Advent

Today is the first Sunday in Advent in the Anglican cycle of seasons. During the coming weeks we will prepare for the celebration of remembrance of the coming of Jesus.

During our services today the children of our church sang the first verse of Silent Night and learned to sign it as they sang. It occurred to me that the joy of the Christmas season, as captured in the carols that we sing to celebrate the birth of Jesus, spends much of the church year waiting for the season when they can again be sung loud. The exuberance of expression that comes with the first singings of this season is wonderful.

I am not certain why this immense feeling of joy is not present throughout the year. Perhaps it is too great an emotion to sustain? I know, for myself that it does roll to the surface of my being whenever we baptise and welcome a new soul into the church and whenever we see off a soul who has gone to glory from our midst.

thinking of Robert Frost

Today the rain came. Not the rain that has visited us at the farm over the past couple of months, sometimes driving down, sometimes falling gently. Today it rained. Steady, steady, steady. The type of rain that Helly Hanson and Coast Mountain Equipment don't know how to build for. Rain that in a quarter hour will find every small seam of skin betwixt the hat and the hood, runnelling under the collar and down the back and front of a fellows body; rain that will run down an upraised glove and presto, before you know it the arm the hand hangs from is wet, and when that hand is down again that rain runs down that arm and the inside of the waterproof glove is wet too. Today the rain came.

I was thinking today of my thoughts yesterday on community and warming myself on the heat that comes to me from the church group that I attend weekly. That warmth brought to mind the observation that, as important as my faith is to me and as completely as it feeds me, it really expresses itself in the sublime moments of life where the religion that is both cradle and crucible of my faith is absent. A glance from a stranger, a sound, a creature moving through nature unaware that it is being observed. and most of all in depictions of life by the living.

Kent Haruf wrote two of what rank amongst my favorite books. Plainsong first and a couple of years later a sequel, Evensong.

Evensong ends with a most satisfying four paragraphs that I hope Mr. Haruf won't mind me reproducing here.

"And now, outside the house, beyond the silent room they sat in, the dark began to collect along the street.

And soon now the streetlamps would come on, flickering and shuddering, to illuminate all the corners of Holt.

And further away, outside of town, out on the high plains, there would be the blue yardlights shining from the tall poles at the isolated farms and ranches in all the flat treeless country, and presently the wind would come up, blowing across the open spaces, travelling without obstruction across the wide fields of winter wheat and across the ancient native pastures and the graveled country roads, carrying with it a pale dust as the dark approached and the nighttime gathered round.

And still in the room they sat together quietly, the old man with his arm around this kind woman, waiting for what would come."

How often do we see God in the wind? How often in our depictions of what came before and what is to come is the breath of life, God?

Community

I spent a good part of today reflecting on communities and the extent to which I am a part of same.

I've never been much of a people person and have long held my core family to be the central community in my life. My two daughters and my son. Of course I can't leave out the three women who have been married to me. One, number two, has passed on and we were divorced before that sad event, but she remains close to my heart. I can't leave out my sister and two half brothers though I have irregular contact with them. They are family in every sense and are a part of this core community. Mom, dad, two sets of grand parents, all gone on now, but all still here to be called on, to be turned to, in times of need, times of joy.

I am welcomed as a member of the community of my church and of our denomination here in BC and in Canada and throughout the world and that community feeds my soul's longings as no other could.

My boss out at the farm and his family, from the outset of our working relationship, worked hard to forge a deeper connection with me and mine than one might expect from an employer. This also is a community to which I belong.

As a citizen of this town, this province, this country I am a member of a community.

And as a citizen of this world...Pretty big group I belong to, who belong to me.

Not bad thought for a grey late November day at the farm.

Farm time

Four in the afternoon on a late November day and the day is done.

Today included a large chunk of what I like to refer to as, "farm time."

Around lunch time I headed off in the new Gator to see what the neighbour was doing to drain rain water off his newly developed fields. This would be about a fifteen minute round trip.

A Gator is a handy little six wheeled vehicle built by John Deere that we use for running around the farm. It has a pair of seats and a tilting box for carrying and dumping stuff. Also a very effective four wheel drive system.

Well, about a half mile up the back dike into the neighbour's I high centered the little beauty and that was that. A brisk walk found me back at the barn where I assembled the necessary chains and fired up the old Gator. A quick run back and careful positioning had me close enough to chain up the first vehicle with a view to hauling it out of the muck. A light touch on the gas was all that it took to cause the old Gator to slew around and, as had it predecessor, get truly stuck. An hour had now passed.

A somewhat slower walk back to the barn and then on to the far end of the farm got me to the EX60, our baby excavator. An hour later and I had it out on the dike with the two Gator's. I chained up the second one and dragged it about two hundred yards to firm ground then headed back and chained up the first and similarly dragged it. Those two operations took another hour.

I now drove the first Gator back to the barn then hiked back to the second and the excavator. Chained the second to the EX60 and used the 60 to haul it home.

All in the fifteen minute look-see took three and a half hours. Mind you, the weather was good. Farm time...

God and such thoughts

Another week gone by and winter has still not come on hard. Weather in the shoulder seasons has a major impact on life at the farm. There is a hunkering down and a slowing of the days that comes with the day in day out rain and cold of a deep west coast winter.

I have been listening to a Christian radio station for most of this week and am, as a Christian, shaken by the apocalyptic tone of their messaging. For me the heart of the bible is the stories of the life and message of Jesus Christ as remembered and told by the four Gospel writers. That message is, not surprisingly given the Jewish heritage of the authors of old, placed in the context of the scriptures of the Jewish people and is interpreted by writers like Paul and James and Peter. Conservative Christianity seems to have bypassed the message of the four gospels other than as illuminated by the interpreters Paul and John of Patmos. Similarly, the interpretations centered on the old testament rely almost exclusively on the Book of Daniel. The emphasis on reward and punishment, on us and them, on the exclusiveness of the gifts of the spirit, all of these seem most un-Christian to me.

As I believe in God, I also believe in each person being possessed of a soul. I do not know what soul is, as I do not know what God is. I do believe that a life lived shallowly has the effect of turning souls filled with untellable potential into withered, vestigial and, ultimately poisonous remnants. I come to this belief after following a life that has been shallow and careless and without many redeeming qualities. It seems to me that in grasping so firmly on the concepts of judgement and punishment the conservative Christians embrace a very surface interpretation of the message of God as presented in the life of Jesus. But, perhaps I am wrong...I have only been called back to my spiritual journey for a few years and my thoughts are not fully formed.

saving grace?

This is the south end of Pitt Lake which is about a kilometer north of the farm. A cool November day, though the clouds only settled in about mid-afternoon.

Trash cleanup continues at the farm and should be done by weeks end. Trash is the name given to the leaves and vines and weeds beaten free of the biomass when we harvest. It is amazing how much of it there is. I figure that we will take about six tons off the fields and out of the cleaning system this harvest. The benefits are two fold; first, removing this material through the harvest process takes nitrogen out of the biomass and second it beats up and floats off a lot of weeds that are still viable. Less weeds in the fields this fall, less weeds in the fields next year.

I have been following a murder trial, that is taking place on the prairies, in the news over the past week. Allegedly a twelve year old girl convinced her 25 year old boyfriend to murder her parents who didn't want them seeing each other anymore. While he was so engaged she is accused of murdering her little brother. A hell of a thing. If found guilty the 25 year old will get life with 20 years without a chance of parole. The girl, being a minor will get, I think, 3 years. I can only imagine how broken this child was to be complicit in this and cannot imagine how society will be able to restore her as she grows into adulthood. It is cases like this that lead a person like me, who does not especially believe in intercessionary prayer, to pray.

Season change

Winter is coming. A hard frost has cut down most of the leaves on the farm and turned those remaining a brilliant hue. The cycle of seasons has many stages. We are blessed to live in such a system as earth possesses.

filler

Thinking of canoeing today so I thought I would share a photo from earlier this year. Don't swim, don't fish and especially don't like lying on beaches, but give me a couple of hours in a canoe and the world becomes alright.
I spent the day yesterday listening to a Christian radio station while working the fields. I am suprised that some of these preachers aren't brought to task for human rights violations given the excessive nature of their interpretations of the Bible. It is a strange place, this world we Christians occupy.
Given the lateness of the year, the weather that we are having out at the farm is just great. November is the month with the highest rainfall in our neck of the woods. Not a drop for the past three days and temperatures up to fourteen degrees.

This and That

This and that; brings to mind Aldo Leopold's, "Sketches Here and There." One of my favorite writers.

What an end of week. Friday spent doing a lot of nothing at the farm and then off to the quack for a flu shot that somehow became a bleeding session to divine possible causes of the weight loss that accompanies every harvest. ...checking white blood cell count...now those are words to bring a chill to the spine. Oh well, tests give certainty to things, and are as often good news as bad. So, then home where younger daughter was sick. Back to the Doctor and a diagnosis of tonsillitis with the complicating factor of a bronchial infection. Poor little darling is sick as a dog.

The cycle of seasons ending with harvest always brings thoughts of how my faith expresses through my life to the fore front of my mind. As does illness in my kids. I often find myself envying those folks who are cursed with a load beyond anything that I think I could bear to carry and who maintain a positive and accepting demeanor. I lack such courage.

I suppose that I fear the unknown as much as anyone else. Being a Christian of the Anglican persuasion doesn't give as much comfort on that front as you might expect. The idea of hell has aways seemed out of place in a religion where all are saved though none are worthy of saving or possessed of the ability to earn salvation. The wondrous concept of grace. So, if no hell, why heaven? On this I remain a waiter. I shall see, or not, as the case may be. The question of reward seems to me to hardly have anything to do with the call transmitted through Jesus to live a certain life, in and with God. Mind you I am on a faith journey that has no accurate mileposts to give guidance to the distance travelled or that yet to be covered.

Well, enough of this, time to go and comfort...

After the Harvest

First frost reddens off cranberry vines and sets them into dormancy for the winter.

Harvest is over but as with everything in life the cleanup goes on for a couple of weeks after the last truck heads out. Pulling stakes, bringing in booms, winterizing the beaters and the elevator, putting the dump truck to bed for the winter...all the stuff that comes after the crop is off.

We are two years into a five year plan to take the farm from forty barrels an acre to one hundred and fifty. So far the plan is working out, though thinking incrementally over several years is somewhat frustrating. My berry count in late July projected seventy-six barrels and we came in at seventy-four. Pretty accurate but disappointing none the less. The pre-harvest anticipation always becomes a mish mash of hope and desire for more, though the plan is well founded and more will come in it's own time. The good Lord willing.

There are many benefits to working on a farm, not the least of which is having the time to reflect on the inexorable slowness of the cycles of the seasons.

There was a wonderful warmth to the day today that made the work go quickly and I kept looking up at the mountains and blue sky. A few dragonflies were out and a good number of late season bees. They will all be taken by the four degrees of frost we expect tonight.

I am amazed that nothing but bugs and people eat cranberries. They are such an elegant and nutritious little fruit.

Praying in the Harvest

What a bloody great run around setting this thing up. Oh well.

Harvest is in fact in for this year. Two hundred and ninety thousand pounds of lovely cranberries destined for the juice market. With luck the price won't fall before they are sold. Isn't that the litany of every farmer?

Harvest usually runs ten days, but the adjoining farm has new owners this year so we helped them bring in their crop before getting ours off. Twenty days of ten to twelve hours a day, most of that in mid-thigh deep water. It seems a long haul this year.

Well, this blog isn't primarily about farming so this post may seem a bit gratuitous. So be it....

Praying in the Harvest

This occasional blog is only incidentally about praying and harvest, though much of my life is directed towards both endeavors.