at this point is fairly hopeful but the process of recovery will probably involve several years of treatment and will be expensive.

Neither I nor anyone else should ever have to go through the kind of suffering I have endured for the past year because there seems to be no doctors in this area who know about or are even interested in learning about the proper procedure for diagnosing and treating Lyme disease. There is mounting evidence that with deer populations (and the ticks that infect them) increasing in populated areas all over this country and the world, that Lyme disease has the potential of becoming a major pandemic. There needs to be increasing awareness of this problem both within the public and the medical sphere. I feel a strong need to work at channeling my anger at the existing local medical establishment towards connecting with others who may be affected by or who are already struggling with this illness by forming a local Lyme disease support group which can spread public awareness and perhaps work in a more positive way to attract Lyme literate doctors to our area or even to encourage doctors who are already here to learn more about this illness. I hope to be able in the coming months to get my story well enough written to have it published in the local newspaper. I purposely desire to avoid lashing out at the doctors or the system which so grossly underserved me.

I now depart from farther writing about this unsavory subject to share the news that in December Christine and I traveled as far west as central Texas to visit friends and her sister and husband near the city of Waco. On the way we toured an Appalachian folk art museum and visited a dulcimer shop near Ashville, NC. On the return we passed through southern Louisiana to enjoy a boat ride in the bayou swamps and to taste some Cajon food, then on to the Mississippi gulf coast to the areas struck by hurricane Katrina several years ago. About this time we got the exciting news that our neighbors were digging out of more than two feet of snow at home. We returned through Alabama and Georgia to visit a few more of Christine’s relatives before getting home on Christmas Eve. We had talked of going as far as Arizona to visit the Grand Canyon and relatives in that state, but gave it up when things worked out for the doctor appointment in MD on the 29th. I didn’t feel comfortable for much of the trip but I tried to make the best of it.

I cannot honestly say that I had a very merry Christmas as I spent much of that day lying around the house in deep pain. However, that is OK for I am thankful to be alive, that there are family and friends who support me, that it does not appear to be something really serious like cancer, MS, or ALS, and that there is hope for recovery. My journey through illness in 2009 has been like getting lost in the wilderness. After following several trails which lead nowhere, one finally finds what appears to be the right trail. He is still in the woods, and the trail out may be steep, rough, and long, but knowing that this one may eventually get him out, keeps him going.

We look forward to the coming year with anticipation. Our son Hans will be coming home in March from two years of living and working in Paraquay. I’m sure he has grown a lot through this experience and both of us are delighted that he has expressed some interest in helping us to run the farm, at least for awhile. I for one intend to bend over backwards to make room for him to work with us comfortably and to become actively involved in management and decision making. There will most likely be some serious talk about how to go about arranging for a smooth and successful transition of the farm management and ownership from us to him (or another person). This is both exciting and a little scary at the same time.

When one begins to peel away the layers of silliness, superficiality, triteness, overindulgence, and crass materialism surrounding the way so many celebrate Christmas, he eventually gets down to that wonderful story of a not really high class couple who traveled over a long distance into a crowded city to attend civic duty. Mary arrived in Bethlehem very fatigued and in much pain with a baby soon to be born. The prospect of even finding a place to lie down looked bleak. But God was behind that scenario and out of it all came songs of angels and a King who offers us forgiveness and the hope of eternal salvation.

May God take care of all of you in 2010.
Marlin


PS. I have just learned that there is a Lyme disease support group in our area and I plan to begin attending their monthly meetings this coming Saturday.

How Could I Have Been So Sick When the Tests showed I Was So Healthy?

The story I am about to write is one that almost didn’t get written! It is a story about illness. I do not like illness! I do not like to hear about illness! I do not like to talk about illness! I do not like to read about illness! And most of all I do not like to write about illness! The only reason I am trying to write now is that I have heard from a few people that have told me that I need to write about my recent struggles with environmental illness. It will be an excruciatingly painful and difficult task. I hope the pretty picture serves to diffuse somewhat the pain of what I am about to write.

What is environmental illness? Environmental Illness (EI) is a multifaceted illness characterized by a long list of symptoms affecting multiple body organs and systems. Triggers for EI are almost too many to count including a broad diversity of mycotoxigenic molds, plant pollens, animal danders, and other airborne dusts normally associated with common allergies, and the inexhaustible list of synthetic and toxic manmade chemicals which permeate our modern world. These things are found in the walls and floors of the buildings where we live and work, in the upholstery of our furniture, in the clothes we wear, in the air we breathe, and in the food we eat and drink. Many people slather copious amounts of toxic substances on their bodies and in their hair to mask odors, and they swallow toxic drugs to ease their pain. More toxic substances are used in our germ fearful culture to sanitize our surroundings. Toxic volatile chemicals emanate from the machines we work with and the vehicles we ride in. Little research has been done to effectively evaluate the impact of frequent and multiple long term low level toxic exposures on human health.

One of the most frustrating aspects of environmental illness is its diffuse nature: multiple symptoms which can vary tremendously from person to person and from time to time, and an often nebulous sense of what the triggers are and where they are coming from. The more common symptoms themselves—fatigue, dizziness, weakness, depression, anxiety, an indefinable sense of “just feeling bad” can apply to a broad range of illnesses and, of themselves, do not lead to a definitive diagnosis. Batteries of diagnostic tests can be done on persons suffering from environmental illness which show no or little evidence of organic disease. Therefore there are few doctors, who are knowledgeable of or interested in environmental illness and, on the basis of their medical training, are inclined to write off such cases as persons who are suffering from a psychosomatic illness and are in need of psychiatric treatment. Believe me! I have 20 years of experience with environmental illness under my belt and I am not about to believe any doctor who tries to convince me that I am merely mentally ill!

According to recent estimates, up to 15% of the American population could be suffering from some forms of environmental illness. Following is a list of frequently misdiagnosed illnesses which can be linked to environmental exposures:

Allergies of all sorts
Arthritis
Anxiety
ADHD
Asthma
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Clinical Depression
Cold extremities
Diabetes
Emotional instability
Fainting and(or) dizziness
Fibromyalgia
Headache
Heart arrhythmias and (or) tachycardia
High blood pressure
Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Indigestion
Frequent colds and flu
Lyme disease
Memory loss, confusion, inability to concentrate
Panic Disorder
Respiratory distress
Recurrent infections
Post Menstrual Syndrome
Reactive Hypoglycemia
Sleep disorders
Zoloft deficiency

I have tried to be fairly accurate with my listing of these illnesses which can be linked to EI but recognize that some of this information could be challenged as I recognize that I am not a medical expert. I have personally experienced many of these conditions and been misdiagnosed and medicated for some of them. My heart goes out to the thousands of persons who are, as I write this, being treated symptomatically for illnesses or conditions which could be resolved if the roots of their environmental exposures could be recognized and properly dealt with. This is my real reason for undertaking this difficult writing.

I will now summarize as briefly as I can my past and more recent journey through environmental illness.

Beginning in the early 1980s and continuing into the 1990s I suffered through several acute episodes of mold induced hypersensitivity pneumonitis and later chronic mold and chemical sensitivities which culminated in a four day hospitalization in late 1991 and my decision to liquidate a dairy farming operation.

In the years since 1991 I have repeatedly developed chronic mold and later chemical sensitivities during the winter hay feeding months resulting in respiratory discomfort and chronic fatigue symptoms. I have tied to resolve this by becoming more vigilant about wearing breathing protection while handling hay..

In the past month I experienced a three day hospitalization following several weeks of daily episodes of extreme weakness and fatigue, dizziness, respiratory distress, and sensations of shock radiating throughout my body. I suffered intensely through this time and experienced days of near total disability. The reasons for the several trips to the hospital emergency room and several days admission was to check out possible heart related problems. Most of these tests were negative or revealed minor abnormalities. We think that I may have experienced significant mold and bird dust exposure during the month of January while daily tending a small flock of chickens in an out building and some chemical exposure while repairing and refinishing a few pieces of small furniture. Though I thought I was using adequate breathing protection while feeding hay to livestock, this may need to be evaluated also. I am currently undergoing follow up diagnosis and treatment with a new doctor who seems to have a much more open attitude towards my illness and a desire to get to the root of the problem.

I am deeply grateful that medical tests done so far reveal that there is as yet no evidence of serious damage to my heart and lungs and that there is good hope that the neurological symptoms, as intensively distressful and frightening as they were, will resolve as my body heals. I am also grateful for the quality care given to me during the hospital stay and the financial assistance given by the hospital to defray some of my expenses. Things could be a lot worse.

Five Reasons Why I Garden

Every once in a while I come across something someone has written that expresses my passions and philosophy more eloquently than I can ever hope to articulate here. Therefore I feel that it must be shared on this blog. The author of this essay was one of my farm subscribers last year who worked for part of her CSA share. One of the joys of operating a CSA farm is the realization of the truth that my farm and my business belongs, not just to us, but also to those who become actively involved, either as work share participants on the farm, or as volunteer help with the annual CSA organization process. Something similar can also be said on behalf of those who support our farm in other ways with their patronage. Without their contribution, the successful operation of this farm would probably be impossible. When I include the thoughts and words of others as a part of my blog, the blog becomes not just mine but theirs also. I like to think that when I include their contributions, the blog becomes that much the better than it would be if I was trying to do it all myself.

Five Reasons Why I Garden
by Anna Maria Johnson

I am not a gardening expert. I am, in all honesty, a fairly lousy gardener! But I do work at it, and if my actual garden fails to measure up to the orderly, weed free, and well mulched cornucopia of abundance imagined in my head, there is probably a good lesson in there somewhere.



Here are five good reasons to garden.

Peaceful Protest:
Gardening is a peaceful protest—my response to all that is ugly in the world; all that is cheap, easy, and gas guzzling; all that comes wrapped up in plastic after being shipped 3000 miles across the planet; all that causes cancer, social injustice, and oppression.

I am powerless to end these things myself on a global scale, but when I set my shovel down on my small plot of earth, I declare, “In God’s name, not here! Not in my back yard!”

Hope:
Gardening keeps me hoping. It often delivers on its promises, such as the summer when our Tarahumara sunflowers reached mythological heights. In autumn we feasted on squashes and late harvested vegetables, and during the winter my fifteen quarts of salsa nourished us and warmed our tongues.

Groundedness:
Gardening is, by its nature, grounding. There is nothing like physical work with our hands to bring comfort in times of disappointment. Anger can be a force for good, giving my measly 103 pound frame an extra punch as I throw my weight upon my shovel and churn up the dirt.

Digging is hard. After a couple of hours, dirty, sweat-soaked, and stinky, I feel cleansed. I ache with a good kind of ache.

Wonder:
To grow a garden is to marvel at creation. I drop tiny brown wrinkled things into the ground and every time I feel surprised when something eventually sprouts. I get so excited that I call my children and point to the tiny dicot leaves.

“Look, our food is growing!” I say.

We stoop down to admire its tiny new life, its persistence, its goodness.

Love:
Finally and most importantly, I garden for love. I love digging and the smell of rich earth. I get a kick out of compost—nothing wasted, just re-allocated, renewed, and regenerated. No death is so great that it cannot serve yet another life, another body. I am forgiven for letting those vegetables sit in the fridge until they rotted. Worms, soil, and detritus work together to make yummy vegetables and beautiful flowers. Gardening makes me strong, healthy, and whole. It is a relationship of reciprocity—I feed the garden and the garden feeds me. The food that the garden gives to me is physical, tangible, and tasty but it is also spiritual.

Gardening helps me to love God, who becomes less of an abstract theological construct and more the Surprising, Creating, and Sustaining force that I really do believe in.

The fruits of the garden nourish those I love—family, house guests, neighbors, and friends. Eating home-grown produce together is love in tangible form.

Anna Maria Johnson lives and gardens with her family near Broadway, Virginia.

What Does It Feel Like to be an Old Man?

A few weeks ago I quietly joined the ranks of that segment of our population identified by a variety of monikers—senior citizens, the elderly, old folks, geezers, etc by passing my 60th birthday. I remember when my dad had his 60th birthday roughly 30 years ago. One evening as I was milking the cows I answered the phone to find one of my aunts on the other end. Expecting my dad to answer, she yelled brusquely into the phone, “How does it feel to be an old man?” My dad had a gravelly voice which I could have easily faked and I have always regretted not playing along with her a little and having some fun.

Sometimes I like to reflect back on my life journey. When I entered first grade at the age of six I began to think of myself as a “big boy”. Seven years later I became a “teenager” and that coincided closely with entering high school. I missed the next common rite of passage of most teenagers—“getting their beer license”, as I didn’t start drinking at the age of 18. I didn’t have my first date until past 20 and somehow never thought of that as a significant marker of transition in my life as some of my peers were already married and having children. I did become aware, however, that somewhere in the distant future I would hit the age of 30 and become a hopelessly old fogy. I married at 28 and of course I saw that as a very major life changing event. The same also goes for my becoming a father two years later. I had just passed 30 then and no, I did not yet feel like an old fogy. The next ten years flew by ever so quickly and there I was looking at the big “four oh”, the boundary line in life (or perhaps the top of the mountain) where one crosses over from youth into middle age! From then on, the sages say, “It is all downhill!”

It did indeed feel like my life started going downhill as I entered the 40s seeking physical therapy treatment for chronic back problems and, a few years later, I began a gradual descent into a vaguely defined environmental illness which expressed itself in a manner similar to chronic fatigue syndrome. Fortunately, as one grows older and his physical capacities begin to wane, another force, the accumulation of hard won wisdom, is kicking in and that helps to level out the descent. By that time I had learned that I was strong enough to injure myself, that it really is a good idea to eat healthy foods and to protect oneself while working in dirty or toxic surroundings, and that it makes a lot of sense to work smarter instead of harder. By applying some of these principles, I eventually found the downward slope becoming more gradual and less slippery and at times even ascending a little once again.

It has now been 20 years since I crossed life’s summit and mathematically speaking that works out to half of the time it took for me to get to the top. That means I should be half way down by now! Something inside me yearns for the hope that I will get to stay high up on the mountain to work and to enjoy the view for a good while longer and that the best way down will be to drop off a cliff when the time is right.

So back to the question that was popped to my dad 30 years ago and was mine to field at a time when I perceived myself very much a youth, “What does it feel like to be an old man?” Well, I could begin by mentioning the various kinds of “itis” that seem to constantly pop up somewhere in my body all of the time or to hang around like mosquitoes or deer flies on a muggy day. It’s kind of like farting. Some people seem to get a certain pleasure out of yammering about their aches and pains just like they do--well you get the idea! But it is best not to do it any more than you have to because most people would rather not hear it anyway.

My Style of Christmas Shopping

I have always hated going shopping with my wife. She always has her list of things she must buy and considers it an inefficient waste of time doing anything but focusing on what must get done and what must get bought. If I ever get stuck shopping with her I usually tag along, bored and frustrated to tears.

I love to do my kind of shopping, especially at Christmastime—browsing around in my favorite stores, savoring the smells and sounds, and enjoying looking at the kinds of things I would never buy. The secret is to be able to sneak away and do this without my wife being fully aware of it. It never works if she is along.

Before leaving for the holiday farmers’ market the morning of December 13^th Christine had told me that I would need to be home by 4:00 because we were invited to a wedding reception of one of our friends at 4:30. I figured that I would probably be out of the market easily before noon, leaving me a nice chunk of time to do my Christmas shopping. One of my favorite haunts is a multi store market a few miles south of Harrisonburg. That’s where I headed as soon as farmers’ market was over.

The first thing to do after walking into the Dayton Farmers’ Market (not even close to being a farmers’ market but really a collection of specialty stores) is to walk by the Coffee Klatsch and smell the $3--$4/ cup gourmet coffee. I always think to myself that if they were smart they would figure out a way to charge everyone who walks through there 50 cents just to get a sniff and I for one would probably not mind paying it. But fortunately it is still free and I surely would not want to pass that one up.

Next to the Coffee Klatsch is Country Village Bake Shop where one can draw in the heavenly aroma of fresh baked bread and cookies still warm from the oven and gaze at the pretty young Mennonite ladies flitting about doing their jobs.

I walk on a little more and wander into an art store where among the first things I see are prints by several unknown to me artists and of one who I know fairly well, priced in the range of $60--$200. I would consider buying one of those if I had a good place to hang it and it had some special meaning to me. Then I see a few more priced $500--$600 and “Oh my gosh! There is an original P Buckley Moss for $7,500!” I keep looking and there are several more around the same amount and a really big one for over $11,000! Well thank goodness that I can appreciate some kinds of art and can have the privilege of perusing some occasionally without getting myself in hock in the process.

Next stop is “Zolas”, a specialty shop where lots of really nice dried flower arrangements, wreathes, and dust collectors of every sort imaginable can be had by those who are abundantly blessed by lots of the green stuff. Another thing I like about “Zolas” is the nice smelling potpourris along with the tasteful displays of colors and textures throughout the shop. Of course another good reason I drift by her nook is the fact that she is my sister and the least I can do is to drop in and say “Hi”.

I turn a corner and there is “10,000 Villages”, a fairly big store originally started by Mennonite Central Committee to establish markets in North America for artisanal products made in 3^rd world countries where MCC workers are located. There is lots of nice stuff here. I’ve never bought much at 10,000 Villages but I have worked as an MCCer in a 3^rd world country and I can readily appreciate what is being done to boost the income of highly deserving skilled artists living in parts of the world where their economic opportunities are limited. If I could justify spending serious money on artistic objects it would be here.

I pause awhile along a wall full of highly ornate wall clocks long enough to check the time and to hear several them play a preprogrammed melody on the hour. There is a different tune for every hour of the 12 hour cycle. They are pretty, but $700-$1000 per clock? The $5.00 Wal Mart wall clock at home will get the job done.

Then I drift into the store that draws me to this place every year—Crafty Hands Toy Store! This is a toy store of real character, featuring toys that challenge you to think creatively and if you do that you might even learn something. I have quickly walked through many a toy store but this one I always linger in. I know Ric Bowman the owner personally and he knows me. I have heard him admit with a twinkle in his eye that the reason he has a toy store is that he has never managed to grow up.

Along an aisle near the front of this store is a row of hanging wind chimes and I always make sure that I bump several of them with my elbow as I walk by. My favorites are the “Corinthian Bells” which have long and wide chimes which keep on ringing with the richest deep tones for at least a minute after being stroked. If I didn't have one already, I might buy one but the one I like most is $350 and I still have the $60 one I bought here about five years ago. That one I dug in pieces out of the fire rubble a year and a half ago and paid $20 to replace some of the lost parts and a few parts I didn’t buy, I made myself. It hangs on my porch today with some scars and blemishes but it sounds pretty good and I am satisfied with it.

Strategically placed right inside the entrance is a large table piled with a bunch of scientific puzzles, stacking blocks, and various other interesting gizmos with magnetism and other mysterious forces in them, lying around calling out for people to play with them. It is no small surprise that many of the persons playing are pretty big kids! I mess with the Kapla blocks for a few minutes until I knock down part of the tower that someone had dutifully stacked up a few minutes before. Then I pick up something called a Whacko. It is a ball of rare earth magnetized tetrahedrons that can be pulled apart and reconfigured in all sorts of different ways. It’s about as magnetizing of my attention as a Rubic’s Cube and maybe more so. I think, “Should I buy it?” Then I see the price $30. “Nah, I have enough to do with my time. But maybe if I drop a few hints in the right places someone might get me one for Christmas.” Then out of the corner of my eye I see Ric blowing a marshmallow at someone with a shooter made of pieces of ½ inch PVC pipe and elbows stuck together. “We used to have one of those things! For $6.00 I”ve got to have it! The grand kids will love it!”

On the way out of Crafty Hands I noticed lying on a small pedestal a fairly thick book entitled “Exhaustive Encyclopedia of Fun Things to Do for Those Who Never Really Wanted to Grow Up” for $29.95. I must have killed more than a half hour flipping through that thing! Definitely not the kind of book I would buy but I sure would love to borrow it for a few days.

Then I looked up and the thought hit me. “I’d better be checking the time!” I rushed to other end of the market where the fancy wall clocks were displayed. It was five minutes after four! “I’ve got to get my butt home!” I had a 20 mile drive ahead of me and Christine had said that I should get home around 4:00! I could see her now standing in the doorway with that dark glowering look on her face, ready to launch into that “Your irresponsibility really breaks my heart!” speech. I must have hit 70 mph at a few straight stretches on that section of country road between Dale Enterprise and Singers Glen.

As soon as I spun into the driveway I quickly sneaked down to check the feed and water for the baby chicks instead of going directly into the house so that when Christine would tear into me I could at least say that I had done something since getting home.

I walked into the front door and Christine looked up with a cheery smile on her face. “Good to see you home! You just made it in time.” I peered up at the clock, 4:35! “Weren’t we supposed to be there around 4:30?” I queried. “Well yes, but it is a drop in occasion so the time we get there is not that critical. I was a little behind myself in getting some things done before we go so everything will be OK.”

When Life Gives You Frozen Cauliflower Make Alegria

We had a hard time this fall growing cauliflower.

It’s not unusual for a disappointing crop to have its beginning when something goes wrong with getting the crop started. Oftentimes there is something wrong with the seed like low germination if the seed is too old or perhaps disease organisms in the seed that causes it to germinate poorly or to become sickly after it comes up. If the seed does come up properly there are many ways to screw up if it was started in a greenhouse like many of my crops are started. Sometimes I have inadvertently gotten something out of whack with the way I had mixed or selected my seed starting medium resulting in disease or chemical imbalance in the medium. Assuming that I have gotten everything right up to that point, the next common way to fail is to lose control of temperature, light, or air flow fluctuations inside the greenhouse. All it takes is one night of letting the greenhouse get too cold in the early spring or one day of letting it get too hot or dry in early summer to lose or to seriously set back the growth of a bunch of tender but otherwise healthy seedlings. If the temperatures are kept in the proper range it then becomes important to know when to set up fans inside the greenhouse to simulate the action of wind or to move the plants outside for a few hours per day in order to expose them to natural wind and temperature fluctuations, a system otherwise known as cold hardening, usually done in the last week or two prior to transplanting into the field. Most greenhouse started plants need to transplanted by six weeks after their germination in the greenhouse. If field preparation or other work scheduling delays result in greenhouse plants sitting in the greenhouse much beyond six weeks, the plants can become root bound and will not start off well once they are transplanted.

Compared to last year’s more successful cauliflower crop which had gotten off to a much slower start in the greenhouse and even more pestilence after transplanting than this year’s crop, I should have seen cauliflower doing at least as good as last year. I had done a better job with the plants keeping them growing on in the greenhouse and had even set up curtains of protective cover and window screen to keep out the yellow and white butterflies that often lay eggs of the imported cabbage worm on the plants while still in the greenhouse. I transplanted mostly healthy well started cauliflower on schedule in late July and early August. Except for a marauding groundhog that repeatedly raided one end of the patch, most of the plants took off vigorously following transplanting. I had to dust them a few times to keep off the cabbage worms but the harlequin bugs were not nearly as bad as they were last year and everything pointed to a good harvest beginning in early October.

October came in and steadily went by with no evidence of heading up in my otherwise healthy looking cauliflower crop. We finished up the CSA season on October 20 and still there were few cauliflower heads big enough to harvest. I waited and waited and waited. November came in and finally I was able to cut a few small to medium sized heads for sale at the farmers market. Then it started getting cold—unusually cold for this part of the country in November! I watched helplessly as we got several nights in a row with temperatures in the low 20s and teens. I tried pulling frost protecting row cover over some of the rows but this effort proved futile as we were getting a lot of wind and without a good way of holding down the cover over two foot tall rows, much of it ended up in the road and on the neighbor’s fence. Broccoli can handle freezing temperatures down to 20 degrees without serious damage but cauliflower is in real trouble if the temperature gets below 30. The killing frosts that began around Oct 20th had pretty much stopped the cauliflower from growing any further and now the November freezes had turned the whole unfinished crop ashen white and weeping on the ground.

I pretty much gave up hope with the beleaguered cauliflower and began threshing out the heads of grain amaranth I had cut and spread out to dry in the greenhouse in mid October. By now the colorful heads had dried nicely and a few hours of rubbing them over wooden frames covered with hardware screen separated the grain and chafe from the coarse stems. The next step was to rub the grain and chafe over window screen. The grains and fine chafe goes through the screen and the coarse chafe and any remaining stem pieces come off the top. Following this I winnowed the mixture by pouring it slowly in front of a box fan set at medium speed. A large stainless steel dish pan set directly beneath where I was pouring caught most of the grain as the wind from the fan blew the chafe onto a tarp spread out on the ground behind the pan. I had to repeat this process several more times with the caught grain before I got most of the chafe out of it. Two 150 foot rows of amaranth yielded about three quarts of straw colored grain. I scooped up the chafe and put it in feed sacks. This chafe is wonderful for sopping up oil spills in the shop and spreading on ice in the winter.

I finished up going to the farmers’ market on the last Saturday before Thanksgiving. This year would be different though. The farmers’ market board decided to hold holiday markets on the three Saturdays before Christmas. I decided that it would be cool to make some “alegria” to sell at one or two of those holiday markets. Well it turned out to be way too cool to go to the first holiday market on Dec 6th. In fact it was ungodly cold! Not only that, Christine needed me to finish trimming out the basement rooms of the house in preparation for a party she had been planning to host on Dec 7th for our local Kurdish community. I didn’t get a chance to make my alegria that week. While a few intrepid souls stood around shivering on Saturday morning at the market I finished installing baseboard and closet shelves, something I didn’t mind one bit.

Okay, by now you probably want to know, “What in heck is alegria?” Would it help if I told you that alegria is the Spanish word for happiness and joy? It is also the name that Mexicans use for a candy made by mixing popped amaranth grain with a little molasses or honey and pressing it into cakes or bars. It looks a lot like those seed cakes sold at pet stores for feeding to parakeets. Alegria is commonly sold by street vendors and in open air markets throughout Mexico and has been made since the days of Aztec civilization. It is simple to make and it is a tasty and nutritious snack. So why not make some alegria and share some happiness and joy at the Harrisonburg holiday farmer’s market?

It’s a lot of fun to make alegria. You start by finding a clean and dry skillet. It is very important that it is clean and dry. Use a large stove burner and set it at high heat. Use no water or oil in the skillet. You will need a cover over the skillet, preferably made of glass, so you can see the popping amaranth grain. Have a clean dry brush near by and a large (no plastic) pan to dump the popped amaranth into. Once the skillet is hot, scoop about a ¼ cup of grain into the skillet, cover, and immediately begin sliding the skillet back and forth on the burner as the grain begins to pop. The objective is to keep the grain rolling as it pops in order to avoid sticking and burning. The popping will continue for about 30 seconds to a minute, and begin to slow down. Dump the skillet immediately once the popping has slowed and brush out any grains still sticking to the bottom or sides of the skillet and return to the burner to repeat the process. This process moves rapidly once you start and requires some practice. You will most likely burn a few skillets full until you get the hang of it, knowing when to dump and how to keep it moving smoothly.

When the dish pan is about ½--3/4 full add about 1—2 cups of honey and stir until the mixture is well mixed and sticky enough to press into balls or squares. Press firmly into a lightly buttered pan and chill. One can form the candy and lay it out like cookies on a sheet or cut it into desired shapes after it has chilled.

Now back to my story. I made my alegria on Thursday night Dec 11th with plans to go to the market on the 13th. On Friday afternoon I got to thinking, “I should have something else to sell besides eggs and alegria tomorrow.” So I go tramping down to the cauliflower patch just to see if there might be something there worth salvaging. I immediately saw some exposed heads that obviously had frozen and thawed several times and were a little soft on the surface but, I figured, “We could probably still get some good out of them,” so I picked them, about a five gallon bucket full. Then I got to pulling the wrappers off some more small heads and lo and behold there were some pretty little baseball sized heads, still firm and with little freeze damage, apparently sufficiently protected by those wrapper leaves. They were not full sized but they would sell! I ended up with about three buckets full.

The more damaged heads were taken up to the kitchen and I realized within a few hours that I had made a mistake. The whole house stunk! After a few more days of eating frozen and cooked cauliflower in about everything my wife could think of putting it in, I would realize that I had really made a mistake! By then other things besides the house were stinking.

I went to the holiday market the next day and I was pleasantly surprised. It was a little cold but I had dressed for it and the wind was not blowing, so it was not all that bad. There were a good number of vendors there and enough shoppers to make it all worth while. People loved the alegria and I could have sold more. Several even thought my slightly frozen cauliflower was beautiful. And I sold most of it!

An Eight Cow Wife

My wife Christine and I found this story years ago not long after we were married. We liked it so much that we want to share it now.

The value you put on a person greatly affects the way they value themselves. The story of Johnny Lingo shows how you can bring out the best or the worst in a person.

An Eight Cow Wife

My trip to the Kiniwata Island in the Pacific was a memorable one. Although the island was beautiful and I had an enjoyable time, the thing I remember most about my trip was the fact that "Johnny Lingo gave eight cows for his wife."
Johnny Lingo is known throughout the islands for his skills, intelligence, and savvy. If you hire him as a guide, he will show you the best fishing spots and the best places to get pearls. Johnny is also one of the sharpest traders in the islands. He can get you the best possible deals. The people of Kiniwata all speak highly of Johnny Lingo. Yet, when they speak of him, they always smile just a little mockingly.
A couple days after my arrival to Kiniwata, I went to the manager of the guesthouse to see who he thought would be a good fishing guide. "Johnny Lingo," said the manager. "He's the best around. When you go shopping, let him do the bargaining. Johnny knows how to make a deal."
"Johnny Lingo!" hooted a nearby boy. The boy rocked with laughter as he said, "Yea, Johnny can make a deal alright!"
"What's going on?" I demanded.
"Everybody tells me to get in touch with Johnny Lingo and then they start laughing. Please, let me in on the joke."
"Oh, the people like to laugh," the manager said, shrugging. "Johnny's the brightest and strongest young man in the islands. He's also the richest for his age."
"But …" I protested. "… If he's all you say he is, why does everyone laugh at him behind his back?"
"Well, there is one thing. Five months ago, at fall festival, Johnny came to Kiniwata and found himself a wife. He gave her father eight cows!"
I knew enough about island customs to be impressed. A dowry of two or three cows would net a fair wife and four or five cows would net a very nice wife.
"Wow!" I said. "Eight cows! She must have beauty that takes your breath away."
"She's not ugly …" he conceded with a little smile, "… but calling her 'plain' would definitely be a compliment. Sam Karoo, her father, was afraid he wouldn't be able to marry her off. Instead of being stuck with her, he got eight cows for her. Isn't that extraordinary? This price has never been paid before."
"Yet, you called Johnny's wife 'plain?' "
"I said it would be a compliment to call her plain. She was skinny and she walked with her shoulders hunched and her head ducked. She was scared of her own shadow."
"Well," I said, "I guess there's just no accounting for love."
"True enough." agreed the man. "That's why the villagers grin when they talk about Johnny. They get special satisfaction from the fact the sharpest trader in the islands was bested by dull old Sam Karoo."
"But how?"
"No one knows and everyone wonders. All of the cousins urged Sam to ask for three cows and hold out for two until he was sure Johnny would pay only one. To their surprise Johnny came to Sam Karoo and said, 'Father of Sarita, I offer eight cows for your daughter.' "
"Eight cows?" I murmured. "I'd like to meet this Johnny Lingo."
I wanted fish and pearls, so the next afternoon I went to the island of Nurabandi. As I asked directions to Johnny's house, I noticed Johnny's neighbors were also amused at the mention of his name. When I met the slim, serious young man I could see immediately why everyone respected his skills. However, this only reinforced my confusion over him.
As we sat in his house, he asked me, "You come here from Kiniwata?"
"Yes."
"They speak of me on that island?"
"Yes. They say you can provide me anything I need. They say you're intelligent, resourceful, and the sharpest trader in the islands."
He smiled gently. "My wife is from Kiniwata."
"Yes, I know."
"They speak of her?"
"A little."
"What do they say?"
"Why, just …." The question caught me off balance. "They told me you were married at festival time."
"Nothing more?" The curve of his eyebrows told me he knew there had to be more.
"They also say the marriage settlement was eight cows." I paused. "They wonder why."
"They ask that?" His eyes lighted with pleasure. "Everyone in Kiniwata knows about the eight cows?"
I nodded.
"And in Nurabandi, everyone knows it too?" His chest expanded with satisfaction. "Always and forever, when they speak of marriage settlements, it will be remembered that Johnny Lingo paid eight cows for Sarita."
So that's the answer, I thought: Vanity.
Just then Sarita entered the room to place flowers on the table. She stood still for a moment to smile at her husband and then left. She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen! The lift of her shoulders, the tilt of her chin, and the sparkle in her eyes all spelled self-confidence and pride. Not an arrogant and haughty pride, but a confident inner beauty that radiated in her every movement.
I turned back to Johnny and found him looking at me.
"You admire her?" he murmured.
"She … she's gorgeous!" I said. "Obviously, this is not the one everyone is talking about. She can't be the Sarita you married on Kiniwata."
"There's only one Sarita. Perhaps, she doesn't look the way you expected."
"She doesn't! I heard she was homely. They all make fun of you because you let yourself be cheated by Sam Karoo."
"You think eight cows were too many?" A smile slid over his lips.
"No, but how can she be so different from the way they described her?"
Johnny said, "Think about how it must make a girl feel to know her husband paid a very low dowry for her. It must be insulting to her to know he places such little value on her. Think about how she must feel when the other women boast about the high prices their husbands paid for them. It must be embarrassing for her. I would not let this happen to my Sarita."
"So, you paid eight cows just to make your wife happy?"
"Well, of course I wanted Sarita to be happy, but there's more to it than that. You say she is different from what you expected. This is true. Many things can change a woman. There are things that happen on the inside and things that happen on the outside. However, the thing that matters most is how she views herself. In Kiniwata, Sarita believed she was worth nothing. As a result, that's the value she projected. Now, she knows she is worth more than any other woman in the islands. It shows, doesn't it?"
"Then you wanted …"
"I knew that I loved Sarita...”That I wanted to marry her.”
"But …" I was close to understanding.
"But," he finished softly, "I have always wanted an eight-cow wife. And if I couldn’t find an eight cow wife, then I would make myself one!"
The above story was based partially on an article found in Reader's Digest (February, 1988). The original work was copyrighted by Patricia McGerr in 1965.

An important note from Marlin:
Out on the hillside at my farm are approximately 20 head of beef cattle. I would be glad to give up those cattle and maybe even the flock of 50 laying chickens too if I had to in order to keep my wife Christine.

Happy Reunion with a Special Former Teacher

Several weeks ago Christine and I had the good fortune to visit one of my special elementary school teachers for a special occasion.

I had Miss Mabel Horst as my 3rd and 4th grade teacher in the 1957-58 and the 1958-59 school years at the old Singers Glen elementary school. I was nine years old the first year I had her and I remember sometime in one of those years she announced to the class her 40th birthday. She taught one more year at Singers Glen after the last year I had her, and then taught another 20 or so years in private Mennonite schools in the Hagerstown, Maryland area where she had grown up. I had not had any contact with her for most of the 50 years since I had had her as a teacher. It was a joy to find her at a relatively healthy 90 years of age residing at a Mennonite owned retirement home in Maugansville. MD.

Miss Horst was a highly dedicated teacher who always began the school day with a Bible story and prayer back in the days when those activities were still permitted in public schools. She taught both third and forth grades in the same room for both of the years I had her. At the beginning of the school year the Bible story book she read from began with the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis and by the end of the school year it had covered most of the Bible, ending with the stories of Apostle Paul’s missionary journeys.

During my growing up years my parents took us to a conservative Mennonite church but there was ongoing tension within that church over conservative-liberal issues relating to worldly dress and entertainment, resulting in our family not being well accepted in the church. I do not remember going to Sunday school regularly during those years or having many positive memories of my parents relating to the church leaders. This span of my life paralleled the years of the civil rights movement, hippies, student unrest, and the Vietnam War. I passed through my teenage years uncertain if I would remain connected with the Mennonite church and at times unsure if I really believed in God. Looking back I acknowledge that even though my church experience wasn’t what it should have been, it still was better than no church.

Miss Horst was a very conservative Mennonite lady but she modeled genuine Christian character and made lots of effort to instill in her pupils Christian values that went beyond mere adherence to conservative custom and tradition. Once during my years in her classroom she had her students competing for a prize for memorizing the Christmas story in Luke chapter two and I won the prize, a book entitled Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us by Charles Foster. It was the Bible stories remembered during the two years I sat in her classroom and the brief descriptions of the roughly 400 illustrations in that book that laid the foundation for much of what I know today about the Bible.

The book I had won was just a simple Bible story book written to a level of mid
elementary school understanding, but it was a reprint of an edition first copy written in 1886 and as I grew older I began to realize that the artwork of those 400 woodcuts and lithographs was superb and although I didn’t look at them often, I began to cherish them when I did.

This precious book was among the wall full in the library where the house fire of last year burned the hottest and it was among the first that I thought about and wondered if I would find any traces of as I dug through the rubble a few days later. There were many books in that collection that I valued a lot and would miss, but this one was special because Miss Horst had written a short note and her signature on a flyleaf inside the front cover. Finally I found a fragment of the front cover with part of the title and the name of the author still visible.

I knew that this book might be difficult to replace due to its being an antique edition long out of print but even if a copy could be procured it still wouldn’t really replace the memories I have associated with it. But I was fortunate to be living in an age of Internet access and I couldn’t resist the urge to pull up Google and type in the title of this lost treasure to see what might come up.

Lo and behold there were indeed websites that listed book sellers throughout this country where copies of this book or something close to it could be ordered online. I finally settled on one that looked like what I was looking for and advertised to be in good condition. The only difference I could see from the thumbnail picture on the Web page was that the covers would be brown instead of blue like the copy I had lost. When the book arrived in the mail I opened it and “Yes indeed, everything between the covers was pretty much exactly as I had remembered it!”

So now we go back to our recent visit with Miss Horst. The picture says it all. She autographed once again the replacement copy of a simple book that represents the influence that she most likely left on my young life that may have helped to keep me from rejecting the Christian faith. And now I can look forward to sharing this regained treasure and the story behind it with my grandchildren.

End of Season Finale-a Year Later

Here we are at the middle of November, a little more than a year later than the last time I posted on this theme. For the benefits of those who won’t spend much time digging around in the archives of old blog posts, I will remind them that I had been gloating a little on the success of last year’s fall planting of cauliflower. I had posted spectacular pictures of about three colors of the various varieties I had grown. Sometime during the ensuing months something screwed up the server that allows the pictures to load. I’m either too dumb or too impatient to figure out how to edit pictures on old posts in order to fix the problem. Since I am fairly confident about posting pictures to new posts, I am just going to do them again on this post. I’m telling you though, that this year’s cauliflower crop has not done nearly as well so no more bragging this time around.



The first killing frost occurred about a month ago. There were several of these in succession, the last of which caused the last planting of tomatoes to bite the hay mulched compost enriched earth on a Sunday night. Those tomatoes were in a plastic covered high tunnel and I was assuming that they were safely protected so I had spent that Sunday afternoon reading and sleeping instead of going out and placing additional row cover over the plants—an activity which might have saved them for another several weeks of production. Of course I was disappointed and ashamed of myself when I discovered the frost blackened plants the next day but I didn’t need to complain long for that planting had produced abundantly throughout September and halfway through October—a time of year when we normally don’t expect much from our tomato patches.

The highlight of this year’s fall garden has been the abundance of greens, two kinds of kale, early mizuna (Japanese mustard), white Hakurei (Japanese) turnips, Napa Chinese cabbage and, ah yes, the Asian pears! Some of those puppies sold for over $2.00 a pear! I admit that it was kind of fun to set a bushel of those things from the back of the truck onto the market table and within a few hours to turn them into about $160! Oops, am I bragging again?

Several weeks ago they staged the grand opening celebration for the new Harrisonburg Farmers” Market pavilion, complete with speeches by the city mayor, blue grass music, cake and apple cider, face painting, clowns—the whole enchilada. There was a scarecrow contest among the vendors with each vendor pitching in a few dollars or some of their product to a kitty for the winner to take all. My live in hired man and market helper decided to paint himself up and pose like a frozen statue, changing position occasionally, to freak people out. It was a real hoot to stand back and watch people walk past him. Of course he won the contest, hands down.

This past Saturday I went to the market possibly for the last time of the season. I still had a lot of Chinese cabbage which I have been holding in the walk in cooler, plenty of fall greens, and as much of the belated cauliflower crop as I could harvest before serious cold weather sets in this coming week. I actually was able to make a pretty impressive pile of bright orange “Cheddar”, dark purple “Graffiti”, and snow white “Freemont” cauliflower on one of my tables. I sold most of it and went home with less than a dollar short of $400 in total sales for the day—not bad for mid November. If I could have gotten another dollar for each time I answered the question “Does it taste like cheddar cheese?” I probably would have cleared $1000 for the day! I really had to suppress the urge to stick my tongue way up into my cheek and respond “Oh yeah, just slice it onto a hamburger along with a slice of onion, add the mustard, tomato, and dill pickle, and away you go!” When the seed supplier that now sells “Cheddar” cauliflower first offered this variety about five or six years ago, they called it “Citrus”! Yep, you guessed it. “Does it really taste like citrus fruit?” “Why of course! Just add the bananas and coconut and a little whipped cream or ice cream and you are all set.”

Aren’t people a lot of fun?

Farming On MY Prayer Bones

I originally wrote a version of this article in 1994, a few years after I had started Glen Eco Farm. I hadn't attempted writing anything since college days way back in the early 1970s. I had spent several days diligently working on the manuscript with thoughts of sending it to one of our church publishers or maybe to some small "country living" magazine. Finally I proudly handed it to my oldest daughter (then in her senior year of high school) for her evaluation. Her response: "You have got to rewrite this! Its full of word junk!" She then proceeded to go through the document marking out what seemed like 3/4 of the content and writing in suggested changes. "For gosh sake" I protested. "Its no longer my writing!"

I printed off one hard copy and then laid the thing aside for awhile with the honest intentions of working on it again another day. Before long a busy spring season took my mind away from writing and the saved file containing the article eventually went the way of virtually all used computers after one has had them for several years.

Ten years and several computers later I got inspired once again to resurrect "Farming On My Prayer Bones". Copies of my original writing, both electronic and hard copy, were no where to be found. I decided to rewrite the whole thing as much as I could remember and several weeks after completing a draft that I felt fairly satisfied with, I found myself at a sustainable agriculture conference in Pennsylvania, shaking hands with the publisher of a small circulation country magazine from the heart of Amish country in central Ohio. "Sure, send me a copy! I would like to see it" he replied. "Farming On My Prayer Bones" became my first and thus far only attempt at writing for publication. It appeared in the summer edition of "Farming Magazine-Land,Community,People" in 2006.


Farming On My Prayer Bones

About ten years ago, I had just finished spending a long morning down on my knees weeding a large strawberry patch and putting in transplants. I had come in for lunch and one of my brothers in law had dropped in for a short visit. Noting my morning activity, he told a story he had recently read about some naughty boys who had tried to get revenge on a neighbor by seeding his strawberry patch with hay chaff from his barn floor. The boys had gotten caught and had to pay for their mischief by spending much of their summer vacation down on their “prayer bones” undoing the results of their misdeeds. My own knees were feeling a little sore at the time, and the threadbare condition of my blue jeans bore witness to the reality that I too had been “farming on my prayer bones”. The metaphor appealed to me and gave me the idea for writing this story.

My story begins on the family dairy farm that I took over in 1975 and operated for sixteen years until a chronic and debilitating illness forced me to sell out in early 1992and begin anew with a different style of farming built on principles of healing and sustainability. The five year struggle with this illness literally brought me to my knees both in an attitude of humility concerning my abilities and in practice as I performed much of the work on my new farm, transplanting, weeding, and picking vegetables on my prayer bones. The story continues with the lessons and observations I’ve made while transitioning from the style of farming which wrecked my health to the style of farming which is restoring it.

I took over the management and work of the family dairy farm immediately following my return from an overseas agricultural mission assignment with the Mennonite Central Committee in the mid 1970’s. I was working with my dad in a partnership which began with me providing most of the labor input and he carrying all of the real estate and most of the capital investment. It was a typical conventional farming operation, following the pattern of most dairy farms in Virginia. I grew silage corn and alfalfa hay in the summers and immediately following the corn harvest; I would plant rye for a fall and winter cover crop which was often harvested for silage the following spring. The fields would then be sprayed with a mixture of herbicides, insecticides, and chemical fertilizers in preparation for planting the corn crop into the dead rye stubble without further tillage. Most of the crops were put into silos for feeding throughout the year along with a little hay and pasture. Our 50 Holstein cows spent most of their time in a free stall loafing barn and were milked in a modern milking parlor.

Like most dairymen, I constantly struggled to control numerous herd health problems endemic to modern dairying: mastitis, milk fever, ketosis, uterus infections, cystic ovaries and various foot and leg problems. These herd health problems resulted in my need to cull cows nearly as fast as I could raise replacements. Though I felt that these problems were environmentally related to the way we handled cows, I accepted them as a normal “cost of doing business” in modern dairying.

As my dad got older and less able to work, I systematically bought into the operating capital and took on increasingly more of the most difficult, dangerous, and dirty work. On two occasions in the 1980’s I became acutely ill following massive exposures to airborne molds while working inside silos. The first time I toughed it out. The second time I went to the doctor three days later when I realized that I wasn’t getting better. I now believe that these illnesses set the stage for the multifaceted illness that would put me out of the dairy business a few years later.

In the late 1980’s, came a major and much needed remodeling of the milking parlor, expansion of the cow loafing barn, and installation of a computerized supplemental feeding system. Despite the upgrading of the facilities, I still found myself disappointed with improvement in the work load or the herd health problems and knew that the production model I was following was still seriously flawed. The long hours of frustrating and strenuous work impressed on me the realization that I was still spending too much money and energy putting out the fires caused by an unhealthy environment, both for the cows and for myself. I tolerated this situation primarily because it was the norm for all the dairymen I knew in our part of the country and because I was deeply invested in the operation and breaking out of the pattern seemed difficult and risky.

It was during these years that I had begun reading Rodale Institute’s New Farm and other magazines devoted to sustainable agriculture, and had been inspired to experiment with farm scale composting, alternative soil management practices, and more intensive pasture and crop rotations. I began adopting integrated pest management (IPM) practices which allowed me to reduce by 50% and more my use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides on the crops. I learned to use hot water baths and “Absorbine” veterinary liniment on swollen udders to reduce the need for antibiotic treatment of mastitis. In response to improved herd genetics and better control of feed utilization, the herd’s production climbed steadily. I took pride in my work and saw my farm as at least partially successful in transition to a more sustainable operation. Compared to other dairymen in this area, I was among the more successful (as measured by milk production per cow). Deep down I knew that I was headed for an eventual breakdown or burnout, but I continued to press on, assuring myself that I was doing some things right, was physically strong, and could take anything. Little did I realize that major changes in my life were about to occur as the 80’s drew to a close.

The first hint of trouble began during the winter of 1989 when I developed a dry and persistent cough. At that time I was tearing apart and hand feeding to a group of calves some large round hay bales with a few moldy spots. I suspected then that my exposure to this hay mold might be causing my cough but I didn’t become concerned because I was otherwise not feeling sick.

The symptoms gradually worsened during the following year, leading me first to the family doctor, then to an allergy specialist without any fruitful resolution to the problem. Two years after my illness began it reached a climax with a four day hospitalization in late September of 1991. I would later tell people that on the day that I entered the hospital, “I felt like I had chronic fatigue syndrome, smoke inhalation, and a nervous breakdown all rolled into one”. All diagnostic tests were negative except for one which indicated that I had reactive hypoglycemia, a condition exacerbated by stress and my other underlying illness, I would later learn. I was discharged from the hospital with a diagnosis of “Panic Disorder” (a type of psychosomatic illness) and a nerve medicine prescription which I refused to have filled. I then proceeded to seek out a clinical ecologist in Washington DC who diagnosed “multiple environmental sensitivities” (also known as “environmental illness”) brought on by long term and frequent exposures to molds, diesel fumes from tractors, and various other chemicals used around the farm.

I knew then that I would have to get off of the farm and proceeded to hire someone to do my work for the remainder of the year until I could complete arrangements to have an auction sale for the liquidation of the dairy on Jan 1, 1992. God had allowed my farming career to be derailed and would soon be setting me on a different track. The long journey up the road to healing was about to begin.

One of the hardest challenges for me in the coming months and years would be to face my vulnerabilities. I had been raised to endure pain and discomfort and to not complain or back off from work because of minor illness or injury. A few years earlier I could pick up 200 pounds and walk away with it. Now I could feel thoroughly exhausted walking a short distance to help one of my children collect a few leaves for a school science project. Once I could work in any kind of hot, dirty, and smelly situation. Now all it took was one whiff of a woman’s hair spray or body perfume to send me fleeing out of a church service in search of an open window or door where I could stick my head out for fresh air. The world I lived in had apparently become a hostile place where I could no longer go anywhere or do anything, including being inside my own house, without finding myself reacting. Many times I could be reacting and have no idea what was causing it. Doctors had proved themselves to be of little help. Well meaning family members would try to convince me that I needed to “get in control of my emotions” or to “go get some exercise”. Sometimes I could sense the Devil taunting me with the thought that I would probably continue feeling like this for a few more years until I would die with something like cancer. Several times I wasted money on questionable alternative health modalities in a desperate search to get relief. I found some solace in reading the book of Job and being assured that I was not the first person in history to go through this kind of experience. At least I still had a good wife and healthy children. It was even still possible to find someone who would pray with and for me. Then there would come times when some of the symptoms would go away and I would feel healthy again. It was these periods of remission that gave me hope and carried me through the numerous periods of relapse that would return during the following months and years and occasionally still happen even today.

I now end the account of my journey through environmental illness to tell the story of my transition from being a conventional dairy farmer to becoming the ecologically oriented market garden farmer that I am today.

In order to adequately articulate the magnitude of adjustment I had to make in my thinking as I made this transition, I will quickly summarize my background of involvement in agriculture. My parents both came from a farming background, and they in turn reared their family on a farm where I learned to do farm chores from early in my childhood and began driving tractors around 12 years of age. I took vocational agriculture classes in high school and was an active participant in the “Future Farmers of America” organization. Following high school, I attended Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, one of the better known land grant agricultural universities in the nation, and earned a BS degree in Dairy Science and Agronomy from that institution in 1972. I spent the next two years in Bolivia teaching Bolivian farmers and Mennonite colonists to care for dairy livestock which had been imported to Bolivia through the Heifer Project International organization. Following the Bolivia experience, I returned to run the home farm for the next 16 years. Shortly after I had liquidated that farm in early 1992, I attended a sustainable agricultural conference or two and did some reading about alternative agriculture in an effort to prepare myself for the new style of farming I was about to undertake. Only then did I come to the humbling realization of how pathetically little I actually knew about agriculture! It is now 12 years later and I still feel that I have much more that I need to learn.

I started out small, feeling very much that I didn’t know what I was doing, but I did it anyway. I began by planting some perennial crops like asparagus and raspberries and a modest variety of conventional garden vegetables which I sold at a local farmers’ market two days per week. From my experience as a dairy farmer, I knew lots about producing but nothing about marketing. As a novice market garden farmer I had a strong tendency to overproduce certain items and would end up running around town and walking into the back doors of restaurants hoping to sell them some of my surplus. Invariably I still ended up giving lots of good stuff to local soup kitchens and food distribution centers. I pretty much learned by the seat of my pants the intricacies of retail marketing and how to talk to restaurant chefs. Later I added to my marketing venues by starting a Community Supported Agriculture Program and by accommodating Kurdish immigrants who began appearing at my farm gate preferring to buy produce directly from my farm.

As I grew in my hard won knowledge about what does and doesn’t work in marketing (and also growing things without weed and insect killing chemicals), I developed a deeper understanding of the needs and wants of people and the need to understand and appreciate the interconnectedness of people of all racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. A similar interconnectedness also exists among the complex mixture of microorganisms, plants, insects, birds, and animals found in a farm ecosystem. Understanding this interconnectedness goes a long way towards one’s success in managing and cultivating a healthy diversity among the diverse life forms on the farm without having to deal with pests (any life form which can harm crops) by applying toxic materials (the equivalent of warfare). Likewise among the human population we are sometimes affected by pests (any fellow human being or group who offends or threatens us in any way). Our choice is to respond with force (complaining, litigation, or warfare) or something gentler like peacemaking (mediation, forgiveness, or nonexclusive defense tactics). Like the farmer who has to accept some pest damage in order to avoid spraying toxic chemicals on his farm and thus putting himself and others at risk of toxic exposures, we also are challenged to absorb some injury from other persons without striking back at them and risking our own peace of mind and soul. As a practicing organic farmer I have learned that some weeds are even more nutritious as food and possess greater healing properties than many of the crops I cultivate, and if managed appropriately, can do other beneficial things like cycling soil nutrients, and providing habitat for beneficial insects and wildlife. Some pestiferous insects are needed to support beneficial insects, bats, and birds. As we transfer this understanding to our interpersonal relationships we can then realize the extent that we need one another, need to appreciate and cultivate our diversity, be patient with our differences, and forgive when necessary. Thus an organic farm becomes a good laboratory for learning the principles of applied peacemaking needed in many of our interpersonal and international relationships.

Having learned in a new way the reality of interconnectedness of the various elements of a farm ecosystem and how that relates to how humans interconnect with each other and to the natural world, my next step has been to enter more deeply into the concept of relationship marketing and building of community. Many of the problems affecting modern agriculture and the environmental degradation so well known in our world have to do with the separation of people from their agricultural roots and indeed the natural world itself. This loss of connectedness has been hastened by widespread industrialization throughout modern civilization, especially the industrialization of agriculture. This has resulted in increasing tensions and alienation between the urban and rural elements of our society as they now increasingly encroach upon each other’s space. I now find myself seeking ways to restore that broken connectedness by building bridges of understanding and relationship to my urban and suburban customers.

This process started when I stopped letting the milk processing plant market my product and I began producing something which I could sell directly at a farmers’ market. I was now free to invite my customers to come out and visit my farm if they desired to do so and it wasn’t long until some actually did that. Later on as I began organizing the Community Supported Agriculture program, this process took on new meaning as the process of building closer relationships with my customers became a primary purpose and focus of my work. Offering some of my CSA clients the option of working on the farm for a part, or their entire share, became an essential part of making the operation of the CSA program possible. Then the Kurdish immigrants began coming. The result has been the formation of numerous new friendships, not only with neighbors from a nearby city, but also with people from the other side of the world. This has indeed become an enriching and gratifying experience to know that I am not only healing physically, emotionally and spiritually, but I am also contributing in a small way to the healing of our society and world. This is well worth the price of sore knees and worn blue jeans.

Whenever I work on my knees, my thoughts go back to the rural conservative Mennonite church my family attended years ago during my childhood. That church had a custom that would appear to many modern folks as peculiar and quaint. During the course of a typical Sunday morning worship service, when a call was made for a congregational prayer, the congregants would turn around in the pews and kneel on the floor, facing towards the back of the pews with their arms resting on the hard wooden benches as the prayer was led. I vividly remember this somewhat uncomfortable yet humbling exercise.

In a sense I had to do something similar when I transitioned from dairy farming to the kind of farming I do today. God brought circumstances into my life that made it necessary for me to turn around and to face a different direction, looking backwards and taking some cues from the wisdom of earlier generations, not only for the restoration of my health, but also for the healing of my farm. I not only had to turn around and face another direction, but I also had to get down on my prayer bones in order to see what God needed to show me and to be humbled enough to be teachable.

At a time in my life when most people are moving forwards and growing their businesses and financial investments, I had chosen to divest and to start over on a smaller farm and at a much smaller scale of operation. I had sold most of my tractors and equipment and was now preparing to set out on a new farming endeavor with little more equipment than the average suburban homeowner owns for the maintenance of his yard. Occasionally during the first years following my departure from the dairy farm, I would walk onto other farms, look at all the equipment they had, and realize how radically I had divested. Then when I would go home and go out to my field to pull some weeds I would feel small and somewhat ridiculous and wonder if I had downsized too far.

My little farm has an 8 acre field alongside an 800 foot road frontage where I planted my first market garden. From the vantage point of one driving up that road in a pickup truck, the field looks small. It was in this field that I first began kneeling on the ground to plant rows of strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes, broccoli, and lettuce in little subdivided patches, making the field to appear even more diminutive. A year earlier I had traversed that same field with a 90 horsepower tractor pulling a four row corn planter. Now as I knelt on my knees in the middle of that field which looks so small from a pickup or tractor seat, I couldn’t help but notice the difference in perspective that one gains when he comes down off that tractor and sees the same field from on his prayer bones. What a difference it makes to move one’s vantage point from nearly eight feet above ground to eighteen inches above ground!

The first thing that always hits me when I set out to weed a 200 foot long by 20 foot wide strawberry patch, especially if the weather is a little hot, is how big it appears from down on the knees. Now 200 x 20 feet is hardly enough width and distance to get a tractor turned around and well revved up, but while kneeling on your prayer bones that little plot can look as big as a Texas ranch.

The other big difference a farmer experiences while looking at his land while on bended knee is what he can see, hear, and sometimes feel going on near the surface of the soil. Now he can see and hear earthworms, ladybugs, spiders, ground beetles, bees, and other interesting creatures going about their busy lives and know that their presence means that the soil ecosystem is alive and well. He can enjoy the sweet aroma of healthy soil instead of enduring the acrid smell of diesel fumes. He can be warmed by the sun shining on his back and at the same time be cooled by the dampness of the moist earth. While kneeling on his prayer bones in intimate contact with the land, he is closer to God, and in an appropriate position to communicate with Him in an attitude of humility and gratitude. In this position God can give the farmer the guidance he needs to cultivate his land in such a way that it nourishes and sustains all of the life that lives on it. The guy on a tractor easily misses much of this.


One can now ask. “What effect does farming on our prayer bones have on our lives?” It has much to do with our feeling of intimacy with the earth, our quest to understand and work with the natural realm, and our reverence for the God who created it. Like the small child who finds comfort and nurture while sitting on his mother’s lap, soothed by the sound of her voice, her breathing, and her heartbeat, the gardener can kneel on the bosom of God’s good earth and sense the vibrant pulse of life carried on by the myriad variety of microorganisms, insects, birds, and animals living there. Feeling nurtured by this good earth, he can respond by recycling organic matter, and by using discretion in decisions to do anything that might endanger the farm’s complex ecosystem. As we try to comprehend the incredible complexity and diversity of a healthy web of life in and near the soil and also throughout our farm and the universe, we are humbled to an appropriate level of smallness and honored with the awesome responsibility to treat this land and all who depend upon it for their sustenance with love and respect. It is our hope that the efforts we expend here plus our personal witness and testimony, will point others to God.