Today is turkey D-Day. About 40 birds will be prepared for the Thanksgiving Day table… in other words butchered. Tomorrow about 40 more will meet their maker and become someone’s dinner. I recently “talked” on facebook with a friend of mine from Fort Hood and shared about my transition to farmatarianism, eating only meat that you know personally. I was a vegetarian for eight years. I wasn’t a really good vegetarian, whatever that means. I was more concerned about the way meat was produced and what was in it. I was also concerned about the effects of excessive meat consumption on our bodies and the planet. I wasn’t concerned that animals should never be killed for food.

Anyway… it was probably strange for my friend to hear that I would be helping slaughter some 80 birds and what’s more I would happily eat them given the chance. I still don’t eat a lot of meat. It’s not often an option at the farm, but when it is I appreciate the life of the animals that we eat. Our turkeys are free range in every sense of that word. They roam free all day, foraging for food and stretching their legs. Our goats and cows also spend the majority of their time in pastures eating their meals straight from the soil. That is worlds apart from how your Big Mac or even grocery store meat is produced.

So, every year Cargill (God bless ‘em!) donates about 100 turkeys to the farm along with their bedding and feed. We raise them and sell them for Thanksgiving and Christmas. We could ruminate on why Cargill would donate these birds to a farm that teaches methods of agriculture directly opposed to large industrial-scale production. Perhaps it’s a form of penance, an attempt at reaching some sort of redemption. Perhaps someone in the company has a subversive ironic streak. Regardless, it is a good things for these birds and the people that buy them.

Clearly, these turkeys have been bred for one thing and one thing only… meat. These are dumb animals. These birds see a large predator (aka me or Edwina, the wayfaring farm dog) and think to themselves, “Hey let’s all go check that out! Guys come over here! Look a predator! Let’s all go say hi!” Needless to say they would not last long in the wild. Unfortunately they also don’t last that long on the farm. One turkey randomly had a heart attack one day and became dinner. It seems they are looking for ways to die. Apparently it is not really true that turkeys can drown from looking up at the rain, but they’re so dumb it seem plausible.

Barbara Kingsolver’s account of trying to get her turkeys to reproduce and hatch eggs is a riot. The reason industrial turkey sex is so funny is because it simply does not happen. Imagine a couple of full grown adults who are supposed to be well versed in the birds and the bees, stumbling over what’s what and what goes where like a couple of pimply teenagers. Add to the lack of knowledge the fact that these guys are bread to be a tub o’ meat on toothpicks. They are no longer physiologically shaped for reproduction. In case this hasn’t been made abundantly clear let me say it. The turkeys you buy in the store do not have sex. They all have to be artificially inseminated in order to reproduce. That in itself is not humane.

There are heritage breed wild turkeys out there that you can buy. Those guys are smart and they know how to have sex. So, think about the life of turkeys this holiday season when you’re sticking that Butterball in the oven or deep fryer. Support turkey sex and happy turkeys this year and buy your bird from a farmer.

Texas at the Table was a gathering of local, state and national leaders to coordinate efforts to end hunger in Texas by 2015. Lots of people in suits (me NOT included) gathered at Baylor University to launch a Food Policy Roundtable that will tackle this issue. This gathering was organized by the Texas Hunger Initiative and included Todd Staples Texas Commissioner of Agriculture, Max Finberg Director of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships USDA and Julie Paradis Administrator for Food and Nutrition Services (to name the big wigs). There were also plenty of little wigs there today. Many folks I know from Waco and other non-profits working on sustainable food and hunger issues.

Here are some statistics I found most enlightening:

• Texas is now the 2nd hungriest state in United States (according to most recent USDA report 2009)
• 50% of people in the SNAP program (formerly food stamps) work full time
• Only 50% of eligible people participate in the SNAP program in Texas
• $4 billion in benefits goes untouched in Texas alone
• 70% of USDA budget is allocated to Assistance programs

I’ll start with the positives and then get cranky.

It was awesome to see so many people from so many diverse organizations, agencies, churches and faiths (one Muslim representative from Houston) gathered together for a common goal. All of the politicians said the right things and we all applauded at the appropriate moments. Clapping for cliches does not make change, but it does rally the troops and inspire people. Jeremy Everett of the Texas Hunger Initiative did a great job of putting a human face on hunger and clearly pointing out that the resources are already available and allocated to do the job. Camille Miller from Texas Health Institute did a good job asking us to put a face on hunger and pointing out where some of the gaps are in our knowledge and network.

Waco’s Mayor Dupuy recently visited Saudi Arabia and found that they had a food reclamation program that curbed food waste in their country. Why can’t we do that in the United States? We have a great mayor in Waco!

Baylor, as always, does it up fancy. They pulled out the good china for this event and touted a menu all from local Texas farmers. Unfortunately these local farmers remained anonymous and I cannot corroborate what local meant in this particular meal. Texas is a big state and if everything in Texas counts as local we might as well stick with California produce. I requested the vegetarian entree and almost shrieked when I saw the ASPARAGUS on my plate… in November… in Texas! This was wrong on so many levels, particularly considering the event’s claim to support local farmers. It was also disconcerting to see the coffee labeled “free trade” when they clearly meant “fair trade.” I applaud Baylor’s steps to start efforts to compost and reclaim food waste on campus, but there is clearly a long way to go for them to grasp the full concept and implications of sustainability.

This highlights the need to be on our toes to spot the difference between appearance and reality. Even well-meaning people using terms like “local” and “sustainable” need to be held accountable and educated about the reality.

As I said, Todd Staples said all the right things. There was one question I wanted to ask him. He touted the agricultural products of Texas. We’re #1 in cattle, of course, and cotton and mohair. The problem is we can’t eat cotton and mohair. We also know what kind of beef our corn-fed cattle are producing and it’s part of the problem. What is the Texas Department of Agriculture doing to encourage more fruit and vegetable production from small diversified farms in the state? If you’re reading this Commissioner Staples, just reply in the comments.

The breakout session on local food access was very good. I asked a question about better connections between Texas Agrilife and folks who are trying to do urban/community gardening, but don’t have any gardening or agriculture skills. This is a barrier for a lot of people and the A&M extension system could be a great resource for those people to get the help, knowledge and training they need. Unfortunately the system is not set up or able to do that the way it is currently. The emphasis is different in each county. Agents, particularly in urban counties are more likely trained in turf grass and landscaping. They need to also help the urban and community gardening people.

Finally, John Garland had the best quote about food deserts.

In the Rio Grande Valley people have to drive 20 miles to get to a grocery store. They drive through miles of land producing food to get to that grocery store.

I’m excited about the possibilities, but there is a lot of work and a long road ahead of us just to accomplish something that should already be happening. Let’s get busy.

photo from Boggy Creek Farm Austin, TX.

I can’t help trying to find puns for the titles of posts. I apologize.

We are back from Houston where I helped the Texas Hunger Initiative with a workshop at the BGCT’s Stream event. Here’s the back of my head in the photo at the left talking to a fellow Truett grad after the workshop.

What was most fun about the trip was getting to bring my family along and seeing Houston with them. We hung out for an afternoon at the Discovery Green across from the convention center. They have an awesome exhibit of 50 globes with different themes related to global warming. Tuesday we went to Hermann Park for a couple hours and enjoyed the playgrounds and a really nice urban park. We were too exhausted to visit the Japanese garden at the end of our walk.

I was already antsy driving in to the nation’s 4th largest city, but the green spaces made it all better for me. Urban centers are not going away any time soon. So, it seems crucial that we spend a good amount of energy greening them up.

The Justice Project is the latest book in the Emergent line from Baker Books. I think it’s important that a movement often accused of some sort of absolute moral relativism has come out with a book about justice. It’s also important that many of the voices in the book are not well known and many translated from Spanish. The book has a lot going for it.

Brian Mclaren starts out the book with an important caveat about the difficulty of defining justice. This notoriously difficult concept has troubled humanity at least since Socrates came up empty searching for a good definition. All Socrates found was a lot of people who thought they knew what justice was, but didn’t. They claimed knowledge that they didn’t have. It seems we haven’t come so far after all.

My favorite chapter, of course, was “Just Countryside: How Can Justice ‘From the Roots Up’ Affect Life in Rural Areas?” by Sarah Ferry. While many of the other chapters touched on problems with climate change, environmental degradation and the need for creation care, this chapter got closest to answering the question why. Taking care of our planet doesn’t make much sense unless we understand why. Unfortunately I think a lot of people that see the need to take care of the planet believe that others will intuitively understand why this is important if they can show them the devastation. Again unfortunately, I don’t think that this is often the case. We are so far detached in our understanding of ourselves as creatures subject to the limitations and laws of nature that it is difficult for many to make the connection between the planet and themselves.

The biggest downside I see is that the scope is just too big. Most of the chapters are only 5-7 pages. Each chapter has an important element to add to the concept of justice in the Christian tradition, but just about the time you start getting into that particular issue the chapter is over. Most of the book, therefore, only remains at the very surface of justice, never dwelling long enough on any one element to go deeper. One might argue that this is an introduction to the project of justice in the world. Introductions are necessary, I suppose. It just feels like too much of the conversation about justice never moves beyond the surface. That is why I still hear Christian musicians encouraging people at their shows to sponsor a child with a certain organization that will remain unnamed. This book points us beyond the surface, but it never quite goes there. Each chapter and topic deserves an entire book to explore the implications.

While perhaps the title is a little hyperbolic, this is a needed book with many new voices.

For my stalkers here’s where I will be so you can secretly snap pictures of me with your spy pen.

• November 15-17 Stream (Part of BGCT Conference) Workshop with Texas Hunger Initiative
• November 19 Texas at the Table Hunger Summit at Baylor (Keynote: Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture)
• December 9-11 ECHO Agriculture Conference Fort Myers, FL

Will definitely blog the Vilsack keynote. I will try to take good notes at ECHO as well. It will be my first time to the great state of oranges and Disney.

Exodus 23:14-19 Three times in the year you shall hold a festival for me. You shall observe the festival of unleavened bread; as I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt.

No one shall appear before me empty-handed.

16 You shall observe the festival of harvest, of the first fruits of your labour, of what you sow in the field. You shall observe the festival of ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labour. ¹⁷Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God.

18 You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, or let the fat of my festival remain until the morning.

19 The choicest of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God.

You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.

Setting aside the weirdo who made sure to cook a baby goat in the milk from its own mother for a second, let’s consider the appointed festivals. This passage appoints three main festivals that the Israelites should celebrate. The feast of unleavened bread, or Passover, commemorated their liberation from slavery in Egypt. This was a springtime feast. The feast of first fruits celebrates the first of the harvest, around August sometime I would guess. The feast of ingathering would then be some time in October when the growing season ended.

I could look up more information on these festivals and their meaning in Jewish ritual religion, but you can use Google as well as I can. What I’m more interested in is how in tune to nature and agriculture the rhythms of these festivals are. They occur at natural times when you would celebrate the first harvest, the end of the growing season and the first planting. If those are already good occasions to celebrate (and they are) why not include God in them? It’s easy for us to miss how close to the land, natural rhythms and agriculture the readers and writers of the Bible were because our lives are so far removed from that connection.

It is often mentioned that the first fruits and sacrifices were to be the best of the harvest and best of the livestock. I’ve often heard this used to say that we shouldn’t hold anything back from God, but give our very best. What we seem to miss is a more agrarian reading. What does it mean for a farmer to give a lamb without blemish or choicest fruits? Since the discovery of evolutionary biology, we know that this is a crazy sacrifice. This means giving up the very best genetics in your herd or crop. Farmers have practiced breeding and seed-saving for centuries and they know how important it is to select the best genetics to save.

By asking for the “choicest first fruits,” God is not trying to keep the farmer down. Instead God reminds us that we are not the authors and creators of those choicest genes. We can trust the Creator of those genetics to continue to provide. Just as in the Sabbath commands, we are reminded that it does not all depend on us.

The Story of B opened my eyes to a linguistic problem that reveals some truth about the way we read and perceive history. We tell the story of history beginning with the rise of agriculture. Everything before the rise of agriculture is referred to as “prehistory.” That can be taken to mean simply that this was a time before history was recorded or written down. In another more subtle way it belies the way we think about the kind of life and people that existed before agriculture. In a sense this was non-history, non-life and they are therefore non-people.

This was certainly part of what allowed colonizers and religious imperialists to conquer in the name of civilization. Savages and barbarians were not real people. Their ways of life, thinking and relating could not possibly be anything more than animalistic instincts and perhaps demonic deception. They were primitive people who had not yet been blessed by the advances of civilization, progress and technology. There was nothing to learn from these people and everything to teach them.

I don’t mean to romanticize tribal civilizations by any means. There are harsh realities that come with another vision for the way the world works. But this is exactly what they offer in response to the failures of our technocratic society, another vision of the world.

In this other vision of the world, human beings are subject to the same rules and limitations as the rest of creation. The way we order our lives is based on living in harmony with the natural rhythms of the world. This includes the natural process of life and death. We are not as much in control of nature as we are subject to it. As mentioned in the previous post, this means there are tradeoffs concerning the population that the planet can sustain and how we move away from our current destructive practices. What this other vision offers is a refocusing and reorientation of the way we think about the problems we face, their sources and causes.

I don’t know that hunter-gatherer societies offer a viable solution for the near future. What they do offer is an alternative vision and a challenge to the modern myth of progress that has brought us to the brink of disaster. Perhaps they can help us find a path forward, if we have ears to hear and eyes to see.

This is the continuation of a series exploring basic assumptions about agriculture, history and our relationship to creation: The Original Sin of Agriculture Part I, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

Matthew 12:9-14 He left that place and entered their synagogue; a man was there with a withered hand, and they asked him, ‘Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath?’ so that they might accuse him. He said to them, ‘Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.’ Then he said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and it was restored, as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.

Here again, as in the previous passage, Jesus is not doing away with Sabbath, but instead challenging our understanding of Sabbath. Personally I bristle at the statement Jesus makes, “How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! ” That is so anthropocentric! Isn’t this part of what has brought us to this place? We think that we are the pinnacle of creation and that somehow makes exempt from the laws of nature. We don’t have to deal with the repercussions of the way we treat the earth because somehow we’re more important than sheep and animals.
Well, as always, it would serve us well to read the Bible in context. The original hearers would certainly not have read (or heard) that into the text. They were agrarian people who depended on the land. Jesus in fact points out that saving an animal on the Sabbath trumps the rules about resting precisely because the Sabbath is about life, not rules. So, this passage might actually be highlighting the dependence of human beings on creation. It’s our modern mind that reads such a technocratic elitist idea into the text.
Perhaps Jesus’ words about the value of human beings is also to point out the inhumane way in which people treated other people, the sick, the lame, the blind, etc. Jesus restores humanity to the man with the withered hand by rightly relating people to each other and to the Sabbath. Remember that the Sabbath commands are about economics and ecology, our relationship to the earth and to each other. In other words, Jesus says, “You would break Sabbath in order to be rightly related to that which you depend on for sustenance. Recognize that you depend equally on being rightly related to your fellow human being. This is the meaning of Sabbath.”

I’ve been interested in getting a tattoo for a while. I couldn’t tell you exactly why. Piercings and tattoos mark rites of passage for a lot of people my age. The main things holding me back have been the price and finding the right tattoo. Since my wife recently got her nose pierced, I’ve been thinking more seriously about it.

Tattoos are an interesting phenomenon. Some happen on a whim. Some are intensely thought out and designed. Some are just meant to be cool or project an image. Some have deep meaning and significance. Some are ridiculous and silly. Some are thought provoking and intense. Some will need modification later on. Some will stand the test of time.

That last one is the one that interests me. What would I be willing to permanently etch in my flesh? What would I not regret 30 years from now? What will stand the test of time?

For me I think I’ve settled on a tree. It combines the things that I try to combine here on this blog, a love for God, a love for the earth and a love of real food. The tree as a symbol has a long history in the Christian tradition. The editors of the Green Bible put a tree on the cover, explaining that this is actually an ancient tradition in the church. The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil are central to the creation narrative. Psalm 1:3 says,

They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in season,
and their leaves do not wither.

I haven’t found the perfect tree yet or exactly where I want it. The one pictured is close, but I definitely want there to be color involved signifying life. I’ve never had any piercings or other tattoos and I’m not eager to get just anything. I do think that this is a mark I would always want and would never regret, a permanent reminder of my connection to the earth, to God and to my food.

Matthew 12:1-8 At that time Jesus went through the cornfields on the sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, ‘Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the sabbath.’ He said to them, ‘Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests. Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath the priests in the temple break the sabbath and yet are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice”, you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.’

Sabbath has been a pretty regular part of the conversation here about Food in the Bible. How do we read this passage in light of extending the sabbath to include the Sabbatical year (Deut 15) and Jubilee (Lev 25)? Or in light of the Sabbath being about remembering our place within the creation story?

I’ve read this passage in the past as another exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees (which it is) in which Jesus triumphs over those legalists showing them who’s boss. The sabbath is primarily about taking a day off and following the rules and Jesus is breaking the rules in order to show them how stupid their rules are. But this is not quite what’s happening is it?

Jesus is not getting rid of the sabbath. He’s reclaiming and redeeming it for its rightful purpose. He uses two examples from the Hebrew scripture (the only Bible around at the time) to show them that had missed the point of the sabbath. In fact, the disciples plucking heads of grain is reminiscent of the sabbatical command to allow the poor and wild animals to glean from the fields.

Jesus’ example of David taking the bread of the Presence when he was hungry reminds me of the way we treat the elements of communion. Denominations have different versions of the same thing. Basically the “bread” and “wine” are considered “holy” and off limits except during the particular ritual of the Eucharist. In some churches the bread and wine have to be finished off, poured down a particular drain or disposed of properly because of their sanctity.

In light of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 11 about divisions at the agape meal and his warning about taking communion unworthily which follows, he seems to imply that taking Eucharist unworthily means not sharing your food with the hungry. If that is the case then every time the elements (especially if it’s a loaf of real bread) are disposed of or gorged on by someone in order to fulfill the letter of some traditional ritual, we may be partaking unworthily of the Lord’s Supper. (further discussion will be shelved until we get to 1 Corinthians sometime in 2050).

Finally, Jesus reorients the understanding of sabbath by putting the commandments in light of God’s desire for “mercy and not sacrifice.” This is a helpful guiding principle for following Jesus and interpreting the Bible. If mercy is not the driving force and guiding principle then we will end up with empty legalism and broken relationships. Jesus identifies himself as “lord of the sabbath,” meaning not only over the particular command to rest on the sabbath day, but also over the command to let fields rest, to free slaves and return land, in essence over the equality and justice of the created order as God intended.