Texas at the Table: Part Three.

From the Garden of Eden to Utopia

at the Table in San Angelo, TX

When in San Angelo, we – the lovely ladies of the Texas at the Table: Project Go Road Trip – saw the service of many churches and community folks coming together to meet the needs of their neighbors. San Angelo was the third stop on the Texas at the Table Road Trip to explore how people across Texas creatively address hunger in their communities – or more simply, exploring where food comes from, who gets it, and who doesn’t.

WIC accepted at the Concho Valley Farmers Market.

Day Six (the evening): Arrival in San Angelo. Jumping in head-first, our first stop on Sunday evening was Southland Baptist Church, home-base for much of the San Angelo’s work with the Texas Hunger Initiative. In fact, San Angelo was targeted for our road trip largely due to the good work of Carol Rigby Hiebert and Mary Herbert with the Texas Hunger Initiative in San Angelo. Tonight’s visit entailed clean-up crew for Southland’s VBS program, after a hearty meal of hot dogs and potato chips. I, Bethel, tried discreetly to sneak in some carrots from the Downtown Art Market in Lubbock to munch on for dinner – which satisfied my initial hunger until we settled into our new home for the next couple of days at the Baptist Memorial Retirement Home. Yes, we basked in the glorious accommodations of a retirement home while in San Angelo. God and his hospitality can be quite charming.

Cowboy Bob, a real West Texan cowboy.

Day Seven: Monday morning we head to Rust Street Ministries and meet Cowboy Bob, a true West Texan cowboy. His real name is Bob Knox, also the director of Rust Street Ministries. Cowboy Bob tells us that RSM is a social service agency run out of a converted warehouse, distributing food (including fresh produce from the Garden of Eden), clothing, furniture and good cheer to all who come through the doors. First things first, our time starts with a devotion and sharing of fresh peaches, brought in by a neighbor. Next, a tour and then to work. A few of the gals stayed up front meeting with folks who came in for assistance, while the rest of us sorted clothing in the free store collection area. We were also able to scour the racks for some farm-work clothes while in McAllen – which inevitably led to much plaid and pearl-snaps as well as tattered jeans.

Lunch line at Fort Concho Kids Eat site.

Around lunchtime, we headed to historic Fort Concho for Kids Eat, a summer feeding site in San Angelo. In San Angelo, the summer lunch program is coordinated by churches in the community, not through the school district or a food bank. Volunteers from various churches join together to make sure food is freely available to all in the community – especially kids – who need it. Cowboy Bob emphasizes the necessity of an ecumenical approach towards serving community – no church can be the body of Christ alone. Rather than helping service lunch, we are free to greet and eat with kids and their families. Much to the chagrin of the Road Trippers, lunch consisted of a hot dog and beans. Two consecutive days of hot dog meals conjured up images from Food, Inc., and our time at the Farm in Waco – and more questions about the state of our food system.

at the Garden of Eden with Cowboy Bob.

After lunch, we visited the Garden of Eden, a community garden coordinated by Cowboy Bob. In its first season, the Garden of Eden was established by a plea to a local church from Cowboy Bob to start a garden – and $15,000 was raised to sow and reap. Of all the okra and melons and more grown, 50% of the produce is donated to the Rust Street Ministries to distribute to community folks. A number of folks from the neighboring low-income senior housing units help provide a good amount of labor to keep the garden growing even in the midst of the West Texas dry heat. Additional support is provided by area Master Gardeners on Monday nights, when the gardeners gather together.

Sunrise at the Conch Valley Farmers Market.

Day Eight: Another early morning. Local wisdom informed us that the Concho Valley Farmers Market sells out fast – so we had to the market opening at 7am to find fresh produce for our meal later that evening. Carol Hiebert guides us through the market, where we acquire fresh figs, peaches, red onions, sweet corn, elephant garlic, beets, bell peppers, and summer squash. I made a side purchase of amaranth seed from a lovely lady saving and selling seeds from her own garden.

at the Daily Bread Soup Kitchen.

From the Farmers Market we made our way to serve at the Daily Bread Soup Kitchen at Wesley United Methodist Church. Little did we know that we were to be the sole staff preparing the meal this noonday’s lunch. Starting with leftovers, we reheated enchiladas, greens, and rolls, then set to the task of making salad, spaghetti, and sweet tea. Daily Bread also has a relationship with the local Olive Garden, which donates extra soup. Today’s soup du jour: minestrone. No one is refused food. Seconds are freely given. Under the tutelage of hard workin’, tough lovin’ Pam, we managed to feed all who walked through the door, while pausing for a devotion and hymn-sing led by a neighbor in the midst of the lunch-feedin’ fury. Before leaving, a donation of fresh summer squash arrived from Rust Street Ministries, and we began to prep for tomorrow’s meal.

Dutch oven cookin' with Cowboy Bob.

As a brief interlude, we went back to Fort Concho to meet with Cowboy Bob for a tour – and some down-home cookin’. Dutch oven peach cobbler, made in under the sweltering heat of the West Texas sun. (Interesting fact: many of the African-Americans in San Angelo are descendents of Buffalo Soldiers who defended Fort Concho).

the Finished Product: peach cobbler.

Mildly exhausted, we traveled back to the retirement home to meet with fellow residents (of the young variety), Sarah and Jeremy Boucher – former Go Now missionaries now working with Kathy Waller and her husband, Terry, who started the organization Water for All. Sarah, Jeremy and Kathy shared their stories – travels and travails – of doing the work of the Lord in many places around the world – now for Water for All, which hand-digs and installs wells for increasing access to water in small communities. When they are not in the mission field, their home-base is San Angelo, where they attempt to live simply in order to avoid debt and other pitfalls that would chain them down to comfortable American lifestyles. Instead, they hope to be free to the possibilities to serve whenever and wherever they feel God calling.

Local dinner at Carol and Tommy's.

Our final event for the day was hosted in the home of Tommy and Carol Rigby-Hiebert, gracious hosts of our time in San Angelo and members of Southland Baptist Church. The gals gathered and crafted our meal from the local fixins we picked up from the farmers market that morning, supplemented by local Mikulik sausage. Along with an education of what real food looks and tastes like, the gals were increasing in their capacity to prepare a wonderfully delicious dinner: corn on the cob, beet and beet green salad tossed in peanut sauce, onion-pepper-squash sautee, local sausage, and fresh fruit dessert of cantaloupe and yellow watermelon.

A slice of Utopia: chocolate pie at Lost Maples Cafe.

Day Nine: A good nights rest, and then we packed up for our official day-off: a trip to the hill country en route to San Antonio. We stopped for lunch in Utopia, TX, at the Lost Maples Cafe where we enjoyed slices of home-baked pies (chocolate, cherry and buttermilk), before an afternoon floating down the Frio River in Concan and an evening in a cabin at Neal’s Lodges.

End Day Nine. End Part Three.

Texas at the Table: Part One.

And So it Begins, with Five Fearless Feather-Pluckin’ Females:

at the Table in Waco, TX

Whilst in Waco, we – the lovely ladies of the Texas at the Table: Project Go Road Trip – harvested and gleaned both vegetables and stories with dirty-fingernail-ed farm-hands and business-suited theological-thinkers. Waco is the first stop on the Texas at the Table Road Trip to explore how people across Texas creatively address hunger in their communities – or more simply, exploring where food comes from, who gets it, and who doesn’t.

the World Hunger Relief Farm.

Day 0.5 (the evening of our first gathering – thus not the legitimate Day One in my play-book): The much arrival happens. Five fearless ladies convene – with parental units – on the World Hunger Relief Farm in Waco, TX. The parents step out of their comfortably AC-ed vehicles to be hit brazenly in the face by the Farm – the heat, the smell. Welcome. The gals are starting to question what they’ve gotten themselves into. And perhaps, so are their leaders. All meet and greet each other awkwardly. A short tour of the Farm is given – complete with instructions that this is a flush-free farm (only composting toilets) and the home they will be staying in does not have running water or electricity. Parents leave reluctantly – they have left their daughters to the care of a lady with a lip-loop and nose-ring and the other one has tattoos . . . Introductory awkwardness subsides and its dinnertime. Except that dinner must first be harvested. Kale. Swiss chard. Onions. Peppers. (Supplemented with Bethel’s peanut sauce and rice). This dinner is a strange experience (in addition to the heat and composting toilets) because: 1. These gals never really cook; and 2. They don’t ever really eat vegetables. Whataburger seems to be a staple dinner. Bethel (the leader with tattoos and braids – and also the leader with tattoos) begins to worry . . .

Sunflowers for CSA harvest at the World Hunger Relief Farm.

Day One: No rest for the weary – or the farmer. Devotions at the Farm start at 7am. Lucas Land -Truett grad and former Farm intern – leads a discussion of personal heresies and the Bible. Work chores are handed out. Most farm folks are working the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) harvest – the Farm supplies 60 families in the Waco-area with a week’s worth of fresh vegetables for 8 months a year, on a subscription basis. CSA is just one model of direct-to-consumer farm marketing allowing farmers to know that what is planted has a home once out of the field, creating a relationship between farmers and those who eat the food the farmer grows. All that to say, the Go Now-ers jumped into harvesting bouquets of basil, counting cucumbers and eventually bundling sunflowers for shares. After moving the chickens in their portable coop-mobiles, designed to rotate the chickens to fresh pasture – which leads to eggs richer in beta-carotene and omega 3 and 6 fats, all part of a healthy, balanced diet. After a farm-family lunch, Farmer Jes talked with the gals about raw milk as the gals washed eggs freshly collected from our clucking lady-friends. The Farm manages a Grade A Raw Goat Milk dairy – containing the healthy bacteria that aids in digestion for even those who are lactose-intolerant.

the Lorena stove over which our meal was cooked.

Without a siesta, the real work for the day begins. Making dinner. From scratch. Over a wood-burning Lorena stove. Without running water. With meat that must be caught and killed before eaten. This is no simple task for five young ladies not used to cooking, let alone with modern day appliances – and in the heat of the day. Two roosters were caught by Dani and Chelsea, who were brave enough to volunteer for the slaughter.

An education in chicken butchering with farmers Lucas and Bethel.

Necks were slit (albeit with a dull knife) and the birds were bled out and plucked, while the rest of the gals gathered garden vegetables and pumped water from a well. Four hours later, a simple meal of chicken and rice with greens was prepared and placed on the table for all to eat. Delicious to all except those still smelling chicken feathers beneath their nails. With bellies brimming with fresh eats and tasty meats, the gals ended their evening with a showing of Food, Inc. – posing even more questions in already wearied and worried minds.

Our made-from-scratch meal at the Farm.

Day Two: Rising with the sun in time for devotions at the Farm, all are a bit slower than Day One. Yet the gals are able to drag themselves to a meeting with Beth Kilpatrick and Jeremy Everett of the Texas Hunger Initiative – aiming to end hunger in Texas by 2015 through collaborative community organizing. Jeremy shared about the role of grassroots organizing hand-in-hand with political advocacy in ending hunger in communities – while highlighting Gospel passages to inform the work we do. Beth also shared a clip from Rush Limbaugh and his comments about the federal Summer Feeding Program which provides a free meal to youth ages 18 and under, covering the gap in the free and reduced lunch program that continues throughout the school year. Please listen to the clip – and share your own comments.

Summer meal site in East Waco.

After those parting words from Rush, Jeremy and Beth, we ventured to Wesley United Methodist Church in East Waco to experience a summer feeding site firsthand. We met with Reverend Valda Jean Combs and a representative from the Waco ISD Nutrition Program. Waco is a unique place when it comes to summer feeding – Waco ISD writes the program into the budget, ensuring that a number of trained cafeteria workers are employed throughout summer to deliver hot meals to the summer feeding sites throughout the city. Host sites need only open their doors. Wesley UMC is unique in that Reverend Valda has organized a summer day camp in addition to providing transportation to the church. In an effort to encourage families to eat together, the McLennan County Hunger Coalition subsidizes adults to eat with their children.

Hot lunch provided by Waco ISD at Summer Feeding Site.

From Wesley UMC, we met with Phylixcia Moore and her uncle Vernon Clark to discuss the role of urban agriculture in providing healthy, nutritious food in communities experiencing supermarket redlining as well as increased rates of diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure. Phylixcia is now a sophomore at Prairie View A&M studying agriculture. While in high school, she headed the garden at Carver Park Baptist Church in East Waco, selling produce to the church for community meals as well as donating to food pantries. After Phylixcia had shared her story, her uncle Vernon asked a large question of the Go Now gals: How is the work you are doing and seeing maintaining poverty or attempting to resolve it? This question helped frame a number of the projects we were to encounter on the road.

From East Waco, we trekked to a variety of gardens throughout Waco – at churches and at schools – as I, Bethel, shared about my work as an agrarian social worker with the Heart of Texas Urban Gardening Coalition. We stopped at Homestead Heritage, another Christian farm in the area, for ice cream (my favorite being sorghum pecan) before heading back to the Farm to make pizza with farm fresh ingredients and resting before hitting the road to Lubbock.

Making pesto for pizza with fresh-gathered basil.

End Day Two. End Part One.

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.

the Waste-Not Wagon.

God bless y'all for your support and prayers. as a small renegade on the farm have acquired a bus. i introduce to you the Waste-Not Wagon.



Vision of the Wagon

To bring together neighbors near and far who believe that another Way is possible.

Mission of the Wagon

* Empower communities to become food- and resource-secure
* Support communities to improve health and well-being through growing food
* Encourage communities to share local resources
* And above all, love God through loving neighbors.

Become a Wagoneer

We Wagoneers need all the help the Lord is willing to offer. Hospitality. Prayer. Agricultural and Engineering experience. Stories. Book recommendations. Garden tools. Saved seeds. And friends along the Wagon trail. As Wendell Berry said, “Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it.” And if the Lord has blessed you with monetary abundance, please share. If not with us, with your neighbor.

For information on the projects we will have on the Wagon and to find out how to help, visit our website: http://wastenotwagon.wordpress.com.


love, the raggedy wagoneer.

the "pen-ultimate"

Hello all from one of the newest farm members!!! My name is Nicholas Waters, Idaho native, and grass fed; I come to Texas with my amazing wife Molly Scott Waters and am so excited to be on the farm...I am learning so much with each passing day. The ins-and-outs of bee-keeping details: queens, bee-space, drones, workers, broods, capped-honey, swarming; how to prune and side dress tomato vines; goat milking, and the differences between a larva and nymph, as they relate to complete and incomplete insect metamorphoses.

However, amidst all the newness (of schedule, surroundings, knowledge, responsibilities, friends, community, and cockroaches) there has been one meditation in my heart that has remained constant, and seems to be growing in my heart: that of the "penultimate." The penultimate refers to "that which comes right before the last." i.e. "the penultimate chapter of the book." So, in my estimation, it is a thing which is probably quite important (in that it is leading up to the ultimate, or conclusion), but it, in and of itself, is not the end.

And so, being on the farm and not only thinking about the importance of sustainable agriculture, organics, local-food production, but believing in it and being a part of it, I am even more resolved that these things are not the ultimate...they are "penultimate"...in a certain sense. Are we living, dying, and putting our ultimate hopes in these things? Do we entrust our very souls and spirits to them? May it never be so.

"For since the creation of the world His invisible attribute are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful , but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man...[they] exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creation rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen" -Romans 1:20-25

The ultimate is God, and our "worship" should be directed to Him alone (an object or being of worship is that which we profess to be of ultimate worth...and as God is of ultimate worth, He is the only thing of worth, for everything else of worth: goodness, truth, love, and purity, flow from Him) . So, Jesus may you direct our hearts, our minds, our lives toward things that bring you glory. May you lead our minds and efforts towards things that you are blessing. May Jesus have the glory, honor, fame, and praise that is due His name!!!

In Christ,
Nicholas