FOOD FROM THE FIELD

Food from the Field

Yesterday I had the privilege and pleasure to pick up my first foodbox of the harvest. I joined a food farm co-operative this summer and each week we receive a portion of the bounty from the fields.

When we arrived at the farm we couldn’t locate the farmer (it was our first time and we had forgotten to bring a bag or box!). We followed voices that we heard from behind the farmhouse. There in the field my farmer friend and her farmer husband tried in vain to round up their lambs.

Watching the lambs scamper up and down the hills reminded me of how we humans follow each other and not the Shepherd. We ask for advice from friends instead of seeking God’s.

How easy it is to follow man’s advice – to do the normal thing, to be one of the crowd. Remember how in the book of Job, Job asked advice from three of his friends. Then Job said:

“But my brothers are fickle as a gulch in the desert
— one day they’re gushing with water
From melting ice and snow
cascading out of the mountains,
But by midsummer they’re dry,
gullies baked dry in the sun” (Job 15, The Message).

It reminded me, too, of Craig Groeschel’s book Weird, how Normal isn’t Working.

Can we, as Christians, be different from the crowd?

Choosing to buy from a local farmer is, for me, choosing to be different. The amount of produce is uncertain – as all depends on God.

The quality may not be supermarket perfect (protected with pesticides or waxed or shelf-life extended) but neither are we. And yet everything belongs to God and He considers us special.

That night as I returned with my bounty, I joyfully washed my greens and cut my radishes; extruded my garlic; washed the kale and the garlic tops; washed and cut the strawberries and rhubarb. Then I stir-fried my kale and baked my garlic tops; and baked a strawberry-rhubarb crumble for dessert.

What a feast we had as we added only rainbow trout and beans!

As I set the table with the flowers from the farmers’ field I felt blessed to be a part of God’s creation.