turkey.

turkeys are peculiar creatures. at the farm, we have the joy of herding the little ladies out to pasture on a daily basis where they happily feed on sunlight, grass and farm-fresh air. until thanksgiving rolls around.

rather than raising beautiful heritage breeds, we rely on the good graces of cargill, who graciously grace us with 100-odd turkey chicklings (poults), as well as donating their bedding and supplemental feed. thank you corporate kindness.

papa ghana: turkey man of the year 2008.

enough of my pastoral ponderings . . . and back to down and dirty farm life (note the farmers in charge of the farm's turkeys!). this morning, herdsman raymond mcgee/mcginnis small gathered and guided our friendly fowl to their pasture plot. like the dumb domesticated beasts that we all are, they were soon distracted (probably by some shiny object) and thundered full-speed in my general direction. if you've never seen a turkey run/waddle-at-full-speed, they rev their engines like turbo jets prepared for take-off but remain ground-bound due to their bountiful bosoms.

rodeo wrangler:
turkey man of the year 2009

well, in their great rush, only lovely lady got her dinosaur feet stuck in a mud puddle. and flap as she might - her flappage was all in vain (turkeys are suckers for pathetic deaths). i hopped the fence just as her scrawny neck went limp and her beady head turned blue. so i said a prayer - asked the great herdsman to carry her to the processing house for final rites. after a cup of coffee.

1. sharpen knife.



2. hang bird.



3. slit throat. (those americorps members can do everything!)




4. skin and eviscerate.

i am grateful to know the sunlight and air that nurture our food to life. to know the green pasture and garden soil that feed us. and to share the bounty with each other over a bonfire. rather than view death as the end, we see new life. i suppose there's a parable in there somewhere.

rather than think too much, we give thanks. and dream up new possibilities for something that could so easily have been discarded. i guess that's what the dream's all about. let's not waste it.

mutterings of a mother hen.

to be a woman farmer is a beautiful and powerful thing. to rise before dawn to milk goats and haul hay. as the rain spits at my face and the mud sucks at my boots.

this is to be a farmer. to fry (uncertified) no-till summer squash and bake befuddling blue cornbread for noonday meal. to crack (certified) organic orchard pecans with friends and read aloud facts on wild foraging - as she patches her poor tattered work pants, as he stitches his squirrel skin knife sheath, as they strum guitar and mandolin and sing stories of life. this is to be a farmer.

but to be a woman farmer - this is a beautiful and powerful thing. to smell of rosemary and dirt. and to take on life's daily labors of love in a hand-me-down skirt and some loved-beyond-repair boots.

Water For All

Terry Waller from Water for All is visiting the farm this week to drill some test wells for a possible well drilling workshop in the spring. He uses a very cheap low-tech technique for drilling wells primarily with locally available resources.

Here's some photos and video from the muddy fun today.

World Food Day 2009

Hungry? Probably Not.

This October 16th, we’re joining millions of people in NOT eating. We have contacted local media and businesses to help spread the word. Now, we need the support of local religious communities.

As people of faith we are called to help the poor and hungry, and statistics are showing a growing abundance of poor and hungry people nationally and internationally. For October 16, we ask two things:

(1) Skip lunch and spend that time praying for those who regularly go without food.

(2) Donate your lunch money to the McLennan County Hunger Coalition, or to a program in your congregation or community that feeds hungry people.

During a brief program at Heritage Square, downtown at 3rd & Austin, from 12:15 pm to 12:45 pm, we will fast together and recognize a number of people who have worked to bring food to the hungry in our community.

A billion hungry children and adults worldwide are depending on us.
How will you make a difference?

New Article from the Waco Tribune-Herald

Waco students learn about food production at World Hunger Relief

Tennyson Middle School student Austin Lyon never thought about where his food came from before.

The 13-year-old never realized that vegetables were much cheaper to plant than they are to buy in the grocery store.

And he had no idea that planting and harvesting his own food could actually be fun.

Lyon is one of about 15 Tennyson and Brazos middle school students who go to World Hunger Relief in Elm Mott once a week as part of the Communities In Schools of the Heart of Texas after-school program.

The program works with 30 community agencies, including World Hunger Relief, that are designed to support students’ emotional, social, physical and intellectual development.

“It gets them outside their boxes,” said Sara Karnes, an AmeriCorps member who works with Communities In Schools.

On a rainy Wednesday, the students sat around a long table, planting seeds of romaine lettuce and soybeans in trays.

The students will take a portion of the vegetables home with them, and the remaining harvest will be taken to Baylor University’s Campus Kitchens, in which food from the school’s dining halls is rescued and served to the hungry in Waco.

Read the rest...

The Original Sin of Agriculture: Knowledge of Good and Evil

One of the most interesting aspects of this discussion, particularly in Ishmael, is the application to the interpretation of biblical texts. This series is called the "original sin" of agriculture in part because of the interpretation of Genesis 3 and 4 in Ishmael. Chapters 3 and 4 tell the story of the Fall and Cain and Abel respectively. These are stories that are embedded in our culture and ones we read with a lot of assumptions and preconceptions. Without disregarding many of those readings of these texts, let's try to hear a fresh interpretation and ask what it might contribute to our understanding of sin, history and agriculture.

We'll begin with Cain and Abel. This story is clearly about the rivalry between two kinds of agriculture, farmers and shepherds. Ishmael contends that this represents the rivalry between Takers and Leavers. Cain, representing Takers, conquers Abel, representing Leavers, through violence as he murders his brother. This is a story told by Leavers against Takers. The nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life is threatened by the surging agriculture and social changes the Takers advocate. After Abel's murder Cain and his descendants go on to found the first city, domesticated animals, musical instruments, tools of bronze and iron basically all the building blocks of civilization and culture as we know it, agriculture, weapons, art and cities.

Ishmael describes the story of the Fall in Genesis 3 through an alternate mythology. In his interpretation the gods struggle with knowing who should live and who should die. For example, from one perspective it seems right for the lion to kill his prey, a deer, one day in order to keep the population down and feed the lion. However, from another perspective shouldn't the deer live in order to feed on the grasses and play its role in the ecosystem. You see the conundrum? How do you decide when to let the deer escape and when it should die, along with millions of other decisions within a given ecosystem? The gods decide that one day the deer will live and the next it will be food without any real reason or explanation. It's left a mystery.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil has always been kind of a mystery. There have been many different ideas and interpretations about what it means or represents. None have ever been very satisfying to me. Ishmael suggests that the knowledge of good and evil is the knowledge of who should live and who should die. The consequence of Adam and Eve eating from the tree was not that they actually possessed this knowledge, but that they thought they possessed this knowledge.

So, what's the original sin of agriculture? The Leavers originally told the stories of creation and fall to point out the problems in Taker's way of life, but Takers took it as a flaw in human beings in general. Takers believed that the reason they were not able to ultimately free themselves from the constraints and limitations of creation was something inherently wrong with themselves as human beings and not their way of life.

The original sin of agriculture is the notion that we, humans, possess a kind of knowledge that we do not. We believe that we are able to manipulate and control nature, bending it toward our ends in order to become masters over it and eventually free ourselves from it. The sin is that this way of thinking about who we are and how we are related to the earth is a lie.

This series of posts was originally posted at What Would Jesus Eat? You can read the entire series there or wait for it here over the next few weeks.