Monday

I woke up late. 7:40. I was supposed to be there at 8. I threw my clothes on and ran out the door without doing my hair or brushing my teeth. Awesome. I was about 45 minutes late and felt really bad but when I pulled into the long gravel drive way I saw two men smiling as if caring weren't worth there time. Jeff and Fred. Jeff greeted me and started explaining his philosophy to me. He said that farming, working with a flock, is like leading a church. He said that today we would learn about the slow processes of pastoring.

We walked through a field of high grass towards a mobile chicken coop. Jeff told me that he and Fred had already collected the eggs but when we got there more had been laid. We picked up the eggs, gave the chickens water and feed and moved on to the turkeys. The turkeys just needed their coop moved over a fresh patch of grass.

People started showing up slowly after that. One by one they would mosey (quite literally) onto the field; one holding a cat, the next telling jokes from afar. After a while we went and looked at the pigs while Jeff hypothesized about the best way to move the turkey fence. Fred whistled and all of the turkeys ran under a coop. They had no idea what the noise was and instinctually hid. We moved the fence so the turkeys would have new grazing grass. All of the animals were free-range. It was beautiful.

We had tea and shared a morning devotional. The pastors joked about swear words and wine (most of them were Lutheran) and we ate homemade muffins and prayed brief but wonderful prayers.

A tractor was pulled near the house and we all jumped on the trailer. We ended up at a large garden cleaning up rotten and near rotten produce, sampling the romaine and banana peppers along the way. We loaded gourds and cucumbers and tomatoes and squash onto the trailer and took it back to the pigs. They lovingly accepted our offering and feasted until it was gone.

In the afternoon we had quiet time and then met together. We discussed a Wendell Berry article about the necessity of home and farmings dependence on new and exhaustible resources. Jeff encouraged us to replace the word "farm" with the word "church" in the Berry essay. It worked quite well. We talked about what home meant to us and what it might mean to have a church home.

My favorite memory of the day was during lunch. We were eating a wonderful beef stew when one of the pastors asked, in jest, "So Jeff, who are we eating." Jeff looked off in the distance for a moment. He turned his head, smiled and said, "Bruno." He wasn't joking. He had raised Bruno. He'd given him a name, knew his identity, and was now using Bruno to sustain his own life and to share with others so that they, too, can partake in the blessing of his flesh. We thanked God for Bruno.