The Briar Philosopher - Farming by Faith (In Honor of National FFA Week)

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My grandpa planted by the moon – not moonlight mind you but the signs and phases of the moon.  He explained it all to me – Taurus or Capricorn for root crops, Leo and Virgo for weeding and plowing.  It was fascinating but I must admit I was too young to really understand it all at the time.  But I did understand that he believed in it.  For him, it was a matter of faith.  I don’t really know if it worked better than any other method, but I do know that I helped him wash enough canning jars after Granny died to believe that there just might be something to it.  

Grandpa loved telling me things about farming.  Maybe that was because I was interested in it and none of the other grandkids really seemed to be.  He used to bring me bugs too – praying mantis and jar flies and devils darning needles (we call them walking sticks today).  He’d explain which ones were good for the garden and which ones weren’t and why.  I used to love seeing him walking down the road from his house to ours.  I never knew what I going to get to see and learn.

Grandpa died when I was eight years old.  He left me his old blanket-lined denim coat and his worn-out black Stetson.  No child could have been more honored if she’d been given a pot of gold and her very own castle.  I used to put them on and go bug hunting.  Of course, I mostly carried the hat and had to pin up the sleeves on the coat or I wouldn’t have been able to see or pick up anything I might find.  I’m not sure what happened to them over the years, but I still never see a black Stetson or a blanket-lined coat without thinking about him.

Grandpa also taught me about beekeeping, whittling, and how to witch water with a forked peach tree switch (I liked that a lot better than its other uses). But those are things for other stories.  This one’s about farming and faith.

Myself, I’ve always grown things – large gardens, small gardens, tomatoes in flower pots – anything I could depending on how much space and soil I could get my hands on or my feet into at any given time.  I’ve always been a lot more haphazard with my plantings and reapings than Grandpa was, not always having time to pay attention to the moon, worrying more about the sun and the rain.  Someday, when I run out of words to write, I’m going to do it his way and my way.  I have enough land now for two gardens and I’d like to do one of each just to see what happens.  I’m bettin’ on Grandpa myself.

I was raised on a farm outside Sand Gap.  We grew 80% of what we ate and a field of tobacco for a cash crop. We plowed with an old mule named Laurie and later with horses.  We planted, weeded, thinned and hoed by hand.  It was hard work and a hard life but I wouldn’t trade it for anything now.  I remember being tired, sore, blistered and dirty.  I also remember what I learned about patience, perseverance, effort and faith, not to mention how good a fresh ear of corn or a vine ripe tomato tastes when you’ve known it since it was a seed.

In the Bible, in Matthew I believe, Jesus spoke of seeds saying that if one had the faith of a mustard seed they could move mountains.  

In my life, and I suspect in the life of a lot of farmers, faith and seeds have always been connected to one another.  I don’t know about the big farmers – those with fields so vast and machinery so huge and high-tech that their feet rarely touch the earth.  Maybe they don’t farm by faith – just be theory and science and equations.

There are many more acres under cultivation by these “Agribusiness men” these days than there used to be.  Unfortunately the small farm is becoming a thing of the past.  But anybody out there who’s nursing that old tractor through one more season and praying that the rains come when they need them and stop when they don't knows exactly what “farming by faith” means.

More often than not that faith has been rewarded with tangible things that come in bushels and bales and wagon loads – things that represent another year’s bounty and mean the bills will get paid, the children fed and maybe even an education paid for.

Then there are the intangible rewards.  It may be these things, these little miracles, that keep farmers going back to the field year after year, through bountiful harvests and lean ones, as much as the money to be made there.

Many folks spend their whole lives waiting and watching for a miracle.  I don’t know what they’re looking for or where they’re looking.  Miracles are all around us everyday.  It has always been impossible for me to stand in a newly plowed and planted field when that first spring rain hits the earth and not believe in miracles.  That scent that rises up, that scent made of seed and sun and soil and rain, is full of life and hope, of the mystery of turning seasons and the miracle of new beginnings.

Grandpa taught me that too, not in those words of course.  What he taught me was to pay attention.  Grandpa didn’t believe God existed.  He knew that God existed.  But then Grandpa wasn’t looking for a God to solve his problems or to blame for them.  For Grandpa, God was right there making things grow and Grandpa was right there having faith that they would.

And when he planted the seeds fell from his hand like a prayer.