Life, Faith, and Urban Farming

Jesus and Mary Sermon: 4th Sunday of Advent

2011-12-18T23:07:00.000-05:00

I Love the gospel of Luke! I find the Gospel of Luke to be extremely profound in it’s first two chapters. Luke does more with the nativity and the one year leading up to the nativity than any other gospel writer. And within these nativity and pre-nativity stories is great theology which sets up an understanding of who Jesus was and is today. So, we’re going to read what the Angel Gabriel first said about the baby who would be born to Mary. From there we’ll be able to match scripture with our own understandings of who Jesus is, for sometimes we allow things other than scripture to form our theology. Even more than Jesus, we get Jesus’ Mother wrong. In fact, I’d say we don’t get Jesus’ mother at all in Protestant theology. During the reformation there was such a strong reaction again the deification of Mary that anything pointing toward Mary as one of the greatest disciples has been missed. Today we’ll also think about Mary, who she was, and why we she is so important to Luke and his gospel.

Move:
The First thing we learn from this passage is that Jesus will be the long awaited King of Israel who rules in the line of David. The birth of Jesus is the inauguration of a new king. Jesus is the king of an ancient Kingdom founded in the people of Israel.

It’s very interesting to me that the one things that the Angel teaches about about the Messiah is that he will be King.

Since the time of David Israel and Judah had placed their hope in God’s king on earth.

In Psalm 2 David says:
7 I will proclaim the LORD’s decree:
He said to me, “You are my son;   today I have become your father.  8 Ask me,   and I will make the nations your inheritance,   the ends of the earth your possession.

From the beginning of the monarchy the king was called the “son of God”. Those years with David and Solomon as king were the glory years of the kingdom. Those were the good old days that every Jew looked back to with imaginative, generational memory. They longed for a time when their king was the most powerful, when they were the dominant people in the land, and when they could freely rule themselves and worship God in the temple however they pleased.

Move:
But that reality was very far off. The kings of Israel went down hill quickly following David. Not even Solomon ruled as effectively as David. And soon after, the kings were either incompetent leaders or downright evil. Along with these bad kings came bad religious practices. Bad priests administering their religion. And repeated conquering by other kingdoms and empires. For the thousand years leading up to Jesus’ birth around 75% of the time the Hebrew people were under the rule of foreign powers, oppressed and defeated for nearly a millennia! The reality of a powerful kingdom for Israel was very far off.

Move:
The people of Israel were still waiting for a King like David to save them from their enemies. Many things that happened in Jesus’ life and that are recorded in scripture point to the people’s desire for a powerful king who would overthrow the Roman Empire. The people of Jesus’ day were looking for a political king and a political kingdom. They had been awaiting the return of a king like David for centuries.

Jesus would fulfill the prophecies that a king in the line of David would return to rule over all the earth. And yet, His kingdom would not be a political kingdom. The Kingdom that this king would bring is much bigger.

Move:
Advent is the season during which we await the full realization of the kingdom of God. I think we often forget that our work to bring about God’s kingdom is work done for a reigning King. This is what I want us all to dwell upon in Advent, the return of the King.

What I gain about Jesus from our passage today is that Jesus is the king that the Hebrew people had been waiting on for generations. Jesus’ life and ministry demonstrates that he is in fact the Son of God, the King of a kingdom bigger than David’s kingdom. Jesus’ life demonstrated what kind of King he would be and how his people would carry on his work. As Bill Mallonee says, The cross was the place of his coronation speech, and the ascension into heaven has placed him on His throne next to God the Father and the Holy Spirit. Jesus is King and we are again awaiting his return to rule over his people. Advent is the season during which we await the full realization of the kingdom of God

Advent is a great time to place ourselves humbly under Christ’s kingship. One of our greatest examples of how we do that is found in the person and action of a young girl.

Who is Mary?
38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.”

Mary was probably only 15 or 16 years old when the angel came to her. She was a young girl, promised to a slightly older man in marriage. Mary and Joseph were living during a one year period of betrothal when Mary lived probably with friends. All of her possessions were Joseph’s, but they were not yet together.

Move:
According to the angel Gabriel, Mary was a girl who God found to be “highly favored”. I’m intrigued by that. What was so special about Mary? Had she really been through enough of life to be chosen by God to bear God’s son? To this young woman, probably a very devout Jew, the idea of bearing the “song of God,” as in the next king of the Jews, was probably not a new idea. The whole nation was awaiting the next “king David” to save them from the oppressive Roman Empire.

But Mary was perplexed when she heard the words of the angel. She could not be the mother of the next political king of the Jews. She was not married yet! She was engaged, and unlike most people today, men and women waited until their wedding day to have sex. There was no way she could become pregnant.

The word used for virgin in the Greek is παρθένον , and in Hebrew Almah, both actually mean young girl. Basically, young women were virgins, so it could be translated either way. During biblical times a young woman would be stoned to death if she were to have sex before marriage. No questions would be asked of the woman, the sentence was quick and lethal.

I was just reading the news this week and heard about a woman in Afghanistan who had been stoned to death along with her daughter. She was a widow and her neighbors reported her to the Taliban as potentially being involved in adultery. Another woman was set free in Afghanistan by president Hamid Karzai this week after being arrested for adultery because she had been raped by her cousin’s husband; a convicted criminal. Thousands of women are in prisons across the Middle East for these reasons. These are the kinds of punishments that Mary had coming to her mind when she was told she would become pregnant.

Can you imagine her feelings? This really hit me in a powerful way this week. Take a moment and dwell upon this reality.

It seems clear that the angel Gabriel was frightening. His presence was scary, but the idea of becoming pregnant before marriage was even more scary. Mary, hearing the words of the angel, would have known that her likely fate would be death.

After hearing the details of who the King would be and what her sons name would be, Mary asks “How will this be since I am a virgin” – if you ask me, that’s a pretty good questions!

Now for the angels response. The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[a] the Son of God.

And I love that the angel goes on to explain about Elizabeth and her extremely unlikely pregnancy. It’s almost like the angel is saying to Mary, really, he can do it. Let me talk you into this.

See, Mary could have said no at this point. God never forces a decision upon us. Mary is chosen among all women to bear the Christ Child, and yet she is free to choose. Bernard of Clairvaux, a trappist monk of the 10th century, wrote that the pause between verses 37 and 38 is holding the crux of human history on it. Will Mary, the chosen one of God, the one who is most favored by God, be willing to risk her life to bear God’s only Son? Bernard says that all the angels in heaven gasped after hearing her question and Gabriel’s response, we might even call it Gabriel’s plee! And you can imagine the celebration when she agrees to allow God to do what she knows God can do.

Move:
Now, I don’t care if we’re Presbyterian, or Catholic, or evangelical, or whatever… this passage of scripture should lead us to desire to be like Mary. Mary, the Mother of God, should be lifted up as the archetypal follower of Jesus and the first follower of Jesus even before she bore him to the earth.

Mary seems to be so in tune with the will of God that she is indifferent to what may happen. This doesn’t mean she doesn’t care, it means that her will has become one with the will of God. It takes years and years of spiritual discipline and prayer to develop a life with God where his will is all that matters. It’s really easy to say that we just want God’s will, until things in life don’t go the way we would prefer. But for Mary, life is being thrown completely up in the air. The potential of a happy life with her new husband is very much in question. The question of whether she will live or die is up for grabs, the massive problem of telling Joseph this crazy story about an angel and a subsequent baby still lies ahead. And yet, this young woman of 16 years, is able to say that she only desires God’s will to be done. It is no wonder why Mary was chosen and why Mary is highly favored by God. There’s something special about this young women.

Concluding Move:
As we contemplate this pregnancy and the coming birth of this King, you and I are called to be like Mary in her response to the coming King. We are called to lay down our hopes, dreams and desires for life so that we may take on the hopes, dreams and desires of our King. Jesus is now reigning over his kingdom and we are his brothers and sisters in this occupied land. We are the ambassadors of the king and we are living in a creation in need of this King’s salvation.

But, are we waiting for the king to do things that he might never do? Are we serving the king in ways that he does not intent? Are we like the Jews of Jesus’ day who were so fervent in their religion that they missed the king when he showed up? What are the chances that you and I might be missing the king and missing out on his kingdom?

Today is not the day to define the kingdom of God in our lives today, today is the day to dwell upon Mary’s response when she realized she did not know the answers to her biggest questions.

When you and I are able to be like Mary and Lay down our lives at the feet of the King who already laid his life down for our salvation, we can be sure that we are not missing the work of the Kingdom. When we can truly be like Mary and say “Let your will be done,” we can know that God will be “well pleased” with us and our response to his call in our lives.

Awaiting Christmas!

2011-12-18T23:05:00.000-05:00

This is what any blogger would put on their blog to show the peacefulness of their home after putting up their farm raised Christmas tree. The family quietly enjoying the warm wood stove reading Christmas books about baby Jesus on the couch.

This is the reality, crazy and loud kids!

Winter Greens and Mushrooms Treats

2011-12-10T08:58:00.002-05:00

The Low tunnels are doing great at the farm. It's our first year really trying to extend the season for some of our crops.

We found and identified some awesome oyster mushrooms last week before the heavy frosts came. These we delivered to Salt of the Earth, probably about 10 pounds! I ate some too, first wild mushrooms I've harvested and eaten. Yes, I did get three "experts" to confirm they were actually oysters.

These lettuce greens are growing in an 8x10 raised bed made of 2x10 boards. They've all been harvested now and gave us about 10 pounds of greens! We sold these to Toast, a restaurant on Baum Blvd. They survive the cold of December just find under two layers of protections, first the plastic and then some Agribon laid right on top of the plants.

The view from Wicklow Street a month or so ago. That's the first garden we began at the farm, still my favorite. The water tower is a landmark that can be seen from all over the city. Makes it really easy for us to point out where the farm is.

Being a Pastor (really just a friend)

2011-10-19T20:24:00.000-04:00

A good friend of mine is slowly losing his father. I say slowly, but really it's only been a month that they've had any diagnosis and about two months that he's been sick at all. So, in many ways, its unexpected and really fast for the family. I'm struggling to know how to comfort a friend in this situation, trying to remember all the "pastoral care" theology that I learned in seminary. I think it comes in useful, but the most important thing is allowing him to know that I'm there for him. I can't imagine the pain that he's going through right now, but I can listen and struggle along side of him to understand where God is and where God's mercy is being shown.

Death is such a difficult thing. As they say, it happens to all of us, but it seems to happen to all of us differently. My grandmother died at 99 years old, one month from being 100. In some ways I wish she had died a few years earlier, before she lost all of her independence. Others die so suddenly and so young, it seems so unfair. Then there are those who suffer intensely from diseases like cancer. As a pastor it's really hard to make sense of it, it's hard to point out God's purpose, it's hard and usually not appropriate to try to tell the good that is resulting in one's death.

I think it's ok to be angry. Angry at God for a time, but that anger should be refocused on death itself. Christ defeated death, though we still face in this life. If we believe in Christ's resurrection we also are believing in our own bodily resurrection. Christ did not eliminate death, but Christ overcame death. And so, for you and I and all those we love who will face death, we should be assured that death is not the end. Death is an enemy that has already been crushed and will one day be eliminated.

Biking

2011-10-12T14:56:00.000-04:00

I've been riding a bike for fun and for excersize, even competitively a for a little while, since I was nine years old. At nine my dad took me for a 50 mile bike ride in Shenendoah National Park in Virginia. We rode 25 miles two days in a row on Skyline Drive. That began my love of cycling and my love of hills. This year has marked my first attempt to not only ride for fun and to challenge myself, but to allow me to stop driving so much. Its been a really good thing. It's also been a challenge and something that requires discipline, time and a less frantic lifestyle.

Biking has really begun to hit big in Pittsburgh. There are many more serious cyclists out on the weekends than there used to be, both in the city and in the suburbs. There's also even more people out during the week using their bikes in place of a car or public transit. There's everything from the $3000 carbon fiber bikes that you'll see on Sunday mornings to the old clunkers that people have to walk up all the hills. In between are the hip and cool single speeds, the fixed gear bikes, and the hand painted steal frames with hand made bamboo fenders. In my book it's all great, as long as it's not just a short trend. My hope is that the transition that we see to bike more continues with more and more momentum moving our city away from fossil fuel dependency.

Now I still have a ways to go, and so do most people in our city. As I finish this point I sit inside a coffee shop on a very rainy Pittsburgh day with my car outside. I had planned to bike over for this meeting but decided to drive when the rain continued to fall. What would it take for you to start riding, not on rainy days, but on those beautiful days when you have no excuse?

Exposing the Cholesterol Myth

2011-06-19T10:56:00.000-04:00

High cholesterol runs in my family. My grandfather was treated for heart disease for years before dying of lung cancer that was most likely due to years of asbestos exposure. My dad has had high cholesterol for years and was on serious statin drugs that nearly caused irreversible damage to his body. This video is one of many that makes it clear that the drug companies don't tell the whole story. I've known for a while now that LDL, HDL and Triglicerides don't tell the whole story. Cholesterol is a sign of inflammation, a bigger problem in the body. This video tells a lot. Very interesting, more learning to do.

How the Buy Local Movement is Changing the Face of Farming

2011-06-01T16:55:00.000-04:00

How the Buy Local Movement is Changing the Face of Farming A great little article on CSA farming and how it makes small scale local agriculture possible again.

Herbs in our CSA

2011-05-24T21:29:00.000-04:00

Like last year, we'll be including a variety of herbs in our CSA shares this year. June 2nd is our first harvest date for our 15 members this year, so we're getting ready and making plans already. This year we'll include Lovage and Tarragon in our first or second week of the CSA. These are two herbs that may be new to many of us. Here's a recipe I'd like to try out this week and include with our first week's basket. It should go nicely with our salad greens!

Tarragon-Walnut Vinaigrette
This dressing is especially delectable on a simple salad of assorted fresh greens.

3 Tablespoons walnut oil

1 Tablespoon minced shallot

2 Tablespoons champagne vinegar

1 teaspoon chopped fresh tarragon (a 6" sprig)

(or use 2 Tablespoons tarragon vinegar instead of the vinegar and tarragon)

1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Pinch of kosher salt

3 turns of peppermill, or to taste

Combine all ingredients in a small jar with a tight fitting lid. Shake well.

Makes about 1/3 cup

Good Day at the Farm

2011-05-16T19:46:00.002-04:00

Our "apprentice farmer" started working this week. Cornelius and I began the week by harvesting for both Salt of the Earth and Franktuary, the two restaurants that purchase salad greens from us each week. It's been pretty awesome to build these partnerships. We also welcomed Fort Pitt Elementary School kids to the farm for the second time. We gave them a tour around the farm and guided them in a little work. It was a good time, most of the kids did awesome and really enjoyed it.

Lent is Over, But We'll Keep Going

2011-04-24T23:06:00.000-04:00

So, what did I learn from trying to create no trash during Lent this year? I learned that so far I can't create "no trash". We did severely reduce our trash though, but we still have non-recyclables, non-compostables and non-burnables coming into and out of our house. But, I must say, we have far fewer than we did before.

Thanks to Alyssa we've taken some small steps just this week that I thought were pretty cool. Almost everyday day she makes an amazing smoothy out of about a dozen fresh and frozen fruits, berries and vegetables. The kids love it and so do I. We almost always use plastic straws. That's five straws every day. First we started reusing them, but they can only be reused a couple times before they get worn out. So, Alyssa found hand blown glass straws. We bought one for each of us for an Easter gift. They're awesome. Those are the kind of little steps we're taking now, still looking for opportunities to buck the culture and honor God's creation by not creating trash.

It was beautiful to have Good Friday and Earth Day on the same day this year. Make the correlations yourself, hopefully you already did. God is about restoration and healing. What are you doing to restore and heal the planet that God has entrusted to us?

Planting Trees with Kids

2011-04-09T15:39:00.000-04:00

I had all three kids all day today by myself, what better to do than plant trees and herbs. When we showed up two kids from the neighborhood joined us. They are two great kids, always wanting to learn and find whatever we have ready to eat. Thanks for the help guys!

Fruitwise apple tree grafting, the saddle graft

2011-04-09T08:49:00.000-04:00

I like this guy, shows some great techniques for grafting.

Grafting Fruit Trees and Planting Today!

2011-04-09T08:46:00.001-04:00

A couple of days ago our scion wood and root stock came in the mail. Scion wood are small branches from specific apple varieties that are grafted onto whatever kind of rootstock you desire: standard size, dwarf, semi-dwarf, and everything in between. These little trees will probably grow in pots for a while before they're transplanted out into the field. Some of them will go to Garfield Farm and some will go to Lamppost Farm.

We also received our pear trees, already grafted and ready to be planted. They are much larger than the scion wood. These trees are going in at Garfield Farm later today.

All of our trees are old varieties that produce beautiful tasty apples and pears not available at the store. Hopefully some of the ones we planted two years ago will start bearing this year!

The Problem with Plastic

2011-03-27T09:26:00.000-04:00

When I began my attempt to create less and less garbage I knew it would mean two things, using lots of reusable materials and only buying things that can be recycled. When shopping at the grocery store the first thing that became clear was that many products are double and even triple packaged using different types of plastic or a mix of plastic and cardboard. Often the cardboard is recyclable but the plastic is not. Our first step was to stop buying these products, which includes a lot of over-processed snack foods. So that has left us with products in single packaging that is recyclable, often is plastic labeled with the 1 - 7 code. In Pittsburgh we're lucky, the city collects 1 - 5.

As I've looked into plastic recycling I've not found what I was hoping for. Most plastics, are not really REcycled, they are downcycled. Downcycling is what happens when a recyclable material is downgraded into a material that is not recyclable a second time. Metal and glass can be recycled over and over again, so can paper. Plastic though, according to what I've found, is usually only recycled once, and not into the same sort of plastic. Recycled plastic is often used in plastic lumber, plastic furniture, and other non-recyclable things. This is much better than just throwing it out the first time, but its not an ongoing sustainable cycle. Infact, downcyling does nothing to reduce the end amount of non-biodegradable material in the landfill, it'll all end up there. Downcycling does nothing to reduce the amount of virgin plastic polymers being created from fossil fuels.

Two Steps in the Right Direction
There are more and more options to buy plant based plastics. Look for those at the supermarket. If you are someone who drinks bottled water or pop (we're not) buy Pepsi products (I hate to say that, I love Coke, even though I can't remember that last time I had one). Pepsi will soon be bottled in plant based plastic (it's not yet though, so keep recycling or avoiding).

Another step you can take is to simply use reusable containers, I've already blogged on how we've begun doing this a lot more. It is the best solution and really is not that hard once you find the right place to shop. That's the key, finding the right place to shop, where you can bring your vegetable bags, returnable milk containers, and mason jars to fill with everything under the sun. I'm finding that this non-waste lent in not too hard for us because of our location in the city with The East End Co-op near by and pretty good recycling at the curb. Those of your in more difficult locations have a much harder job to figure out.

Zero Waste Lent: The Secret Life Of Paper

2011-03-16T15:35:00.001-04:00

Here's another reason to use less - a lot less. This is actually a pretty good video explaining the importance of basic recycling and purchasing habits. Check it out.

Zero Waste Lent: An Easy Fix

2011-03-15T15:08:00.000-04:00

Here's a pretty easy fix if you live in the East End of Pittsburgh - shop for specific items at the East End Food Co-op. You can bring reusable containers and shop in the bulk section where you pay for things by weight. They actually have a scale there where you can weigh your container and subtract that cost weight from the overall weight of your product. We put a sticker on our containers so we know the weight for the next time. Another thing you can buy at the co-op and at Whole Foods is milk in returnable glass bottles. Always remember that reusing something is better than just recycling it. Most organic milk comes in the non-recyclable containers, as in the picture on the right. This milk is also ultra-pasturized. I've met a lot of people who say they don't like organic milk because of the taste. It's not that they don't like organic milk, it's that they don't like ultra-pasturized milk - it's nearly boiled and completely sterilized. The milk on the left is raw milk from pastured cows at a local farm. Tastes amazing, is much healthier and comes in a returnable bottle. They also sell pasteurized milk in these bottles as well as 2% and buttermilk, which is amazing. Try some good cultured butter milk sometime if you've not had it. It's probably something your grandparents will remember from the farm. Just don't by the cheap stuff from the big supermarket, not good. Anyway, bring your own containers and look for the returnable dairy product containers

Update 1 - Zero Waste Lent

2011-03-13T11:58:00.000-04:00

This Lent is a learning experience in garbage reduction. Its also a true fast of food as I get more into. There are many things still in our pantry that I have to avoid because of the high non-recyclable waste content of the packaging. As those things do get used up we're getting better alternatives in their place. Some of the things I've found to be difficult so far are cereals and kids snack food, and my snack foods. Those things all come in bags or boxes with bags inside, that are not recyclable, burnable or compostable. I'll begin avoiding these the best I can, replacing processed cereals with granola from the bulk section at the co-op or homemade by Alyssa. Some things that are working well is the dog poop composter in the back yard and the compost at the farm in Garfield. Our compost barrel here is filled to the brim from the long winter and continual use.

I've learned quickly that processed food = lots of garbage. This fast from creating trash is also a fast from most processed foods.

Zero Waste Lent

2011-03-10T22:37:00.005-05:00

Over the past month Alyssa and I have renewed our efforts to create less trash. It's a hard task when you have three kids and live busy lives, but we hope to get closer and closer to living a lifestyle where all of our waste is either composted, recycled, given away, eaten by us and our animals, or burned for heat. Today I shared this with my pastor friends at lunch during our monthly day at Saint Paul of the Cross Monastery. I thought it could be a good Lenten fast - go 40 days without creating any contributions to the landfill. There response was an avid "Go for it!" So here we go! Honestly, I already know that there are things going into our trash cans here at home. Some of our biggest problems are food packaging, much of which we can't recycle. But we are have purchased reusable produce bags and containers to use when buying from the bulk bins at our local food co-op. We've found laundry detergent, body soap, and liquid soap that can be purchased in bulk with no waste. Here's a picture of some biodegradable laundry detergent in a mason jar.

Why are we doing this? Well, it's pretty obvious, I'm sure... we're crazy. And because we are filling our earth and our oceans with plastic, bottles, bags, residue... jellyfish in the Pacific have been found with plastic chemicals in the cells of the bodies due to the high content of plastic bags in certain parts of the sea. I believe we should always ask ourselves what our actions will lead to if we continue them for another one hundred years. What will our planet look like if we continue creating 1460 pounds of trash every year (thats the average for each of us in the United States per year). During Lent we're going to use these 40 days to see if we can't reduce our trash so that by Easter we've figured out household rules and systems that will help to our part to help the planet and our children and grand children who will have to live with our non-biodegradable junk.

To start with we do have a head start. We've been using cloth diapers about 50% of the time, now we try to move to 100%. We compost, feed food waste to our chickens and compost their manure, and we have worms that eat other food waste. We have lots of glass containers and reusable bags for purchasing from bulk at the market. We also have parents who live where you can recycle plastic 6 and 7, here in the city they take 1 - 5 plastics, aluminum, steel, glass, and pretty much all paper and cardboard.

Lenten fasts are supposed to challenge us and remind us of the sin in our lives that we desire to change. The sins of consumerism, wastefulness, greed and apathy will be on our minds often as we attempt to make these changes. The pictures on show the detergent in a mason jar (probably need a larger container, wanted to try it out first), oranges in a reusable bag to avoid the plastic at the store, and our worms eating away our garbage and making fertilizer for Garfield Community Farm seedlings.

Shrooms #3

2011-03-10T22:31:00.003-05:00

After failing to harvest for than two large mushrooms from our first attempt we have success with the second! Here's a picture. Just took a lot of water and warmer outside temperatures. Our house is too dry mid winter to support fungi growth! I'm hoping to have eat some of them tomorrow, also hoping to talk the kids into trying them. They are iffy at this point, but they're brave eaters, I'm sure they'll try it. Alysssa, well that's another story. Don't tell her I told you, but she's the real picky eater in the family.

Working, Playing, Exercising

2011-03-08T17:33:00.005-05:00

Today I was outside a lot, like most days. But today became a particularly beautiful day, and not just the weather. All day I was hoping to go for a bike ride in the afternoon.

T eah and I learned how to tap a maple tree to extract sap and make maple syrup. Today was our day to try it out ourselves at the farm in Garfield. On Monday I had already tapped one tree, but wanted to take the kids up to tap the second one. I really don't know if we'll harvest enough to make much syrup, but we'll try. I at least think I've developed a pretty good little system using pex pipe from Home Depot, a small pex fitting and a five gallon bucket with a lid. Really simple, but I think it'll work really well too.

Later we came home to unload the farm's pick-up truck of firewood, hopefully our last load of the day. It took about a half hour, both kids helped, without my asking! They're still young, I know, but it was fun to have help. While unloading and stacking the wood I realized it was getting late. My bike ride was quickly going out the window. As I worked to stack all the wood I realized it was a sacrifice on this beautiful day. It was a sacrifice that included me spending time with my kids, while working at home and at the farm, it was a sacrifice that was saving us money through the firewood. It was also a sacrifice that was allowing me to get exercise, enjoy the outdoors, just not on my bike. While I'm not going to give up biking, something I love, I know that living into this lifestyle we've chosen demands a lot of time and work. Fifty or a hundred years ago people didn't "exercise", they worked. I guess we're living into an older way of life while hoping to live a more environmentally sustainable and intentional life. I'm happy with that. Maybe I'll have time for a bike ride tomorrow... maybe not. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with the guys later in the spring. Either way, today was a beautiful day.

Andy McKee - Guitar - Drifting - www.candyrat.com

2011-03-07T17:22:00.000-05:00

I was just introduced to Andy Mckee, amazing guitarist.

Shrooms #2

2011-02-13T16:04:00.002-05:00

The first set of mushrooms have arrived and been eaten! It's been so cold and dry in our house that it seems a lot of the mushrooms in their very small early stage dried up. Only a few progressed. On flourished to the size of a portabella. Now, the same spawn will take a rest and then put out even more mushrooms, hopefully after it's warmed up outside and not so dry in my house.

PASA 2011

2011-02-09T15:31:00.002-05:00

This past weekend, and part of last week, was the 2011 Farming for the Future conference at State College, PA, put on by the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture. It was, once again, a great conference with hundreds of teachers and thousands of farmers and gardeners. I took a pre-conference track on Thursday called Homesteading 101. This track focused on the basics of starting a small CSA farm and all the work that goes into preparing the land and growing crops for the first year. It also focused on seed saving, and preservation of your harvest for the winter months. Later during the week I focused on learning as much as I could about growing fruit trees. We have lots of trees at Garfield Community Farm now, but I don't really have the expertise to care for them properly. Each year we do an "alternative gift" campaign where people can donate specifically toward certain things for the farm. Each year people want to buy fruit trees. And all summer long, while we sell our vegetables, the kids in the neighborhood want to know where the apples are. So, we're working on it, the trees are growing, and now I have a lot more ability to care for all those young trees we have.

The gist of what I learned was that organic orcharding is hard, but it can be done. I also learned that most organic orchards in the US are not really doing it the best way. Most orchards focus on killing fungi and insects by using natural minerals like sulfur and copper. Problem is those kill all the fungi and the things they use to kill bugs also don't discriminate. While I learned that mineral applications are necessary, they should be a last resort and not an automatic thing every couple weeks. Instead, we learned, that orchards should be managed biologically, not chemically and not so much through minerals. Biology in the orchard creates the right atmosphere for a diverse and healthy ecosystem of plants, animals, insects, fungi and bacteria. All things things can be stewarded to create the best atmosphere for apples and other fruits to grow with minimal broad spectrum killers like sulfur or copper. Interesting stuff and very detailed. I still have a lot to learn! Hopefully we'll get a few good apples and pears this year!

Shrooms #1

2011-01-04T12:52:00.005-05:00

The diversity of fungus on this planet is astounding. Scientists usually say there's about 1.5 million species according to www.sciencedirect.com, but other estimates go as high as 9.9 million. That's diversity! Some of this fungi lives in the form of mushrooms and some of these mushrooms are edible. Interestingly, mushrooms are the sex organs, or fruiting bodies, of much larger organisms living below the surface in the soil. Of the thousands or even millions of mushrooms in the world, about 10% are edible. Of these 10% only a few types make it into our grocery stores.

I've always liked eating mushrooms, but they are one thing I've never grown on my own, and I'm not knowledgeable enough to harvest wild mushrooms. So, yesterday I ordered some shiitake mushroom mycelium (the undergrown root-like fungi) living inside sawdust that will supposedly begin fruiting within two weeks of being watered. I'm excited to try it out. It should be a way to grow something healthy in January. I will take some of the mushrooms to our forth grade classroom at Fort Pitt Elementary School so the children can learn about the growth process. We teach a class there once a month on ecology, nutrition and social responsibility.

Check out Fungi Perfecti for all their different indoor mushroom kits. I'll keep you up to date on how this works out.

Lyle, Child of the Covenant

2010-12-06T12:19:00.003-05:00

Last night at The Open Door Alyssa and I led the musical aspect of worship together with our friends Andy, Chris and Robby. We also baptized Lyle, our son, who is 7 months old. It is probably the last time I'll ever baptize one of my own children, since we're not planning to have any more. Lyle was great, I dumped as much water from my hands onto his head as I could. He didn't even cry as it dripped down his face. It was a beautiful thing to have him accepted into the community of faith and to know that God has chosen him to be one of his children. Now, we wait with expectation, for the day when he will accept God's love. It also worked nicely into Advent and the scripture that was preached on last night, all about John the Baptist and his birth contrasted with Jesus' birth.

Fight the Power

2010-11-23T09:52:00.002-05:00

Each year "black Friday" makes me want to barf! The day after a great Thanksgiving meal with family and/or friends where we take stock of all the blessing in our lives we're faced with the most in-your-face example of extreme consumerism that our culture can cram down our throats. My family has chosen to make "Black Friday" a day to celebrate what is for us the beginning of a time of waiting for Christmas. We drive out to a Christmas tree farm less than an hour away, take the three kids into a big field of trees with a hand saw, and cut down our tree. It really is a beautiful scene, with snow the last two years. By the time we have the tree up in our living room "Black Friday" is over and we've effectively avoided the need to buy, buy, buy.

What are you and your friends and family doing this Friday? Can you avoid the temptation to buy more stuff. Do you really need those things that are on sale for such amazing prices? Can you and your holiday recipients go without the stuff that our culture says you HAVE to have? Maybe you'll find a more joyous and meaningful purpose to this time of year. Being out in the country at a farm is perfect for us, what is your alternative to Black Friday?

Here are a couple alternative ideas for this year's Christmas gift giving, most of these are things the my family does, they're all fun and rewarding. You can come up with your own alternative for Black Friday, these are alternatives to the whole consumeristic Christmas season.

1. make your gifts. Last year I made my daughter a wooden cradle for her dolls and my son got a wooden train table. Alyssa made baby dolls for the kids and all their cousins.

2. Buy all your gifts at Ten Thousand Villages in Squirrel Hill. They sell fair trade, hand made, gifts of many different kinds from all over the world. Buy shopping there you know you are putting money into the hands of artisans who otherwise would struggle to sell their craft. http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/php/stores.festivals/store.location.php?store_id=571

3. Purchase gifts for non-profits and ministries making a difference in your neighborhood, city and world. Check out Garfield Farm's alternative gifts http://garfieldcommunityfarm.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/garfield-farms-sponsor2010.jpg . We'll actually send you a card with a description of what you purchase for us. You can give it in the name of a friend or loved one in the place of something they really don't need. Come to church on Sunday at The Open Door and you'll find other alternative gift ideas, some pretty cool ones.

4. World Vision was the first example I noticed of alternative gifts. http://donate.worldvision.org/OA_HTML/xxwv2ibeCCtpSctDspRte.jsp?go=gift&§ion=10389

Whatever you do this Friday and throughout the next month, make it alternative. Do something that is counter-cultural and can help you build community, create a more just world, and show a different way than extreme consumerism.

Getting Ready for 2011 at GCF

2010-11-15T20:37:00.002-05:00

Over the past couple months we've begun our expansion projects at Garfield Community Farm for the 2011 growing season. Each fall, after the bulk of the harvest is over, we begin the major work of expanding our gardens for the following season. This year we're working on expanding our orchard and starting a spiral herb garden in a new section of the our three acres. The orchard space has only seven trees now, all dwarf apples or cherries. We've piled about wheel barrow of compost and fertilizer where about twelve new trees will be planted in the spring. The compost decomposes further and leeches much of it's nutrients into the soil where the tree will go. In the spring we'll dig the whole and incorporate the compost. The spiral herb garden will be a large permaculture garden with many medicinal and culinary herbs, mostly perennials. This space will be calm space at the farm, mirroring the beauty of a natural spiral. So far the teams that have worked with us have moved tons, literally, of decomposed wood chips into the space where we'll layer soil and compost in the spring. The wood chips are used all over the farm. They decompose and create great top soil over time. The fungi that grows throughout the wood chips act beneficially with any plants we grow in the garden.

Swiss Chard #2

2010-10-31T13:35:00.002-04:00

Home alone again today I tried another Swiss Chard experiment. Other than spinach and salad greens, Swiss Chard was the first green that I grew and learned to love. Later I tried different kales and collard greens, but I still come back to good old chard as my favorite for cooking. It just cooks down so easily and quickly. This morning I put a good cup of chopped fresh chard from the farm into about a 10" iron skillet with about two table spoons of butter. I let that saute with some salt and pepper until is was nicely cooked down and wilted. Then I split two large eggs, beat them, and simply put them in with the chard. I cooked it on medium heat. The two cooked into a perfect one inch souffle. Then I added cheddar cheese to the top, a good handful (I like cheese). Let it all cook on low heat until the eggs are cooked to your liking. It all came right out of the skillet, no sticking at all. I finished it off on my plate with some good old Red Hot and enjoyed. It was sooo good.

Swiss Chard

2010-10-29T20:50:00.003-04:00

I went out to Garfield Farm this afternoon to put some row covers on some of the salad greens to protect them from the potential frost this evening. Emma, my German Shephard, came too, she loves the farm, she runs around looking for sticks for me to throw, which rarely happens when crops are growing. During the end of the growing season our Swiss Chard took a hard hit from the dreaded stink bugs that have infested our city. I never remember stink bugs being a problem until this year. I don't remember ever seeing one until just a couple years ago. Since the weather has gotten a bit cooler the bugs are left but the chard has continued to grow. Right now it's at it's best, dark green leaves and brightly colored stems. The leaves are over two feet tall. I picked some and cooked it up for dinner, just feeding myself tonight, steaming it. A month or so ago I made a tincture of hot peppers in white vinegar. The chard and about two table spoons of hot pepper infused vinegar was awesome, hot but not too hot, tangy from the vinegar, still plenty of fresh flavor from the chard. Couldn't get any easier than that. Oh yeah, I had some apple cider, pork stew with it too.

FOUR YEARS. GO. - A Campaign To Change The Course of History

2010-10-25T13:51:00.000-04:00

During the 3 River's Bioneers Conference this week we watch this video first shown at the Bioneers Conference in California. I think it's an inspiring video. 4YG stands for Four Years Go and the idea that over the next four years our global cultures must make serious decisions and changes in order to curb climate change. I think the idea that it has to be done in four years is a little idealistic, but on the other hand, why not. Re-post it and lets see if we can make some changes.

John Mark McMillan | The Medicine

2010-10-22T18:37:00.000-04:00

Alyssa loves what he has to say about the south. Some good music too.

Back Yard Work

2010-10-09T08:40:00.004-04:00

Our current work at the house has involved a several new projects and some regular old ones. The time of year of course brings lots of canning and preserving. The sauerkraut has been great, we're also fermenting pickles right now. I'm also working on creating a few medicinal tinctures using herbs from Garfield Farm. Outside we're working on transforming our backyard. The three chickens and two dogs have pretty much destroyed whatever grass we had back there... I blame a very hot and dry summer. But, we've split the yard in half with a fence and heavily mulched one side for the dogs. The other side of the yard will be a perennial herb and vegetable garden starting next year. The side will also have a nice big patch of grass where the kids and play (and not worry about dog or chicken poop!) The chickens are doing great, right now they're working on fertilizing the area where the new herb garden will be. People have asked if the idea of the chickens fertilizing the yard to make a better lawn worked or failed. Well, we just had too much going on in the same little lawn and it was too hot. Much of the grass died out in the heat. The dogs are more to blame than the chickens. The new yard layout is already working much better.

Fermentation: Part 1, Sauerkraut

2010-09-14T16:41:00.005-04:00

I've been awaiting this time of year when the cabbage would be less than a dollar a head at the farmer's market to start my first batch of old fashion sauerkraut. It's not a particularly common food these days, but it's something I've always liked, along with pickles and hot peppers. What I always missed out on as a kid were the billions of live active cultures that should be present in "real" sauerkraut, pickles and other fermented foods. Before pressure canning was invented last century people had to team up with microbes like yeast and lacto-bacillus bacteria to preserve food. Today canning is all the rave, and it's great, we do a lot of it. People feel like they're getting back to basics by learning to preserve their home grown produce. But, there are some things that can be fermented instead of canned. Canning is used to kill everything so that the vegetable or fruit it can be preserved and protected from microbes, usually for about a year. Fermentation does the opposite, friendly microbes are encouraged to grow which kill the bad ones. Of course sauerkraut that you buy at the store has been fermented, but it has also been heated to kill the good microbes and then canned. There's no life left in it. These friendly microbes that make things ferment add their own strong flavors and preserve the food - not for years, but often for months into the winter. The benefit of fermented foods for our nutrition is something I'm still learning about and something I'll post on later - some of the claims are amazing. For now I'll enjoy the bubbling coming up through the brine. Teah and Micah love this stuff too, can't wait to share it with them. Alyssa... well that's another story. I hope she doesn't flush it down the toilet due to the smell.

Ingredients: three heads of cabbage, salt (seriously, that's it)
Equipment: a very old crock from my grandmother, a plate, a jug of water. The crock is about a gallon and a half. The plate is placed inside the crock with the lid and water jug placed on top to provide pressure to keep the cabbage under the brine as it forms.

For full details on how to do this yourself check out: http://www.wildfermentation.com/resources.php?page=sauerkraut

Return to Nepal w/ Bruce Cockburn - Crops from Stones

2010-09-03T15:27:00.000-04:00

An example of how we are called to "subdue" parts of the earth. This guy makes farming on flat ground look very easy!

Summer Jam, Aug. 30th at the Shadow Lounge

2010-08-30T12:27:00.003-04:00

Come out tonight to Garfield Community Farm's "Summer Jam" concert and fund raiser at the Shadow Lounge on Baum Blvd. tonight at 7pm. We'll have various local musicians, local food from the farm and other local farms, literal summer jam for sale, and hand printed Garfield Farm t-shirts. It'll be fun, so come on out!

Urban Homesteading Part 6: Sustainable Home Heat

2010-08-23T11:30:00.007-04:00

According to Wikipedia The United States is the largest energy consumer in the world in terms of total use, using 100 quadrillion BTUs of energy every year. Only about seven percent of that is energy that is sustainably produced, and most of that seven percent is from hydro-electric plants, i.e. dams (questionably environmentally sustainable). The remainder of that energy comes fairly evenly from coal, petroleum and natural gas, three obvious producers of greenhouse gas. These three are also harvested from the earth in ways that are very damaging to the environment.

A quest that we all might endeavor to journey on together is the quest toward energy independence. Usually when we see or hear that idea it's in regards to national energy independence, but I'm talking about individual energy independence. Another even more exciting realm for us to think on for the future is neighborhood energy independence, but we'll leave that topic alone for today, though it's closely related.

Any homestead, especially in the old days, was required to create it's own energy. Especially energy for heating. With the rising costs of electricity and natural gas homesteaders, farmers and now even urban environmentally thinking hippie people, are returning to that way of thinking. Today it's not only to save money but to help us move toward a more environmentally sustainable source of electricity. Today we'll focus on heat, our largest consuming need for energy. Though air conditioning is also an energy suck my response to that problem is to just turn it off and deal with a little it (we do use a window unit at night sometimes). When we moved into our home we were excited to use a sustainable source of heat... wood. Our house was not too attractive to other potential buyers because each room is heated with electric baseboard heat, a very expensive way to stay warm. Even with insulated walls, new windows and an insulated attic the former renters said they would pay up to $400 a month for electric heat. The worst month at our old 1860's house was $1300, so even $400 didn't sound that bad! Upon moving into the new place we installed a Lopi Leyden wood-buring stove designed to heat up to 2000 square feet. We have about 1500 to heat. By heating with wood for the first year we were able to cut our electric bills from around $400 a month in the winter to $100, same as our summer bills. Basically we did not use anything but wood and one wood stove to heat all the rooms of our house. Our set up though is ideal in that we can use the electric heat for any room that is cooler. Each room has a separate thermostat, surprisingly we didn't use them but for a couple of extremely cold nights last year.

You may be asking "Doesn't burning wood destroy forests and release carbon into the atmosphere?" First, all of the wood we burn is from trees that are already dead or from trees that other people cut down from their yards. Some wood we purchase from a local tree service, already cut, dried and split. Also, with some friends each summer and fall we venture into the woods of our urban neighborhoods, mostly Garfield, in search of Black Locust lumber. Black Locust wood burns hotter than any other wood in North America and can be found all over the city of Pittsburgh. The trees grow like weeds too and don't usually live too long, so they are plentiful in the emerging forests taking over abandoned neighborhoods like Garfield. The second part of the question that we all have is concerning the carbon released with wood is burned. If we had the ability to use energy like solar or wind we might would release to carbon in heating our homes, but it takes a lot of money to put in a large enough solar or wind system. On the other hand oil and gas releases carbon that has been locked within the crust of the earth for hundreds of millions of years. This carbon should stay in the earth and not in the atmosphere. When a tree grows it absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, that's why we need more trees. That carbon is stored in the form of wood in the tree. When a tree falls, whether a tree rots or is burned, the carbon is released. So, the carbon released from wood is carbon within a closed system of a net gain of zero. In essence wood burning is a carbon neutral form of heat even though carbon is released. Now we, like farmers and homesteaders caring for their wood lots, must be sure that new trees are being planted where old ones have fallen so that we know we'll have fuel for the future and so we know carbon is being absorbed within this biological system.

Using wood as fuel takes work. Those looking for a replacement system for what they currently have that does not increase labor on their part hopefully have enough cash to put out for a solar and/or wind power system. Those on rural properties with streams might consider small scale hydro-electric. But for those of us who like to swing a maul and like to save money (or just don't have much of it) should consider wood.

Cell Phones

2010-07-31T07:13:00.002-04:00

I've been a heavy cell phone user for the past ten or so years. For many of those years we only had cell phones in our house, no land lines. Now that we do have a land line, I hardly use it. My Apple iphone is all I need, or is it? Well, sometimes I love my phone and use it's abilities to order my life. The calendar holds it all together and syncs to my computer. The ability to show the weather keeps me from getting too wet at the farm or on bike rides. It even tracks my bike rides with GPS! But, it also drops calls multiple times every day, and I don't even have the G4 version that is known to have issues. I also feel like it is a laborious burden some times, like a ball and chain that I can never leave. If I do leave it I come home to emergency phone calls or calls that people think are emergencies, making things even more stressful. These are probably problems with me and not the cell phone.

But, yesterday I heard an unbiased news story on PBS radio on the hundreds of studies on cell phones and brain cancer. It was said that our planet is currently partaking in the largest science experiment ever by waiting to see what happens when five hundred million people hold small microwave emitters to their heads for hours every day. While many of the studies are inconclusive and some show that there is no danger, others show that brain cancer is increased by cell phone users. Finally, the reporter explained that if you take out all the studies funded by cell phone companies and other interested parties 75% of the remaining studies conclude that cell phones can damage human beings in various ways. Some of the ill effects were brain cancer, tumor development and even dis-unification of DNA molecules.

So, my question, would you stop using your cell phone is you were convinced it could kill you? What would it take to convince you? Did you know that the USA is putting almost no research money into the question while European countries are putting a lot into it and finding less that hopeful results?

"March 03, 2010 - Yahoo News and CNN reports that Maine may require a warning about cell phones being a possible cause of brain cancer. Dr. Derva Davis Mt Sinai Medical center, and Dr. David Carpenter Albany University spoke in favor of the proposed bill."

"May 17, 2010 - According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (funded in part by WHO, the World Health Organization) using a cell phone for as little as 30 minutes may increase your risk of getting a brain tumor (glioma). The study is reported to have included 13,000 participants over 10 years. But we have not seen the details of this study. As soon as we find a source, we'll publish a link to it."

So, do you think our culture could go backwards in terms of phones? Could we do it? I'm sure we'll find ways around it, use your bluetooth...

UPDATE! Urban Homesteading Part 5: Dog Waste Compost UPDATE

2010-07-20T15:50:00.005-04:00

Last week I completed the dog waste composter I've been planning to put in our yard for the past couple months. It was about a one day job, the hardest part by far was the digging of a whole large enough to fit a 30+ gallon trash can. I used a heavy duty green trash can with a good durable lid. If you use a cheap trash can I can tell you it will decompose just like the poop! We've used kids swimming pools for garden beds and have found that they only last about two years before they crumble. Better plastic will last longer in when out in the sun and under the ground like your composter will be. I'm not going to describe what I did, it's all in the video I posted a few months ago. The video is not me, but something I came upon on You Tube. In addition to what they describe Alyssa found a product at the pet store specifically for this purpose. It's basically a compost activator, microbes that break down the waste more quickly. We've been using it for about ten days so far and haven't have any smell. We've been piling it in, along with some decomposing food scrap compost to aid in decomposition. I can't tell you how much easier it is now that I don't have to carry around a plastic bag and try to get it in there without getting it on my hands and feet and... yuck. I'll let you know if it goes wrong, or if it fills up quickly, or what. So far so good. Not sure what we'll do with the end product, it should be something we can bury in some of the non-food producing parts of the yard. We'll see.

Violence and Peace

2010-07-19T11:49:00.002-04:00

Zechariah 8:4

4 This is what the LORD Almighty says: "Once again men and women of ripe old age will sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each with cane in hand because of his age. 5 The city streets will be filled with boys and girls playing there."

This is what we hope for in Garfield. The most recent shooting was in the projects just up the hill from the farm. These projects are being torn down, only about 5 families still live there. It's another place of abandonment.

Article on the Shooting

Creating Biodiversity

2010-07-18T11:25:00.002-04:00

At both Garfield Community Farm and our little yard we're creating atmosphere's that support a more diverse range of life. At the farm the biggest things we're doing are reducing Japanese Knotweed and adding plants that attract beneficial insects. These plants include oregano, butterfly bush, yarrow, dill, lambs ear, and wild flowers. This is the first year we've seen Monarch Butterflies like the one in the photo above. All the bees and insects are helping to pollinate our many vegetable plants. The Japanese Knotweed creates a mono culture, a large space where it completely crowds out all other plants. The only thing it's good for are bees in the late summer, they love knotweed flowers. If anyone wants to do bee keeping at the farm, let me know!

Also by cutting down on the Knotweed we've seen lots of turkey, who now have a more plants to eat, the same with rabbits and squirrels, which we never used to see in year's past. We are happy to have a family of hawks that keep those new smaller neighbors in check.

Quesadilla with Garden Veggies

2010-07-06T09:23:00.005-04:00

I love Mexican food and quesadillas are one of my staples in life. I learned last year in Mexico that a true quesadilla always has Chihuahua cheese in it, which is now available in the Mexican section at Whole Foods. So, last night I made what I thought was one of the best quesadilla creations of all time, pretty simple too. It's all about the saute!

Whole Wheat Tortillas
Chihuahua Cheese
One Small Onion (mild from the garden)
Hot peppers (I used 3 Zimbabwe Bird)
Kale or Collards (I actually used Kohlrabi greens)
Black Beans

First, saute the chopped onion, the chopped greens and the hot peppers with about a table spoon of butter or olive oil. Put a lid on it to help steam the greens. Start the tortillas in a skillet with the cheese, a little butter on the skillet. Allow the cheese to start melting and add the strained black beans. Then, when the saute is ready, add all that with some more cheese. Put another tortilla on top, allow it all to melt together and then flip. I like my tortillas browned but not blackened which can quickly happen on our cast iron skillet. Add salsa and sour cream to taste. Enjoy!

Morning Chores, Participating in a Natural Rhythm of Life

2010-07-05T12:41:00.004-04:00

Last week I went out to Lamppost Farm near Columbiana, Ohio. I went just to visit and show a friend what's happening out there. We helped Steve with what he calls morning chores which includes moving the cattle to a new paddock of grass, moving the broiler chickens to new grass and feeding them their grains, feeding the pigs, milking the goats and collecting eggs. We also moved new chicks into their new grass filled bottomless chicken tractors. Homesteading and farming involves a deeply satisfying and even spiritual rhythm. A rhythm that connects humanity with creation. The movements on Lamppost Farm of livestock all around the farm is life giving to the land, to the animals and to the people who support all that life around them. The day before we arrived two cows had calves. Four weeks earlier one of the pigs had piglets. All this new life took place naturally and with simplicity because of the natural settings in which the animals live. Steve actually went golfing while one of the calves was born! It seems God created life and especially all these animals for movement. It's crazy to think that most of our meat comes from confinement operations, restricting the natural life cycles of creation. All the animals at Lamppost nourish people with extremely healthy meat, eggs and milk because of the natural movements they are allowed on the farm.

Upon returning home I realized the smaller scale natural rhythm that we've created in the city on our 3000 square feet of land. There's movement of chickens onto fresh grass, turning of the compost, watering of plants and harvesting in the garden before it gets to hot. I'm trying to work into my rhythm my daily reading of scripture and prayer.

I often feel pulled in many directions in life. But it's the simple rhythms in our lives that ground us, that make us mentally and spiritually healthy. Exercise, reading, time with kids around the table, prayer, work, etc. It is my hope to continue to connect my spiritual life, my work life, and my home life as we look to live more simply and be satisfied with less while experiencing the more of the earth's plenty.

Open Hand Ministries

2010-06-22T15:21:00.003-04:00

It's been a number of years now, I think three, since Open Hand Ministries got its start in the Garfield and East Liberty neighborhoods. Open Hand is today a ministry of three local churches, The Open Door, East Liberty Presbyterian, and Valley View Presbyterian. My friend, Michael Stanton, graduated from seminary the same year I did and started this ministry soon after, he's a member of Valley View Church. Open Hand Ministries rehabilitates abandoned houses in our neighborhoods, mostly in Garfield. But, the main aspect of the ministry is the people. Each house to be rehabbed is chosen after a potential homeowner is identified and has made it through the long process of getting credit and finances in order. This weekend Open Hand is finishing their first house of this year. Its an amazing accomplishment, a complete rehab with no corners cut. Just because it's a ministry does not mean the work is shotty, this house, which was abandoned for years, is now one of the nicest if not the nicest house on the block. The woman moving into the house is going to be a first time home owner. She is a single mom and is low income, but she has kept her finances in order through her many trials and tribulations. Her mortgage will be around 30k, meanwhile, the house must be worth 80 or 90k.

This Wednesday volunteers will have a final opportunity to put final touches on the house at 6pm. Sunday after worship we'll travel up the hill to all see the finished product and give a blessing on the house and pray for the family about to move in.

Michael and Linda are featured on an American radio works documentary entitled, War on Poverty. Check out the link below. - click on the "download an audio documentary" link on the left hand side of the web page to hear the documentary

Also check out the website.

Urban Homesteading Part 5: Dog Waste Compost

2010-06-17T23:02:00.001-04:00

This video says it all. Creating a simple but effective composting option for dog waist would be a big step us! With two big dogs in a smaller yard in the city, we have very little option for cleaning up their waist. Basically we double bag it, suffer when it's hot because it smells bad even double bagged, and then put it in the trash. It's gross! This double bagging is horrible environmentally, who knows how long it take for it to degrade. I'll update when we've finished this project. Check out the details in the video.

Week Two of Our CSA

2010-06-10T10:18:00.003-04:00

There are a lot of blogs about how people use their CSA shares from different farms around the country. This is the first year that Garfield Community Farm is attempting to do our own CSA for 15 people. Last night was our second week. Our intern Brad spent all day, literally working at the farm, harvesting, cleaning and preparing all the vegetables. BB and I probably each worked about six hours with him. All this in the rain. It was a great day though, we're doing it, growing food, harvesting it and getting into peoples hands on a weekly basis. We definitely have some kinks to work out, I'm sure we'll be short some weeks (probably soon as we wait for summer crops to start coming in), and we could be totally wiped out if this rainy weather continues - fears of Late Blight loom everywhere. But for now, things are going great. In the picture you see tarragon, beets, kohlrabi, lemon balm (with a tea recipe), strawberries, mesclun mix, and collards. Next week we're hoping to harvest raspberries, mulberries, radish, romaine lettuce, mesclun mix, collards and/or Kale, and who knows, maybe something else I'm not thinking of.

Field Trip at the Farm with Fort Pitt Elementary School

2010-05-04T13:31:00.004-04:00

Today was our first official school field trip day at Garfield Community Farm. It was a great time for all of the forth graders who we've been working with now since January. The kids found all sorts of exciting things at the farm today, it felt to them like they were hiking in the forest at times. They found deer tracks, beneficial insects and other cabbage eating worms. We dug in the compost, discovered tiny fruit trees that we'll one day eat, and munched on arugula. They also enjoyed planting food that later in the season they may be able to eat. Each student left with flowers in a clay pot that they made earlier in the year with us, and hopefully lots of inspiration to bring even more positive change to their neighborhood.

Notes on John 20:19 - 23: Mission Comes out of Intimacy With Christ

2010-05-02T17:50:00.004-04:00

I was scheduled to be preaching a sermon to my congregation right about now. Instead I'm hanging out with my sick wife and our little baby in a cramped hospital room overlooking the East End of Pittsburgh. See some of the posts below from earlier today and earlier in the week.

Here are some notes I took earlier in the week on the passage I was going to preach on today. Instead Tim Becker is preaching, who I'm sure will deliver a knock out sermon.

As the Father Sends the Son, So the Son Sends Us:

It seems there are two branches, among many others, within the church today. The first group are the Christians who thrive off of the power of the Holy Spirit. Many of us have experienced the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives. We’ve felt God’s Spirit and know the closeness of God. I believe God wants us to continue to seek the Holy Spirit and the experiences that the Spirit may bring. But, sometimes we can make our purpose in life to create experiences with the Holy Spirit. If we make an idol of our feelings we are missing the point. On the other hand Christians, and I put myself in this category, can feel a distinct call from God to bring transformation to people and creation through the ministry of Christ. We go out in mission and ministry to bare witness to the risen Christ and work for Christ’s sake. But, often times in the midst of our laboring for Christ we forget that Christ’s Holy Spirit is the one with whom we are laboring. We’re the activists in the church, at our worst, we forget to pray, forget that the Holy Spirit is at work, we go about our work busily but with much anxiety and self absorption.

Our scripture today gives us a deep trinitarian view of the Father Son and Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s role in experience of Christ and our being sent into the world for the sake of ministry.

John 20:19-23 (New International Version)

Jesus Appears to His Disciples
19On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

21Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." 22And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven."

Background, what’s happening here?

First, Jesus shows up to comfort, reassure and encourage.

From a place of deep knowledge of the risen Christ and peace in that relationship, we are sent. Read and explain vs. 19 and 20

As the Father Sends the Son… How does the Father send the Son? The Father sends the son from a place of intimate oneness and unity. God the father and God the Son are in perfect relationship, from that deep and personal relationship the father sends the Son into the physical world. It is from this deep personal relationship that Jesus sends his disciples into ministry and mission. Have you dwelt with Jesus? It is only when we patiently learn to be in Christ as Christ is in the father that we will be effectively sent to transform the world.

We’re not sent out away from God to do his work, we’re sent out with God to join him in his work. We work as the physical hands and feet of God, but we are not separate from God. Jesus breathes upon his disciples and gives them his power and presence through the Holy Spirit. It is the work of the Holy Spirit that we partake in as we move from oneness with Christ into world transforming ministry.

As Christians we need to understand our relationship with God in terms of this passage. Jesus gives us peace, allows us to experience himself in worship and devotion, but always gives us the Holy Spirit for the sake of going out in mission.

I’m interested to know if the disciples really went anywhere for the sake of mission. Of course we know Paul brought Christianity to many peoples and eventually to Rome. From there, we usually think Christianity made it’s way throughout the Roman world. This simplistic understanding of the spread of the gospel ignores the fact that the gospel spread not only toward Rome, but in all directions from Jerusalem. Legends and traditions from the early church give us some insight into how the gospel spread to these places.

Traditions and legends almost always hold some truth and some exaggerated storytelling. We can’t often know which is which. But, legends almost always are built on some aspects of truth. The truth that we’ll realize is that the apostles took seriously Jesus’ call to go into the world with the Holy Spirit.

Saint Philip

Saint Mark

Saint Andrew

Saint Bartholomew

Saint Thomas

Conclusion:
You and I are invited to be draw into a mysterious union with Jesus Christ. A union which makes our relationship with Jesus as close as Jesus’ relationship with the Father. Just as the father and son are one, so we are one with Christ. Likewise, just as the Father sends the Son into the world to bring salvation, so the Son sends us into the world, but he gives us his spirit.

If you have never experienced this oneness with Jesus, if you’ve never surrendered your selfishness and your sinfulness to his transformative love, I invite you to do so tonight. The church’s ministry in the world is built upon people like you and me, regular people, who have been draw into relationship with Jesus. If you need to, take that step and ask Jesus to make you one with him. When we do this we are given peace in Christ and we are made ready for our ministry to the world in the Holy Spirit.

Work at the Farm While We're in the Hospital, What Is That?!?!

2010-05-02T17:19:00.004-04:00

Thanks to everybody who worked at the farm yesterday and pulled together a great work day with a bunch of different folks from a bunch of different churches. Thanks especially to Michael Stanton who allowed his intern Mike Spicuzza to lead things at the home renovation work they are doing in Garfield so that he could take my place at Garfield Farm.

Lee and Nick lead things out at the Odessa Garden of Garfield Farm. Seems things went very well until they found this critter. My first thought is that this snake that they found in the wood pile in the garden is someone's pet that got away. Our garden is in a small wooded area in a populated city neighborhood. I figure it got out of an aquarium and found a space where mice and other critters live. Lee though made me aware that it's colorings look an awful lot like the most common venomous snake in Pennsylvania, a Copperhead. I've seen Eastern Rattlers twice in the wild, once in the Laurel Highlands of PA and once in the mountains of Virginia. I've never seen a Copperhead.

Can anybody help us out with the ID of this snake?

Say What? Septic Pelvic Vein Thrombophlebitis

2010-05-02T09:22:00.005-04:00

The doctors here believe Alyssa has Septic Pelvic Vein Thrombophlebitis, anything that hard to say must be scary right? Well, it is. But, with the diagnosis and proper treatment we believe she'll be ok. Basically it seems to me that the infection in her uterus spread to blood veins around the uterus where blood clots formed. The infection in these blood clots is always unaffected by antibiotics because the blood is basically dead and not a living part of the body any longer. That's why the fevers have kept coming back and why the pain keeps coming back. The doctor is now giving her blood thinners which should thin and release the blood clots. Her doctor said that this happens very rarely, about 1 in 2000 births. If this is not the correct diagnosis it seems the doctors won't know what to do next, so, odd as it may sound, pray that this is what Alyssa has and pray that the course of actions is effective. We are now on a 48 hour countdown, if Alyssa can go 48 hours fever free we can go home. That means Tuesday at the absolute earliest. Alyssa would really like to know how and why she got this infection, something she may never know.

You can read a more accurate description

here

In The Hospital

2010-04-30T09:33:00.003-04:00

Alyssa was very happy to give birth in the setting of the midwife center. No hospital stay, no medications, got to go home four hours after the birth. Unfortunately I found out that I had strep throat during Lyle's birth. I didn't know that for a few days. About a week after Lyle's birth Alyssa started feeling very tired. She thought it was just fatigue as she recovered from the birth. After a week of just not feeling right and having a slight fever at times Alyssa developed severe pains in her stomach. They faded for about a day, but returned two days ago with a vengeance. We rushed into the closest emergency room and found that she had an infection in her uterus. We've been in the hospital ever since. She said that the pain from this infection has been worse that giving birth at times, and she gave birth with no pain killers remember! I also found out that my strep came back after a full 10 days of antibiotics. I'm on stronger ones now. Alyssa's IV antibiotics seem to be working some, but not up to what the doctors had expected and hoped for. They are now trying to determine if the infection has spread into her blood system, which one test shows that it has. They think that test may have been contaminated, but they are not sure yet. They are also determining an even stronger antibiotic to kick this bacteria. She is feeling much better, but has not kept her fever down long enough to begin the count down to go home. If they infection is in her blood they will probably let her go home as long as the temp is down, but with IV antibiotics for two more weeks from home. We're hoping and praying that this disease does not persist. It's pretty scary how resistant these bad bacteria have become to our antibiotics. I wish we didn't have to be on them, I wish we could use natural means, but things have gone too far.

Lyle David, Born April 13th, 2010

2010-04-20T22:43:00.003-04:00

Last Tuesday, one week ago already, Alyssa gave birth to our second son, Lyle David. He's a beautiful little guy, 7lb, 8oz. I love this picture of Alyssa with Lyle, right after his birth. We had him in the comforting setting of the Midwife Center. Alyssa did an amazing job, drug free.

Learning with Teah and the Four Year Olds

2010-04-20T18:43:00.006-04:00

Yesterday I went on a field trip with Teah and her preschool class. It was a bunch of preschoolers, a bunch of suburban moms, and a woman named "Ms Meg". We walked around an old farm site at North Park in the North Hills of Pittsburgh. Ms Meg explained about the wild birds and animals living on the farm, including blue birds, which we spotted at a slight distance. I think it was the second actual blue bird I've seen. Ms Meg also pointed out lots of edible weeds growing in the fields, first one was mint. All the kids and moms picked some in wonder that you could actually EAT a weed. Teah stuck some in her pocket to take home. Later on one boy said he was hungry, Ms. Meg suggested he munch on his mint, this was not appealing to the boy, but it was to my daughter. It was like a light bulb went off in her head, she pulled out the mint and immediately started munching on it. One of her little friends took a stunned double take, her face said, "what on earth are you doing!?" For Teah, it's pretty normal. She didn't really like the mint, too bitter, but eat food from the garden and from the wild is pretty normal. I have to keep her from trying things sometimes when I'm not positive what they are! Today for dinner Teah finished off her meal with two big leaves of Red Russian Kale! Yeah, I was surprised too!

We also learned about the invasive "garlic mustard". Since then I've seen it all over the place. Garlic mustard smells like... garlic and mustard, and can be used to cook with. We'll try it soon. I thought it was cool that Teah and I both learned a little on her field trip. The plant with the little flower is a single garlic mustard plant. If you look around you'll find them everywhere! We also learned about Stinging Nettle, which I'll post on another time.

Urban Homesteading Part 4: (Raised Bed Gardening)

2010-04-16T16:14:00.006-04:00

Having a garden in the city or suburbs is all the rage right now! Seems like everybody is starting a garden, especially folks in their twenties and thirties who have never done it before. In the city, the idea of gardening on vacant land has really taken off. It's what we do through Garfield Community Farm and it's what many others are doing. Its interesting to see neophytes take up gardening and quickly realize it actually IS work, or realize that putting plants in the ground in May and then coming back in September to harvest didn't pan out what they had hoped for. Gardening does take some work, it's a bit of a way of life. No, gardening won't take over your life, it won't demand hours a day (unless you start a garden way to big your first or second year at it). But, gardening is one new thing you might add to your homesteading way of life.

Let me take a few minutes and think through this idea of homesteading being a way of life. Homesteading is a way of living as self and communally reliant as possible, its a way of living into local resilience. Think about where your basic needs come from. Who takes care of household problems when they come up, where do you get your food, clothes, heat, and shelter? Also think about your work, what kind of profession have you chosen, is it communally focused or is it globally focused - not that one is bad, or that you should change, but it is telling to think through where your hard work and energy create pay offs. Is your daily labor bettering your community and home or someone elses? Urban Homesteading looks to create homes and communities that rely on very little outside input to survive and thrive. At this point in our history it is very easy to live depending on foreign oil, coal from West Virginia, food from Chile and California, contractors and insurance companies every time there's a leak in the gutter, horribly inefficient water, sewage and electricity grids, etc., etc. But, we also live at a time when some of the smartest people on earth are realizing that changes must be made, that local economies are the most important economies, and that globalization is in some ways hurting the earth. It's our choice to reap the bountiful harvest of the little bit of land that God has given each one of us, at our homes and in our neighborhoods, or to continue to take resources from far off places. Many are saying that we will have little choice in the matter in the near future. Those of us who get a head start will be in a much better place when there's little oil to be had, when China and the US can't trade any longer, or when it's found that Roundup is killing us through the vegetables we eat. If this discussion interests you, check out "The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience" or "Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community".

As a Christian and pastor, it is my hope that the church will soon be the leading entity toward environmental justice, local resilience and communal reliance. I know, you think I'm dreaming, I am... I believe it is the way of the Kingdom to live reliant on our neighbors and friends for our needs, not on big business that promotes injustice and greed. I believe it's the way of the Kingdom to see vacant abused places brought back to life through the restorative work of urban farming. Where are the abandoned places of empire in your life and in your local context? How might they be transformed in a way that provides for you and your neighborhood?

Back to gardening with raised beds. This is the practical part and it'll be short and simple. Growing food for ourselves is of course a great way eat more healthy food. Eating spinach from your own garden is much healthier for you than eating spinach that has been sitting in trucks and grocery stores for the past week. A surprise percent of nutrient matter is lost every day after harvest, especially from greens like spinach. Gardening is also a great way to cut your carbon foot print, so transportation for your veggies mean no foreign (or local for that matter) oil being used. And growing your own veggies saves you money. Organic vegetables are expensive! And they should be. Organic farmers deserve their pay, but those of us who live on lighter salaries struggle to always by fresh and organic... so, grow your own!

Why raised beds???? Most of the soil in urban and often in suburban areas around Pittsburgh, is not very good soil. The best way to fix that is by composting. One method of raised bed gardening that we use at the farm in Garfield includes sheet composting, where you layer different compostables, then adding some quality top soil, then manure and more compost. This can be done right on top of your lawn. We start with cardboard on top of the grass and weeds, then leaves and wood chips, then whatever compostables you have, then soil and compost that has fully decomposed. The compost in the lower layer does not have to be fully decomposed. With this method there is no digging, that's right, no digging, just piling. The only think you have to buy is some top soil, though we've also gone without that depending on the crops to be grown. Some things like squash can be grown in pure compost. Carrots and other root vegetables can not. For those of you who have good soil in your yard, I recommend tilling the soil, then adding the compost, but still mounding it into a raised bed. At home I always like to create walls for my raised beds, but at the farm we sometimes just make big mounds with no walls, its a lot cheaper! The walls I use vary in materials. Last year I was able to get my hands on Black Locust lumber, some of the most rot resistant wood on earth. I actually milled the lumber with my friends Steve and Kendall. But other times I just use plain 2x6 or 2x8 pine. I've made raised beds as deep as 2x12, but rarely much more. I've used concrete blocks and plastic kiddie pools too. Logs from the woods can work great, especially for terraced beds on a hill. I like wood more than anything, especially when it's locally harvest. It seems most plants like about 8 inches of soil and any more is overkill. I could be wrong, on that, but the results I've had have been very good. The picture with the wood and black plastic is an old picture of raised beds made of treated lumber. I don't use that stuff anymore. The plastic is probably just as bad as the chemicals in the treated lumber. I recommend staying away from plastic as much as possible, whether its in gardening or in the house. That another post, and I'm very new at even thinking about it.

By using raised beds you elevate the soil level which does a few things...
1. reduces weeds, the seeds have to climb over a wall to get in
2. allows for more plants in a smaller area, more soil depth so less space between plants.
3. reduces how far down you have to bend to plant, weed and harvest, for us old folks that's a good thing!
4. keeps hands and veggies out of soil that has been contaminated by lead from the old lead paint on your house (this is a major reason to use raised beds for us at the farm and at home)
5. It looks nice

One Satisfying Omelet

2010-04-10T14:02:00.003-04:00

You've never tasted an omelet until you've tasted this omelet. Many restaurants describe some amazing sounding omelets, my favorites are the western style, the Tex-Mex style, and the Greek omelets, they all sound so good on paper. But, I've never had a restaurant omelet (except for one at a bed and breakfast in North Conway, NH), that I really liked. I blame the ingredients. I just finished the simplest omelet on the planet, but it was soooo good, just egg and cheese, you really wouldn't believe how good it was unless you have eggs from rotationally pastured hens. Last week Alyssa made an even better omelet for dinner, here were the ingredients.

2 eggs from the back yard
Local cheese from the East End Food Co-op
Steamed Red Russian Kale from the cold frame
Crumbled Sausage from Lamppost Farm (a pig that I helped slaughter and butcher)

The best omelet ever! Even more satisfying knowing where all the ingredients came from and just how healthy each one is... for us and for the planet.

Work at the Farm

2010-04-07T16:28:00.004-04:00

There's a lot getting done at Garfield Community Farm and Odessa Garden this spring. Already we've had some great work days with volunteers from Beulah Church, Oakmont Church, of course The Open Door Church, CMU, East Liberty Church, and more. I've been putting in lots of hours over the past few weeks on my own and with my co-worker, Kelly too. We're tripling our growing space this year and so have a lot of spring work to get done. I feel so behind already, but mainly just because it feels like summer outside, not early April. Today I got some work done on a water collection system for the Odessa Garden, planted some onions and potatoes over there, and still have our volunteer event tonight at six.

All this preparation is leading to gardens that will provide produce for our Pilot CSA this year, our first partnership with a restaurant, and hopefully a lot more food for the Valley View food bank.

I'm excited that next week we'll have our first crop of greens ready to offer to Franktuary, the restaurant who we're working with, and soon to our CSA customers as an early season addition.

Urban Homesteading Part 3: Salads (almost) All Year

2010-03-31T09:21:00.004-04:00

The south face of our house not only helps heat the interior of the house on cold but sunny winter days, it also heats anything on the outside of the house. I first saw a "cold frame" about three years ago at Three Sister's Permaculture Farm in Sandy Lake, PA. This is Darrell Frey's farm and the location of his bioshelter, a large passive solar green house which incorporates compost and chicken manure into the fertilizing and heating of the building. On the outside of the bioshelter are about a dozen large cold frames. We were there in March with snow on the ground the first time we visited. The inside of the bioshelter was warm and teeming with salad greens, nasturtiums, and herbs, which had all not only survived the winter, but thrived through it. The remarkable aspect of this place is that the bioshelter uses NO natural gas, electricity or any other fossil fuel for heat. Only compost, the sun, and on the coldest nights - firewood. Most people, including myself for a long time, don't realize the enormous amount of fuel needed to heat conventional greenhouses through the winter. That's why so few farmers use greenhouses for growing veggies all winter long. It can be done, but costs way too much money, not to mention the greenhouse gasses produced in the environment. As we walked around the bioshelter and heard about how it was made 25 or so years ago we asked about the cold frames. Darrell opened one up and, lo and behold, a lone mustard green plant. Darrell didn't even know it was in there. It had survived the winter with absolutely no care, only the shelter of a window facing the sun. My friend Lance and I both took a leaf and ate our first fresh garden-green of that spring. It seemed amazing that something could survive the winter with no care. In reality, this is the easiest way to grow salad greens almost all year round.

Our cold frame is a bit small, about four feet by four feet. I used scrap lumber from my garage and from Construction Junction and a $10 used double paned window from the same store. I then attached hinges to open and close the window at the top of the frame. It's very important that your cold frame have an easy way to be propped open too, the sun can quickly raise the temperature too high for your plants, especially in spring. The sides of the frame should slant downward toward the sun to allow as much sunlight in as possible. The rear of the frame should be at least one foot high and the front can be only a few inches off the ground. I used weather stripping around the frame where the window closes against the wood.

We built our cold frame a little late in the season last year, late October. It's a bit difficult to get greens growing that late in the season. But, by December the greens were ready to begin harvesting. We used a few different salad green mixes and some of those hardy mustard greens. I was sure that everything was completely dead and frozen during the single digit nights of January and February, the plants all looked wilted and frozen. But, as soon as a warmer day with sun came, they all perked back up! We didn't eat much from the cold frame in January and early February, but allowed what had grown in November to survive and provide for our salads in late February, March and April. I've been cooking the larger kales and Boc Choi as well as feeding lots to the chickens, who were so excited to have fresh salad greens in February and early March, before the grass started growing.

A cold frame is super easy to build. It's fun to go outside on a cold late February day and pick salad greens like it's mid May. A larger cold frame would be better for our family, I'd recommend maybe 4x6 or 4x8 with two 4x4 windows. All you really need to put in a cold frame is a side of your house that gets lots of sun, building it is the easy part.

Urban Homesteading Part 2: Rotationally Pastured Hens on 1000 Square Feet

2010-03-24T09:27:00.009-04:00

Our chickens are definitely the most popular piece of our urban homestead. Most people I talk to think of having chickens as a really big step for them, something they hope to do someday when all the other things are in order, when they are master gardeners and when they just happen to have oodles of free time to care for their urban flock. I agree that chickens take a little time, but they should not be thought of as something you can only do when you reach a certain sustainable benchmark of extra time and expert gardening… that’ll probably never happen!

A few chickens in the back yard can actually be a great place to start your urban homestead. We have three Plymouth Barred Rock Hens. They came to us in November from our friends at Lamppost Farm. They are about two years old and still in their egg laying prime.

We chose to build a small chicken tractor, a design that Steve from Lamppost came up with, for our hen’s home. A chicken tractor is a moveable chicken coup that allows the chickens access to grass below the coup. They can be used for laying hens like ours or for meat birds.

The purpose of a chicken tractor is at least three fold. First, it allows the chickens access to nutritious grass in your lawn. Grass fed chickens produce healthier eggs than those not allowed access to grass and greens. With grass fed hens the yolks of their eggs actually become the healthiest part of the egg. Yolks are rich in Conjugated Linoleic Acid, or CLA, a long chain fatty acid that actually reduces bad cholesterol and helps the body fight cancer! CLA is virtually not found in eggs that come from hens in confinement style industrial farming operations. Even those eggs labeled as coming from “free-range” hens may not have access to enough greens to produce the best quality eggs. Eggs from your backyard chickens, if you make sure they have lots of grass, grains and food scaps, will also be higher in vitamin A, vitamin E, and lots of other good stuff. The yolks become a bright orange compared to the pale yellow we’re all used to, it’s quite remarkable. So, access to grass for your hens equals healthier food for you.

The second thing that a chicken tractor does is it allows you to move the chickens all around your yard, so they eat it intensively, that's called raising "rotationally pastured hens". Rotational pasturing is the way that the best organic grass based farmers are running their farms these days, and you can do it in your own backyard! If you want to learn more do a youtube search for Joel Salatin. You can actually get rotationally pastured hens eggs from Whole Foods, but they are extremely expensive and you can only get a half dozen last time I looked. So, each day we move the tractor about three feet. As Steve says, it’s one of the best parts of the day, watching the chickens all get excited about their fresh patch of grass to eat up. By making them eat intensively the chickens eat everything in that spot and basically thatch your lawn. No need for a lawn mower here! The chicken’s don’t big much and they don’t kill the grass, but they do fertilize with their high nitrogen manure and urine. So your lawn will end up being very healthy. You’ll build better soil over the months and years, and actually create spaces begging to be gardened in. If the chickens are allowed to just go wherever they want in a yard, they’ll just pick and choose what they want to nibble on and not eat the stuff they don’t like, which usually are the weeds. When that happens the weeds can take over. On the other hand, if you were to make a really nice coup and give your hens access to a patch of your yard they would quickly eat everything in that space to the ground. It would get muddy and you would end up buying or growing all of their food. The tractor allows you to move their home to their daily salad bar while the other spots grow back better than before. But, by using a chicken tractor they will feed indiscriminately on all the grass and weeds and make a healthier lawn in the end.

The third reason for a chicken tractor – it keeps them safe. The hens we have are regularly hunted by two large predators, one weighing over 120 pounds. That’s right, our dogs. Chickens can be killed by a number of city dwelling animals, raccoons, skunks, dogs, cats, and probably more things in neighborhoods like Garfield. There are rumors of foxes living in Garfield and Stanton Heights.

A small flock of laying hens can be a lot of fun for kids and for adults. Our kids love to pick salad greens out of our winter garden (which I’ll talk about in later posts) and feed them to the hens. The hens love it too! Through the winter we only went about four weeks with few eggs being laid. When the days are at their shortest the hens almost stop laying eggs. The quickly ramped back up and are now giving us 2 – 3 eggs each day, just the right amount for us (unless Alyssa is really into baking on week). These little girls’ eggs are the easiest way to produce the protein and fat that our bodies need on a regular basis. Unless you think you can get a milking cow or goat and keep it legal in the city, egg layers are the way to go.

Now, for the building of the tractor. Ours actually still needs wheels on it in the back to make it easier to move. Basically it's shaped like an a frame or triangle if you're looking from the front. The rear is solid with to mesh on the sides to give the birds full shelter in rain or wind, that's also where they lay the eggs. There is a door in the front and one smaller one in the back for retrieving the eggs. We used rough cut oak siding on ours, which makes it a little too heavy. You're hens will like the shelter, but can be let out if you want them to have some fun around a fenced in yard some days. They SHOULD return at dusk to their roosts which you build into the tractor. If you're interested in the details of the design or in buying one just like ours from a local farmer (Steve Montgomery), please let me know.

Urban Homesteading Part 1 (New House Luck)

2010-03-22T09:27:00.004-04:00

My family and I were not very excited to move from our 1860 Victorian farmhouse last summer. We especially miss the half-acre of land and all the fun we had in that big flat yard. But, that move has allowed us to become much more self sufficient and more ecologically responsible with the smaller house and small amount of land that we can currently call our own. Over the next few weeks I’m planning to outline some of the simple steps we’ve taken to create a green urban homestead in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Stanton Heights. Our approach to creating a “green” home has been extremely low budget and simple, it has taken work and creativity, but not a lot of money. We want what we do to be repeatable by anybody, regardless of income. Most of the green building practices that get press these days are the ones that cost lots of money; active solar panels, wind turbines and the like. Most of our steps to creating a green urban home have cost less than $50, and actually have saved way more money than they cost. I’ll highlight what we’re doing, what we’re growing, and how it’s all making a more simple, livable, self-sufficient lifestyle for my family and me.

My hope is that these posts will encourage you to take steps to create your own energy, grow your own food, harvest your own rain water, and build your own healthy soil for your gardens. And my hope is that your home will become an example of how individuals within small communities can change the planet, curb global warming, and teach others how to grow the most nutritious food available.

Passive Solar and Insulated (We Got a Little Lucky)

Ok, so my dream is to someday build a passive solar straw bale home on a 100-acre farm about an hour outside the city. We thought that the Orchard House was going to be our dream home which we would stay in for ever and ever. Upon realizing that the old Orchard House was going to sell we had to find the right smaller home with a decent yard, and we had to do it quickly. We weren’t looking for another forever dream home, but a realistic and financially responsible home that would work out for at least a few years. We searched our corner of the city over, we were in and out of many houses in our price range, but weren’t finding what we wanted. It seemed every house we saw either needed a year of rehab work to make it livable or was priced for someone other than us. It began to look like we would be moving in with our parents or friends when we found a potential house. We were the first family to take a look at it. Apparently it had been on the market for some time and didn’t sell, was taken off the market and was now about to go back up for sale. There were some problems with the house that kept it from selling. One of those “problems” would be a major bonus for us, I’ll talk about that later. In reality we went with this house because it had a decent yard for our Great Dane, German Shepherd and two kids, and because it was move-in ready. While this house is not our dream house built of all natural materials and off the electrical grid, it actually has some characteristics that are pretty amazing – in reality, we got pretty lucky with this place.

Our little homestead is located on a corner lot, a for sure bonus when you’re looking for an urban home with a slightly larger yard than the neighborhood average. Being on this particular corner lot also allows us direct southern exposure all day long. While our northern side is only a few feet from our neighbors, we have plenty of yard and sunlight on the side of the house that counts. The southern side of the house is also the long side, with lots of windows, even a large bay window in the dinning room. Surely this was not an intentional design, but in essence our house is passive solar. The windows allow enough sunlight to drench most of the rooms to raise the temperature at least five degrees on a sunny day. In a true passive solar house that’s nothing, but come on, this is passive solar by luck.

The second and most important aspect of this house is that it’s insulated. That actually did play an important role in our purchase of the house. The Orchard House was anything but insulated. At some point in the past ten years or so the former owners had cellulose blown into all the walls and ceilings here at the new home. Most houses in this neighborhood and in the city of Pittsburgh are not insulated, which is the single most important improvement to make on a home to save lots of money and carbon in the atmosphere.

My advise here is to be more intentional than we were about buying a house that gets very good sunlight, is insulated and has a yard that you can garden in. While we chose this house for the yard, we didn’t think too much about the passive solar attributes or the insulation. Well, we really liked the fact that it was insulated, but we also probably would have bought it either way. We really just got lucky. Some of what I’ll talk about over the next few weeks is really built upon these characteristics of our house. If you want a "green" house that costs little money to live in, it needs to be insulated. The pseudo-passive solar attributes of some homes are a bonus and helps save money, and the yard makes more gardening possible.

Anyone can become more self/communally reliant without spending much money. Maybe these posts will encourage you to take steps to create your own energy, grow your own food, harvest your own rain water, and build your own healthy soil for your gardens.

Change of Name

2010-03-22T08:00:00.003-04:00

I know I haven't been writing anything on my blog lately. I think I've actually had too much to write about to write anything. But, I'm going to try. In thinking about things that I want to share I've realized that most of exciting things in my life right now have to do with Garfield Farm and my family. The farm is an integral part of The Open Door Church and so I'll write about my work with the church too, my work with the farm is some of my work with the church. Anyway, I went ahead and changed the name of my blog and changed the picture heading to better represent what I plan to write about. Hope you enjoy.

Winter

2010-01-10T10:38:00.003-05:00

Last night, while out walking the dog, I remembered why I love winter. I didn't realize it was probably in the single digits when we went out late last night, but I knew it was cold. I put on my red, puffy down coat, my hat and face mask. We walked our abbreviated Stanton Heights walk that ended at the ball park behind Sunnyside School where I often let Emma off leash to run a little. There's a great hillside that leads into some woods that I like to let Emma run down. We found some sticks to play fetch with. The snow had drifted onto the hillside making it about two feet deep, perfect for making a dog run through to get worn out a little. As I stood there on the hill I recognized a sound I hadn't heard in a while, the sound of ice cold wind blowing around my warm ears. The stars were out but no one else could be seen or heard, except cars in the distance and a lone dog not too far away. It reminded me of why I love winter backpacking, few other people ever want to be out, so it's quiet and still. Something about being in the single digits brings a different calm and stillness that I love.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-25T10:07:00.004-05:00

We weren't sure we'd have a very good Christmas morning at 12:30 am when Micah woke up with a croopy cough and asthma worse than I've ever heard. He could hardly breath. It was the first time this year he'd had asthma, thankfully his nebulizer and albuterol were ready to go. It was the first time it felt like an emergency. But, it worked. His breathing slowed down and became easier and he fell asleep next to Alyssa and I in bed. This was one night I wouldn't have put him back in his bed if he wanted to. We woke up in the morning and he seemed to feel a lot better, still has a cough, but no asthma for now.

Micah and Teah's biggest gifts I made this year. Micah got a train table and Teah I made a baby cradle. Teah's new Barbies came from her grandmama's attic, still in the boxes, along with two other dolls that would have probably cost $40 each, at least.

My Christmas gift came a month ago in the form of a chicken coop and Alyssa's gift came last week in the form of a Taylor guitar. Pretty nice guitar too, we had to sell two other guitars and a keyboard to pay for half of it.

Now we're just hoping and praying that Micah gets rid of this cough so we can go see Richard and his family in Knoxville, TN.

Merry Christmas everyone.

A New Farmer's Blog

2009-12-22T11:57:00.001-05:00

This is a great blog, thought I'd share it... http://thebeginningfarmer.blogspot.com/

Got the Chickens

2009-11-28T15:32:00.004-05:00

On Wednesday our friends Steve and Mel Montgomery delivered our chicken coop and three Barred Rock chickens. We've had them now for just about 48 hours and already they've given us half a dozen eggs. It's amazing how different these eggs are than what you buy at the store, even the organic ones. The yokes are bright orange, containing lots of beta carotene. They are a lot of fun too, kids are having lots of fun with them as am I.

Playing Music Together

2009-11-23T11:37:00.003-05:00

Saturday marked an important day for Russ and Sandy, they got married. Alyssa, Andy Wessell and Chris Hilf (AKA This Side of Eve) played for their reception. It was the first time in over a year that we've played our original music, it felt good. There's something right about playing songs that you wrote your self or with the help of your band mates. I don't know if this marks the beginning of us starting to play and write again or if it was just a one time happening. This particular line up hadn't ever really played together before. In the very early days we played with Andy on drums and our friend Ian White on bass. Later Ian played drums, then Chris Williams. Bill Adams was a key member in the band for years, most of that time Chris Hilf played bass, but for a while Jim Leofler played and later Nate Stevens. Bill's is now playing in his own band, The Red Rovers. Having Andy back felt really natural, He can learn a new song in no time, makes rehearsing sooo easy. Chris was perfect on bass as always. We only rehearsed twice, even with five new covers, pretty much all slow songs for people to slow dance to. We really are not a wedding band, but our choices of covers made it all work quite well. We did "Moon River" and a Nora Jones'ish version of "Love me Tender". We also did "I Want You to Be My Love" and "Go Down Easy" by "Over the Rhine", and a really cool version of "The Fire Theif" by Hem. In the end, it was great to play, especially with two really good friends, and my best friend, my wife Alyssa (even though she did give me a dirty look when I missed a change in Go Down Easy!)

I think, even with two kids and another on the way, it's time we begin to reinvent ourselves, just for our own love for music, and begin writing some new tunes. Many of the old songs miss Bill's harmonica and mandolin, or the songs are just not stylistically what we want to be playing. Alyssa and I have known for a while the direction we want to move in musically, I hope we can find the time to work on it play again.

Church Music, Yeah I like it

2009-11-16T14:33:00.003-05:00

I haven't been musically inspired for a while. I think that's by my own place in life these days with my work focusing on other things and lots of time being eaten up by family stuff. We all love music and listen to lots of it, but I haven't had a CD that has moved me in a while, especially not Christian music. But, I really do like this new David Crowder album. I've liked Crowder since before he and UBC released their first album, but that last one was a bit uninspired, I thought. The new album, Church Music, is great for a couple reasons:
1. It's just fun to listen to
2. The band really moves into some different musical categories, even if disco is one of them.
3. Lyrics like "Oh happiness, there's grace enough for us and the WHOLE human race" are too rare in Christian music. Push those universalist boundaries!
4. There's actually some great electric guitar work on some of the songs, especially on God Almighty, None Compares. It really rocks, has complex musical parts and changes, lyrically its good, completely different from anything they've done before, BIG guitars.
5. Worshipful, not boring, not the normal "soft guys voice" wimpy sound that I'm use to.

Urban Homestead Additions

2009-10-28T16:34:00.005-04:00

So over the weekend and on Monday of this week Alyssa and I built two additions for our home. On Monday, after work, I finished up a small cold frame. What is a cold frame you may ask, well it's a super mini green house, usually touching a home. I first saw a cold frame in person at Darrel Frey's Bio Shelter with fresh mustard greens in February. His frame was completely unheated except for the radiant heat that comes from touching the outside of the bioshelter. Touching our house will do the same. It's simply built of scrap lumber and a window bought from construction junction. The window is actually double pained and probably insulates better than the windows in my house. The window itself cost $10, originally hundreds I'm sure. Now we'll have fresh lettuce, spinach and other greens all winter hopefully!

Just a few days before building the cold frame we worked with about 25 other folks at Lamppost Farm for a day (actually it all felt more like play for us city dwellers). Alyssa milked a goat and we both helped, along with our friend Meghan, to build this chicken coup. We'll be bringing the coup into the city for either our yard or Garfield Farm in the coming weeks. It still needs a few more finishing touches. We love the rough cut oak, harvested locally and milled by Steve.

Earth Sheltered, Passive Solar House Visit

2009-10-26T21:36:00.004-04:00

Last Saturday, while shopping at Tractor Supply for a new maul handle, Alyssa and I received a call from Ron Gargasz about coming out to his farm to get some beef. As you know, beef is a new food in my life. This winter we'll basically be eating beef from two local farms, Lee Scot's farm and Ron's farm. We had never been to Ron's farm before and were surprised to find that it is only 5 minutes from my parents cabin outside Slippery Rock, PA, where we were staying for the weekend. As we were pulling up to his home and farm Alyssa and I were talking about a crazy, futurist article in an old Organic Gardening and Farming magazine from 1978. The article mentioned that most houses in the future would be passive solar for heat, a place where people both live and grow their own food in the winter. It also mentioned that these houses would also be partially underground on the north side to preserve heat. Only seconds later we pulling into a long driveway where we saw a roof coming out of the ground. I was dumbfounded, we were pulling up to an earth sheltered passive solar house. Ron was extremely gracious, gave the four of us a tour of his entire house, which he built about ten years after the time the article I had read was written. This house was not only amazing in it's environmental sustainability, Ron had built a beautiful home. We left with about $100 of organic, grass fed, beef, and a big bag of potatoes for free. We also left with a renewed inspiration for sustainable living and self-reliance.

This earth sheltered house is not Ron's, I didn't take any pictures. Just thought this one looked cool, like something a Hobbit would live in, Ron's does NOT look like this one.

A Warm House?

2009-10-13T14:56:00.001-04:00

Temperature outside 38 degrees a couple nights ago. Temperature inside at our old house, without the heat being one would have been about... 38. That house caused us to set the heat at 57 at night and 60 in the day, maybe. Our new house is about half the size. It's also insulated, a novel idea! Each room has it's own electric heat, but we are not expecting to use the electric system very much. We put in a Lopi Leyden Wood Stove in the main living area. So far I've used it mostly because we're excited to use it. A few nights ago we had it nice and toasty around 70 or so but let it go out completely when we went to bed. In the morning it was 39 outside and still well above 60 all over the house! We'll see how things go when it's 2 outside, but it seems we may be able to heat the house primarily for free or very cheaply with wood.

Autumn Locavore Meal

2009-10-09T20:21:00.005-04:00

It's been a tough couple of months to fulfill our attempts to eat locally grown and raised food. We sold plenty of food through Garfield Farm and tried to eat local and healthy when we could, but when you move houses with your family and have a general busy summer, it gets tempting to eat chick-fil-a more that I'd like to admit.

But, things are settling down now, so we're back to having a little more time to properly shop and more time to cook. Most importantly Alyssa's kitchen is mostly done, with a new gas stove, a must have (in her words) for canning, and a new countertop that doesn't gross her out.

So, this afternoon Teah and I went out during Micah's nap, and Alyssa cooked an amazing meal, a pork apple stew. The pork was from Lamppost Farm, carrots from our home garden at the old house, sweet potatoes from Garfield Farm, cabbage from Garfield Farm, and apples from Dawson's Farm (local but bought at Whole Foods). The apples sauce was amazing, local Granny Smith Apples.

Last night was a whole chicken from Lamppost Farm which is now also going to feed us with chicken soup for about a week.

So, if you want the recipe for the stew, don't ask me, ask Alyssa, it was amazing. Props to her cooking and commitment to this counter-cultural way of eating.

The pork, which we got from Lamppost Farm and our friends Steve and Melanie, has been great. They are now raising a bunch of these little guys, though they are getting big now from what I hear. They are Hereford pigs, a heritage breed.

Garfield Community Farm Alternative Gift Giving

2009-09-22T12:11:00.004-04:00

Here is this year's alternative gift brochure for Garfield Community Farm, a ministry of The Open Door and Valley View Church. Check it out and think about giving this year. This is our most important fund raiser of the year as we move away from foundation grants and government funding toward a smaller more sustainable budget and giving community.

Busyness Makes for Little Blogging

2009-09-09T12:30:00.004-04:00

Top Seven Reason why I haven't blogged much for the past six months

1. We moved from "The Orchard House" into a smaller house in Stanton Heights.
2. We are working on that house and living at my parents house.
3. Garfield Community Farm has greatly expanded this year, I've had interns to manage and lots of ministry and farming happening.
4. The normal pace of ministry at The Open Door has continued amidst the new changes.
5. Teah and Micah are 2 and 4 years old!
6. I led our third annual mission trip to Mexico a few weeks ago, amazing trip.
7. I had some great vacation time this summer totally away from phones and computers, but that did make the re-entry more hectic.

Also, I'm supposed to be blogging at garfieldfarm.com too.

Selling Food at the Penn Aiken Dairy

2009-09-01T14:48:00.002-04:00

Last Thursday was our first attempt at selling produce outside the Penn Aiken Dairy. The Penn Aiken Dairy is an interesting spot. The store is a centerpiece in the Garfield neighborhood, everyone goes their to get everything, candy, ice cream, lunch meat, cigarettes, even beer! So, it's a prime location for us to sell veggies outside of, lots of foot traffic and all Garfield residents. The owner was reluctant at first, until I mentioned that we are made up of two churches working to grow food in Garfield and for Garfield. Now he seems very excited to help us. He called yesterday to see how it went last week. The shoppers were interested in our food, we sold a decent amount, all at low prices. We were joined by Maria from Healcrest Farm, which allowed us to take food stamps, which was very cool.

We'll try this location again this week, so come on out and visit us from 4 - 7pm on Thursday night.

Busy Weekend in the Hood

2009-06-08T11:48:00.001-04:00

Garfield Farm had a very busy, but very good weekend. On Saturday we worked along side folks from other local churches at the the garden, weeding, watering, planting, and building. At this same time Valley View Presbyterian Church was feeding over a hundred of Garfield’s residents at their Saturday food bank. And this was the first time Garfield Farm significantly participated in the food bank. Dozens of bags of our fresh spring mix salad greens were given away to those in need, probably the only fresh food available. It is exciting to know that we are doing what we’ve said we want to do, get fresh organic food to people who otherwise may not afford it.

During our work and the food bank, volunteers from local churches were also working with Open Hand Ministries to transform yards, houses, an old church building, and other spaces. Their ministry focuses on rehabilitating abandoned property in Garfield and East Liberty for first time home owners who otherwise may never afford a decent home. This work day was spent working on the yards and homes of our recently new homeowners, we all know that a fixed up house soon needs more fixin’.

Finally, on Sunday morning Garfield Farm participated in the Highland Park Yard Sale, really it’s more like a neighborhood festival, put on by the neighbors, no corporate sponsors or big businesses. There were of course people all over the neighborhood selling their antiques, junk, and what-not, but there were also arts and craft vendors, musicians, and DJ’s, and folks gillin’ up on the sidewalks. It was a great atmosphere of neighbors being neighbors. We participated by setting up our tent at the Union Project and selling our salad greens, spinach, radishes, and tomato and pepper plants. It was a great time talking with folks, signing them up on the mailing list, and even inviting them to church.

A Green House for All

2009-05-04T11:46:00.004-04:00

A part of the purpose behind Garfield Community Farm is to learn and teach how we can become more self-sufficient, or maybe we should say communally-sufficient (we're not looking to make hermits who don't have to go anywhere or know anyone because they are self-sufficient, instead we're looking to develop community that relies on each other to survive and flourish). So, this past weekend we began building a small greenhouse, an important addition to Garfield Farm's ability to grow food and teach others how to grow food in our neighborhood. When we think of green houses, hoop houses, or high tunnels we usually think of things that cost at least a grand. Big green houses that need big-time space. We've hired Darrell Frey, and organic farmer who specializes in sustainable green houses, to help us build a low cost green house. He calls this design his Bale-House design. It is a post and beam structure, no metal hoops. We cut the posts from vacant lots in Garfield and right at the farm. They are either Black Locust or Red Elm. Both tree species grow abundantly in our neighborhood. We didn't even have to cut down the Locust, just trimmed some large branches off. The rest of the lumber is just untreated 2x4's and 2x6's. It is called a BALE-house because in the fall we will line the north facing wall, the wall that gets no sunlight, with straw-bales for insulation. This will allow us to grow more food further into the winter.

It's a small structure, about 16' by 12', big enough to fit 50 seedling flats. But not big enough to provide Garfield with local green all winter long. This structure is a teaching tool, not a high production tool. Sure we'll grow in it and house our seedlings in it to be sold, but the main purpose as I see it is to teach and inspire. While it does take some work and a little cash, this structure could fit in most yards in Garfield (it has cost about $250 so far, probably about $50 more). My hope is that we'll see friends and neighbors helping each other create gardens and green houses together. My hope is that people, kids especially, will learn to eat the food that the earth provides, and do it in community, sharing space, sharing gardens, and green houses all over the neighborhood. For now, I'll settle with this one, and hope that we can involve lots of kids and have lots of fun as we learn together.

Here it is after five volunteers worked with Darrell for about four hours. We're becoming more "communally-sufficient" together. Without help this would have taken days.

Design of an Urban Farm

2009-04-30T10:50:00.004-04:00

On Tuesday night a group from the Open Door attended the final presentations of seven masters level students in the Sustainable Systems program at Slippery Rock University. Each of the students had researched the land and interviewed folks from the Open Door about the Garfield Farm project we're currently undertaking. The two plus acres of land in Garfield that we are working is was their final project for the class. The presentations were very interesting and exciting to hear about and look at. In the coming week or so I will have the visuals and hopefully be able to post some of the ideas here.

In addition to this opportunity we are also conducting an "innovation session" with Jackson Clark Partners with Garfield neighbors and folks from our churches to discern the future of Garfield Community Farm and share what is already happening. We will have the opportunity to share the designs that the students created, but more importantly listen to residents share their ideas for the project.

In the mean time, as we think about big picture designs for the 2+ acres of city land in Garfield, we're also working hard to create a smaller garden on about 1/8 of that land. It's been an exciting process. So far we've sheet mulched the entire space with thick layer of cardboard, wood chips and leaves. We've also begun composting hundreds of points of used coffee grounds from local coffee shops for our nitrogen loving plants. We've built raised beds 4'X25' across the space, built a natural wood terrace begin with is our raspberry garden, and we've planted a small orchard of plum, apple and pear trees. The two peaches look dead, we'll see. In addition we also put in two Jostaberry shrubs and three black currants, neither of which I have ever tasted. All of this has been done with volunteers and neighborhood youth. Each Wednesday night we work together, pray together, and attempt to bare witness to the redemptive work of Christ in our world to these kids who keep showing up to hang out with us and learn to garden. The youngest kids seem to have as much fun as the oldest (that would be the adults). Here's Micah "working" in the potato patch.

Getting What We Asked For

2009-04-10T18:31:00.005-04:00

We're getting just what we asked for, praise God! Wait a second, this is hard! Garfield Community Farm is really moving forward, great things are happening, community involvement is coming about. The main site at Cornwall and Wicklow street in Garfield is actively being developed by church members, community members and friends from around the area. What we asked for was kids. We thought that the involvement of kids would bring the involvement of adults and the greater community. We thought we would partner with Valley View Church's summer camp and other after school programs to make the happen. We didn't think that our simple presence at the garden would be all we needed. Over the past few weeks we went from having two neighborhood kids come out, so about 10, 15 and then this week about 30! We were not prepared, it was chaotic! But that's what we've been praying for right? And most of these kids are coming out to work. One week they were upset with me when we had to finish up, so I let them keep a wheel barrow and a couple shovels out to start spreading mulch in a new area. We have a lot of work to do though. Work to create meaningful activities for these kids to learn and get involved, work to build trust and relationships, work to build more adult involvement tending the garden and more importantly ministering to and with these kids. The picture is from last Saturday. They call themselves the "Cornwall Kids" since they all live on Cornwall Street. These kids are great kids! 30 of them was a little overwhelming!

A Dog Named Tiny

2009-01-05T14:02:00.004-05:00

Alyssa has wanted a Great Dane for years now, ever since we stayed at a home with one in Athens Ohio, when we recorded our first album. But, since them, we got Emma, a 75 pound, playful German Shepherd, who is a VERY good watch dog. She has a very intimidating bark when people approach the house.

A few weeks ago we began a conversation with the Cincinnati Great Dane Rescue, they were at the Over the Rhine concert. The lead couple in the band Over the Rhine are Dane owners and support the rescue by having them come to their shows. We then stopped by to visit the president of the Pennsylvania Great Dane Rescue, and her dog Moose, at the Washington County Petco. So, to make a long story shorter, Emma now has a new friend and playmate, a 1 year old full bred Great Dane named Tiny. He's an amazing dog, very gentle and great with kids. He's teaching Emma how to relax and she's trying to teach him to be suspicious of strangers, but it's not working. Tiny weighs about 130 pounds, almost 2x Emma, and eats about twice the amount of food.

As you can see, Emma is very happy about Tiny's ability to get Mom to lighten up on the couch rules!

An Open Santa Conversation

2008-12-28T10:31:00.002-05:00

Maybe we were wrong, but here's why we told Teah that Santa was make-believe. This is part of a conversation that I had on Facebook. I decided to post it here so that everyone else who thinks we're horrible for not playing into the Santa story understand why we didn't.

Here's why we did what we did, basically there are two reasons.

1. From our perspective Santa has become a tool for consumerism in a culture drowning itself in the stuff we buy. Kids get so much and even expect so much in our culture that we thought Santa would serve as another reason for Teah to expect more stuff. Santa does not teach kids the joy of giving only getting. So we decided to tell Teah that Santa is a fun make-believe character in books and stories that we can pretend comes to our houses with presents, but the real presents come from Mommy and Daddy because we love her. The real joy for Teah this year truly came from her opportunity to give gifts to us, it was amazing how excited she was to buy each of us, including Micah, a gift from her. So, that's reason one why we did it, to teach her that the tradition of giving gifts at Christmas is about just that, GIVING gifts. Sure, she was very excited about the gift she got, but she knew she was getting them from those she loved and because we were also excited to make and buy her those gifts.

2. The whole Jesus thing. I think it's hard for kids to have parallel stories. We taught all about Jesus' birthday and even had a birthday cake for Jesus on Christmas day.

That all said, I'm not against Santa. We're not fundamentalists saying Santa is Satan or anything. We respect those who disagree and think that the story of Santa is something to teach and believe in.

On the positive side, there have been great teaching opportunities that have been afforded by making Santa a minor story in Christmas. Santa is still a part as a story, like a princess story or Winnie the Pooh, but Teah knows the real story is about Jesus and the stories we're creating as a family through the gifts that we make and buy for one another. (Yes, we made most of our gifts, I wasn't about to tell her the table and chairs I made for her were actually made by elves, I worked long hours on those :)

On the negative side, Teah REALLY likes the Santa story and has said she wishes her were real. It's an example of how the story can take over Christmas for kids, they lose perspective and it becomes all about Santa. But, it is also a great imaginative and fun experience that is greatly decreased when kids know it's pretend. Even with that negative, I think our choice is a good option considering the nature of our culture. Maybe I am a bit of a fundamentalist... I'm fundamentally opposed to the hyper-consumerism that drives Christmas and much of the way that we live in America.

Sorry to write so much, that's why I took the conversation off of your walls and to your inbox. Didn't think everyone needed to see my essay! Hope you can understand and respect what we did.

Obama and Warren, That's What I Was Trying to Say

2008-12-23T08:55:00.003-05:00

This is a great article that expresses well why I'm all for the Warren and Obama thing. It's from the Washington Post.

A Gamble for Obama
. . . And a Risk for Rick Warren, Too

It's by E.J. Deonne Jr.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008; Page A17

By inviting Pastor Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation, President-elect Barack Obama has alienated some of his friends on the left. By accepting, Warren has enraged some of his allies on the right.

Obama and Warren have helped each other in the past, and both know exactly what they're doing.

If you're on the left, how you view Obama's move depends upon who you think Warren is, where you think he's going, and what you think Obama is up to.

Liberals who see Warren as a garden-variety conservative evangelical defined primarily by his opposition to gay marriage accuse Obama of selling them out. Gays and lesbians enraged by Warren's strong opposition to gay marriage in last month's California referendum charge Obama with pandering to white evangelicals and fear the president-elect has gone out of his way to offend them in order to curry favor with straight conservatives.

But a more benign view on parts of the religious left casts Warren as the evangelical best positioned to lead moderately conservative white Protestants toward a greater engagement with the issues of poverty and social justice, and away from a relentless focus on abortion and gay marriage.
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Recall Warren's 2006 invitation to Obama to come to his Saddleback Church in California for a discussion of the AIDS crisis. The right came down hard on the idea of giving an evangelical platform to this up-and-coming supporter of abortion rights.

Warren wouldn't back down and offered ABC News a delightful explanation for his political apostasy. "I'm a pastor, not a politician," Warren said. "People always say, 'Rick, are you right wing or left wing?' I say 'I'm for the whole bird.' " Many liberals hope -- and a lot of conservatives fear -- that the rise of "whole bird" Christianity will break up right-wing dominance in the white evangelical community.

Obama never forgot what Warren did for him and brought the episode up last week in explaining why he had asked the pastor to pray at his inauguration. "A couple of years ago," Obama recalled, "I was invited to Rick Warren's church to speak, despite his awareness that I held views that were entirely contrary to his when it came to gay and lesbian rights, when it came to issues like abortion."

One need not be too pious about any of this. Both Warren and Obama are shrewd leaders who sense where the political winds are blowing.

Warren understands that a new generation of evangelicals has tired of an excessively partisan approach to religion. Evangelical Christianity's reach will be limited if the tradition is seen as little more than an extension of the politics of George Bush, Karl Rove and Sarah Palin.

An opening to Obama is the right move for this moment, and Warren appears to be genuinely interested in broadening evangelical Christianity's public agenda. In a recent interview with Steve Waldman of Beliefnet.com, Warren compared gay marriage to "an older guy marrying a child," and to "one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage." But he also called upon evangelicals to be "the social change leaders in our society" engaged with "poverty and disease and charity and social justice and racial justice."

Obama wants to encourage this move, which would be good for him and good for progressive politics. Fear that Obama's analysis is exactly right is why so many conservatives are so angry with Warren for blessing the new president's inaugural.

Philippians 4

2008-12-22T20:55:00.003-05:00

Here's a sermon I preached last night. I don't think I made any irresponsible exegetical jumps...

Advent is a time of looking back at the difficulty in our lives and in our world. It is a time when we should realistically take stock of our world, the injustice, pain, and suffering going on in all corners of this globe. Advent is a time when we realize humanities need to be saved. And yet, Advent, and especially Christmastide is the time when we celebrate the incarnation of the second person of the triune God into this world of injustice, pain and suffering. Jesus did not avoid those aspects of life, but embraced them and experienced the worst of them. God took on flesh and entered into our need for a savior, by suffering intensely God in human flesh conquered sin, suffering and evil. And here we are, taking stock of a world still in need of saving and living lives that are still in need of redemption. And yet, even as are amidst the brokenness and pain of our world we are also amidst the beauty of God’s creation, the beauty of God’s image being lived out in every human being.

This is the life circumstance of every human being who has ever lived, it is the grand story of the entire bible. Humanity is in desperate need of saving, a continued saving.
And yet we are people who have been created in the image of God, able to see the goodness and beauty of creation

Paul was in need of saving when he wrote the letter to the Philippians. As we’ve learned already Paul was in prison needing the generosity and care from others just to sustain his life. Paul was in the midst of suffering and had every reason to focus on his negative situation, those who had done him wrong. And yet, even while he is honest about his situation and the negative situations in his churches, he is able to rejoice and find peace in Jesus Christ. A major theme in Philippians is the theme of rejoicing in Christ Jesus no matter what our circumstances might be.

Our passage today begins in a way that reminds us that we’re not reading a book, we’re reading somebody else’s mail. And the portion that we begin with today makes it clear that the Philippian church is in need of continued saving.

Have you ever been forwarded an e-mail, somebody wants to keep you informed of something, but you can tell you only have one e-mail of a long e-mail conversation? You’re lacking the background to a story, issue at work, or relationship problem necessary to having a complete understanding of that problem. That’s what we have here.

Read Phil 4: 2 - 3

In Phil. 4:2, 3 we’re reading someone else’s mail, and we’re not privy to the whole story. Euodia and Syntyche were leaders in the Philippian church, they were fellow ministers of the Gospel with Paul. And yet they are now at odds with one another and threatening the entire unity of the church. This is the stuff that makes churches split today, you have two pastors or two groups from within the leadership who disagree with one another and end up dividing the congregation. This is just one example of how the Philippian church is in need of a savior. Usually we think of the leaders of the church bringing God’s healing and restoration to the hurting within a congregation. Here we learn that Paul has a beautiful and profound faith in the Philippian church congregation to bring healing and restoration back to their leaders. In verse three Paul actually address an individual, his “loyal yokefellow,” and asks that person to see to it that these two women leaders in the church make things right. So our passage today begins by making it clear that things are not “all good” in the Philippian church, they are in need of continued saving.

Paul then goes on to make one of the scripture’s quintesetial, Advent defining, statements.

READ 4: 4 – 7

This is what it’s all about – our needs are real, felt, needs. Our needs are relational, physical, emotional, psychological… and the reality is they are not going away. The needs of Euodia and Syntheche were real needs, conflicts that had the potential to tear apart a church.

Paul says, we are to make our needs known to God. And why are we to do that? Because God doesn’t know our needs? Because if we ask we’ll get everything we want? Our suffering will end and our saving will be complete?

No, Paul says “The Lord is Near”. And this is his reason for us to rejoice in the Lord at all times, regardless of our situation in this world. We’re to let all the world see our gentleness because the Lord is near. I want to look at this word Gentleness for a second. The Greek word here is epieikes, a word that does not really have a simple and exact translation. The word basically means “gentle ability to reason.” Paul is connecting with what he had just said before to Euodia and Syntyche and specifically to the congregation about helping them find unity. He’s instructing them to stop bickering, rejoice in the Lord, and let the world see your gentle ability to reason with one another.

Paul then goes on to say that when we present our requests to God we will be filled with the peace of Jesus Christ. Did you get that? This is hugely important… Paul does not say anything here about God answering our requests, rather he says that God will grant us a kind of peace that transcends all understanding, peace that transcends the injustice, pain and suffering of our lives and of this world. This is what we are in need of, the peace, in Greek Eirene, and in Hebrew Shalom of God.

The stories of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament tell of the people of God who even in their suffering rejoice in the Lord, make their gentleness known to all, and in the end experience the Peace, Eirene, Shalom of God – something which transcends their circumstances and ability to understand. Abraham and Sarah, way past the age of having children, have faith and bare a son. David, while being pursued by Saul through the Judean deserts continues to worship God and Isaiah in his book is realistic about the destruction around him and yet has the courage to foretell of the eschatologic shalom of God’s Kingdom in Isaiah 65. God’s people tell God’s story through their unrelenting faith in the God of peace, who has granted salvation and who promises a complete salvation through the inbreaking of his kingdom.

Our scripture then continues with Paul encouraging the congregation to not focus on the negative realities of life, but to focus on the beauty of humanity and God’s created world. I started out focusing on the reality of the world we live, and the importance of that during advent. But while we must be realistic, we must also believe in and have eyes to see the reality of the incarnation.

Read 4: 8, 9. These are not really Paul’s words, some of them are not used by Paul anywhere else in scripture, some of these words are not used anywhere else in the bible! According to one scholar, Fred Craddock, what Paul is encouraging the congregation to think about are the ideals of the Greek ethical philosophers. Why is this? Well, I think it’s because, even amidst the bleak difficulties of our world are the beautiful reflections of God’s image found throughout creation and throughout and within all of humanity.

I think what Paul is getting at here is that the Philippian congregation has become too insular, picking fights with one another, worrying about who will bring peace back to the leaders of the congregation, while God’s world is ripe with the beautiful presence of God awaiting God’s people to marvel in it and bare witness to the creator of all that is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy.

The Philippian congregation, it seems according to this passage, was missing out on the culture around them and God’s work in the culture. Does the church today miss out on God’s action in the world today? Every time we as followers of Jesus miss what Jesus is doing in the world we miss an opportunity to bare witness, to point toward the risen Christ.

Another interesting Greek word here sheds light on this passage. Paul writes the things that we are THINK on. What does the word think mean to you? In Greek the word is Logizesthe, the root is Logos - As in word, deed or reason. Paul is using a word here that implies a grappling, reasoning, and engaging of all that contains the characteristics listed here. This passage might, for some of us, bring up visions of nature and what God has created that is beautiful, maybe art, music, film… it might bring up thoughts of children and babies. Maybe science, space, the universe, maybe quantum physics. What ever it brings to mind, those are the things we as Chrsitians are to engage, and reason with. Remember the word Logos in Greek has an active sense, it’s not a static, “think” about something word. Paul finishes by saying
9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

What we should focus on here is the word Practice, put into practice. Paul, I believe, served as an example on how to engage God’s world. He must have been an amazing missional leader, planting dozens of churches, always engaging culture. Paul is saying here, “Reason with, and practice the things of God’s creation that contain truth, nobility, righteousness, etc. and I want you to join me in that.”

Conclusion:
Our lives and our world are broken, even God’s church is broken. And yet, God is revealing himself through the church and through all that he has created. It is our task as Christians to see the beauty in all that God is doing, and has done, all that people are doing and have done, and bare witness to the risen Christ in those things. And the result? God’s peace will be with us. As we engage, think about, reason through all that is true, right, noble, lovely, etc., we are revealing the nature and goodness of God. As I said in the beginning, Advent is a time of looking back at the difficulty in our lives and in our world. It is a time when we should realistically take stock of our world, the injustice, pain, and suffering going on in all corners of this globe. And Advent is also the time when we receive from God a renewed faith in the incarnation of Jesus. The salvation that the incarnation bestows on this world is oozing from thing, every living thing, every rock, every cell, every atom that exists, the birth of Jesus allows us to see God’s goodness all around us.

Cornerstone Story, hearing Latter Days for the first time, play Latter Days:

The action we must take and have the courage to put into action is simply to put the name of Jesus on all that is good in this world. As a teenager at Cornerstone music festival I was open to experiencing beauty, what must we do to be more open to the experience of God’s beauty around us, not taking life for granted? By living like Paul, missional lifestyles pointing out Christ’s continued incarnation in this world, we can diffuse our own pithy arguments, unnecessary and unimportant church problems, and focus on the reality of Jesus’ salvation in our world. This Christmas, enjoy the goodness of God’s presence all around you, and point out the presence to others every chance you get.

7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Amen!

Local Alternative Gift Giving

2008-11-24T16:06:00.001-05:00

As Thanksgiving nears, so does Black Friday and anxiety about buying gifts, having enough money to buy good gifts, and knowing what to buy. Maybe you've participated in an alternative gift purchase before through World Vision or another great relief organization. This year you can make a donation for a specific need right here in your own neighborhood. Garfield Community Farm is accepting gifts! Check out the attached PDF. If you choose to donate we'll send a tax receipt to you and a Christmas Card with info about who Garfield Farms is what we do, you can then give that card to your friend or relative in place of that ugly sweater, and just think, no mall trips!

Photo's of Nov. 23 Work Day

2008-11-23T08:05:00.006-05:00

Here are some pictures of our Nov. 22nd work day with Public Allies at the farm in Garfield, getting it ready for next spring. Some of you may ask why we're cutting down large trees... well this particular tree was very tall and dieing in all it's top branches, and positioned to fall on us in the garden. So, Garret Smith used his expertise to fell. We'll use all the wood for things like fence posts, maybe a retaining wall, and firewood that we'll sell next fall.

Winter Work Day on the Farm

2008-11-22T14:44:00.004-05:00

The alarm went off at 6am on a Saturday, a fairly normal occurrence these days. I once took Saturdays off, but now they are the day of the week that volunteers come to work at Garfield Community Farm. That only really began in September as we began major work at the main farm site in Garfield. The site is getting closer to being ready for planting in the spring.

This morning was a bit different than other mornings on the farm, we started it with 20 volunteers, a 20 degree forecast and an inch of new snow on the ground. I have to admit that I was dreading it, I didn't know what all those people would do and I didn't know if we'd stay warm enough.

Once we got working we had a great time. The crew was from Public Allies, all in their early twenties. I put some to work on the fence, some to work gathering leaves and trash always magically accumulates in Garfield, a bunch to work splitting firewood, built compost stations out of pallets, and about another group went down the street to work on an Open Hand Ministries house.* We had felled a tree two weeks ago and had a large amount of wood that can be sold at the farmer's market next year. After a little work we built a nice little camp fire and had Katie go out and get us some marshmallows, always a good idea.

So the day turned out to be an amazing day, mostly because of the people, everyone had a great time, enjoying the outdoors, enjoying the physical work splitting wood, and just enjoying one another.

*Open Hand Ministries is a ministry of local churches that rehabilitates abandoned property in the Garfield neighborhood for low to moderate first time home owners. The house they worked on today is nearly finished, a service of dedication took place at noon, after the volunteers finished cleaning it up and getting it ready.

I have a bunch of pictures I'll post later.

Eating Locally in November

2008-11-11T17:49:00.005-05:00

It's November and it's still easy to eat about 80% locally grown and produced food. All summer and fall it's taken a very intentional approach, but after being 100% vegetarian for about 10 years, it has not felt strange to be very intentional about my food. It is sure to get much harder as we get into the winter. Alyssa has canned all sorts of fruit all summer to suppliment, but we've already realized that we don't have near enough.

Today we made a good find though that will hopefully be available all year long. Alyssa found bread that is sold at Whole Foods and is made and grown at a farm in the Laurelhighlands. This has been one thing we haven't been able to find easily, locally grown flour, but now we found it. It's not cheap bread and they don't sell the flour alone, so we're still looking for local whole wheat flour so we can make our own bread. We've also begun going down to the Strip District on Fridays to Pennsylvania Maccaroni Company to buy local cheese, they have tons, and it's all amazing cheese.

I must say, eating meat again has been great. We've found local beef, pork sausages, lots of chicken.

Today for dinner I made baken quince for desert, I had never had a quince before, but cooked right, it's very good. Our friend Lance got us about 20 pounds from a local farm for free.

While eating locally has taken intentionality, it's been easier than I thought. And much more rewarding!

That all said, eating locally has brought simple, but amazing food to us. The meat, milk and cheese we're eating is far better than the cheap stuff that travels from factories.

Fall Harvest Party

2008-10-22T01:12:00.000-04:00

On October 24th The Open Door and Garfield Farms is holding a Harvest Happy Hour from 6 - 9pm at the Union Project, 801 N. Negley Ave. You should come out, learn about the farm and just hang out!

Garfield Community Farm is Actualizing

2008-10-21T11:02:00.004-04:00

This is a good time for me to think about this dream of creating an urban farm, think about where we started and where we are now. It was almost exactly a year ago that I was with BJ Woodworth on a beach in the Bahama's doing beach reclamation with folks from the Soularize conference, when this idea began percolating in our minds. Since then a lot has happened, way more than I want to write about now. Here are some of the exciting things that we've done over the past year and things we hope to make happen next year.

Here are some photo's of the land we'll be farming in Garfield, a largely abandoned and struggling neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Garfield is adjacent to East Liberty, where my family lives, works and worships. This year we acquired the land from the city, we're leasing it and working toward making it permanent community green space. In the photo's you notice the trees and forested areas. Its close to three acres of land. We're developing ideas to grow among the trees, creating gardens using permaculture methods of farming. Much of the land has knotweed growing on it, so we're still working to rid sections where we will then plant crops and trees. We're also making decisions about how avoid contact with soil contaminates, like lead.

The photos here show our fence that we've built to keep the deer out. This fence marks an exciting boundary, the area that will become the community youth garden where all the growing will be done in raised beds, keeping kids hands only clean, lead free soil. The area receives lots of sun and also has no knotweed to slow our progress. This past growing season was a fabulous learning experience for The Open Door. We have developed a team of folks who have learned to tend two smaller gardens, one at the Union Project and one at Valley View Presbyterian Church. Each Garden produced food that was used by folks from the two churches, and sold at Whole Foods.

Here are some goals for the next 12 months. We hope to:
1. Build all the raised beds for the youth community garden and have that space fully producing for the summer of 2008.
2. Through community input develop plans for the remainder of the land.
3. Hire a seminary intern and two neighborhood youth interns to work the farm through the growing season.
4. Weekly neighborhood and church volunteer days throughout the growing season.
5. Plant fruit trees in areas where raised bed gardening is less attractive.
6. Provide food for the Valley View food bank.
7. Start a farmers market at Valley View, run by our interns and volunteers.

Ok that's enough work to outline for now. Please come out and volunteer. And come to the Harvest Party on Friday Oct. 24th at the Union Project at 6pm to learn more about us.

Teaching in the Negev Desert

2008-09-08T10:56:00.010-04:00

The Negev is where Abraham lived and it's where Moses led the Israelites as they left Egypt. Both Judaism and Christianity find their foundational experiences, or root stories, in the Negev. This is where God spoke and began it all. I recorded about 45 minutes of teaching from Rabbi Michael and Bill Creasy. Check it out, it's some good stuff. You'll hear the birds chirping as we sit in the middle of a true wilderness desert Oasis, protected as an Israeli national park. You'll also unfortunately hear the Israeli airforce flying jets overhead more times than I liked to count. Oh, and today we did see the wild Ibex, and I got some good pictures! I also put a map down below so you can find some of these places. Click on it to make it bigger. The green in the picture above is the Oasis in the desert.

This was one of the days I was most looking forward to when I saw the itinerary. It is not someplace that American tourists go. We rode on the back of a flat bed truck with chairs bolted into it, open sides and a canopy roof. We bounced for about an hour into the wilderness and then walked into the lush oasis where we had our teaching. The Oasis is well know I guess, it's small but it's called En Zik, sounds like Zeak. It was amazing to see this land where once possibly a few million Hebrews lived as they wandered through with wilderness. It's also amazing to think that Abraham and Sarah lived their lives in areas like this, possibly very near by. Make sure you check out the teaching below.

check out the Negev Teaching here it may get moved to a different page later.

Alyssa, how about one of these goats for our yard?!?! Check out the horns on the big one, probably close to three feet long. The animals themselves are quite large. According to our local guide, who is a farmer of desert olives near by, the Israeli people have been able to bring back most of the natural wildlife in this part of the country, including leopards and wild dogs.

Israel, Day 6, Dead Sea

2008-09-07T14:52:00.007-04:00

The desert of En Gedi is where David hid from the first Israelite king Saul and developed his small army of troops. It’s east of Jerusalem and on the west side of the Dead Sea. We saw the connies and the Ibex, both mentioned in Psalm 104, my personal favorite Psalm. Connies are like ground hogs and the ibex’ are like a mix of a deer and a goat. The animals in this gorge are quite used to people so we got to see a bunch of them. According to 2 Samuel 24: 2, “So Saul took three thousand chosen men from all Israel and set out to look for David and his men near the Crags of the Wild Goats.” That is exactly where we were, the “Crags of the Wild Goats” or Ibex. And it’s very much the same as it was three thousand years ago when David and his men lived off those wild goats and drank the waters that come down the cliffs. Sorry I didn’t bring my camera, which was stupid. I led a short worship service and then Bill taught about David and the caves here in the gorge. Saul came with his army and before going into the gorge to fight David he needed to “relieve himself”. He went in the cave where David and a few of his men were hiding. David had a perfect opportunity to kill Saul, but instead only cut off the edge of his garment. Saul, humiliated, left with his forces and let David live. Go read this whole chapter of 2 Samuel, or all of 2 Samuel, which is what I think I need to do. I am not familiar enough with all of these stories that are now coming to life here in the desert.

After the service everyone started back down the trail on which we hiked. I ran up the other way, just to see where the sound of running water was coming from. We knew there was a water fall way up the mountain, but I guess my uncle and our guide had forgotten about the small fall and pool of water just a few yards up the trail. I waded into the water. This was one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen here thus far, a desert waterfall with green plants all around it. I’ll post pictures later when I get them from someone else. There were about five others who followed me, I was the only one who went in the water.

Mazada was our second stop for the day. This is where Herod built a fortress. It’s an amazing high plateau. Later in history the last 700 Jewish rebels lived here who were being sought after by the Romans after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. This is when Mazada became forever known in history. The Romans set up camps all around the high plateau. It seemed there was no way they could attack the small city on top. Over time they built a massive earthen ramp and wheeled a giant battering ram against the wooden gates at the lowest part of the city. They used first and burned the gates. The next morning the Romans found the city perfectly quiet. Two women and five children were all that remained. Every man had agreed that suicide would be better for themselves and their wives and children than slavery by the Roman Empire. I was overwhelmed with by the idea of making this choice for my family. Most of the men would have waited until their families were asleep that night and then killed them with knives. Hundreds of women and children, who all would have otherwise been raped and abused or made slaves by the Romans. No one knows what happened to the seven survivors. They must have caught word of the plans and they hid in a water whole. Or, their husbands and fathers could not or would not do the job.

Now for the Dead Sea, it’s 33 percent salt. The ocean is only about 7 percent. The color of the water is a crystal clear blue, like the ocean in the tropics. Almost nothing can live in the dead sea, not even algae, so it’s very clear. We walked down to the water and thought it must be at least 100 degrees out today. When we got into the water we were shocked. The water had to be about 100 degrees too. It was not warm, it was hot, literally the temperature of a bath. The Dead Sea is also interesting because it makes you float like a cork in the water. Because of the high mineral content the density of the water is far greater fresh water, it’s heavier, so the water within our bodies wants to float on top… and it does. You can lay on your back and literally float like you’re on a raft. Today, because of the amount of water being used for drinking and agriculture in Jordan and Israel as it flows down the Jordan and into the Dead Sea, the Sea is drastically shrinking. It won’t disappear for many, many years, but it is a concern. The water in the Dead Sea is not usable for anything except making skin care products. The minerals are very good for your skin. As I said, the Jordan River flows in the Dead Sea, carrying no salt, but there is not outlet to the Dead Sea. The water just evaporates, and is carried in clouds back up to Mount Hermon and the North, where it rains and snows in the winter, and comes back down the Jordan. It’s a closed water system. The bottom of the Dead Sea is hard and beautiful salt crystals, I’m glad I wore shoes in the water.

Israel: Day 4, Gethsemane

2008-09-06T10:20:00.006-04:00

Today we went to the Garden of Gethsemane and walked the Via Dolorosa. These are two of the "must see" sights in Jerusalem. Is was very crowded by the time we hit the narrow streets of the Via Dolorosa (stations of the cross). Gethsemane was a powerful experience. We had private access to a section of the garden that my uncle had reserved far in advance. Again the geography of the whole area opened up so many realizations about what Jesus did and where he did it. The time in the garden included a half hour of quiet prayer. The photo above is from the small chapel at the Mount of Olives, above the garden of Gethsemane. Some of the olive trees are 2000 years old in the garden. I was able to get some branches from the gardener (who cuts intentionally for the private guests in the garden), these are mainly for my dad.

Below is a video overview of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. The video scans the old city (it's current size is much larger than what you see here). The ancient wall, reconstructed over the last 2000 years by many different groups, can be seen. The done of the rock, the golden gate where the Messiah is supposed to enter according to Ezekiel. Then the camera shows the valley called Gehenna, or hell. It's where the Canaanites (some say Israelites) sacrificed infants. If you remember Abraham being told by God to sacrifice Isaac, his son, it's believed that they were in this valley and went up to the spot where the temple was eventually built. But God said no and forever made a distinction in the Hebrew faith that they would not sacrifice their babies like the Canaanites did. I'm so glad God did that, aren't you? It is a strange story if you don't know that it was normal to kill your children for the gods back then. I have so much more that I want to write, but I'm tired and in need of some rest. Just of from Gehenna is a massive 70,000 person grave yard of Jews. They are in this place because when the Messiah comes he will come over these hills toward the city (just like Jesus did on the donkey) and go through the golden gates. They beleive they'll be the first ones to be raised from the dead and join the Messiah. They're waiting for his first entrance, we're waiting for the second. In many ways our hope for the coming of the Messiah sounds very much the same. This grave yard many hundreds of years old. Finally, the camera shows the green trees of Gethsemane.

Israel: Day 3

2008-09-05T15:56:00.009-04:00

I love the Galilee region...

Jesus spent most of his time of there and now I think I know why.

I tried to record the message I gave yesterday out on the boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, but I didn't get the MP3 recording correctly. Oh well. I'll write it up later. It really was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Being in Galilee was amazing. It's weird, but going from Galilee to Jerusalem was a let down, it's not supposed to be. Galilee is where Jesus LIVED, Jerusalem is where he died. I know... that's extremely important, but I'm just amped up right now about the towns, sea, and all messages that Jesus gave while he was in ministry in the back country of Galilee.

The pictures you'll see here are all from the boat. While out on the boat it was amazing to be able to point to the exact geographic locations where the bible talks about Jesus doing his ministry. We felt the wind coming through the Arbol (not sure of the spelling) cliffs, we saw fishermen in boats very similar to Peter's 2000 years ago. We saw the mountains and landscapes where Jesus prayed, fasted, taught, and did miracles like the feeding of 5000.

Here's a very short video I took and some pics. In the video, I point in the wrong direction when I'm talking about Capernaum, oh well.

Israel: Day 2, Golan Heights

2008-09-03T12:47:00.005-04:00

Today we visited two amazing sites in the extreme North of Israel. Both sites were remote and not at all crowded with other tourists. Later in the trip we’ll visit the popular sites in Jerusalem, Bethlahem and Nazareth, but these first two days have focused on Jesus’ early ministry and his ministry in the remote villages of north, and one city that Jesus never went to, Dan.

This is an area that has seen heavy military action over more recent years. Here's a picture of the trenches that the Israeli's used when fighting Lebanon and/or Syria.

Dan is located in the forested mountain region of the North of Israel. During the time of the Judges, more than a millennia before Christ, the Israelites were a loose confederation of tribes, all fighting with each other and with their real enemies, the Canaanites. Early on the tribe of Dan attempted to settle near the Mediterranean Sea, but were unsuccessful at overthrowing the Canaanites who lived there. So the tribe of Dan, about 600 people, traveled up into the hill country, where they found a small city of people living in a town called Laish. According to Judges 18: 27 – 29 and Joshua 19: 47 the Danites burned the city and killed all the people. How nice right? They resettled the town, which grew into a large city.

The tell (mound of ruins) at Dan is only about 10% excavated, it’s a huge city and has become completely reforested. There are springs and beautiful rivers all around. The headwaters for the Jordan River begin in this area and north at Mount Hermon, the tallest Mountain in Israel, about 10,000 feet! What has been excavated is the temple where Jeroboam set up an alter with a golden calf. After being told by the the new king in Jerusalem, Jeroboam, that they would have to continue paying taxes and working for little pay the people decided they would quit going to Jerusalem three times a year for their feast celebrations and just worship at Dan and Bethel, that’s where the golden calf came in. The golden calf goes all the way back to their days in Egypt when they probably worshiped just as the Egyptians did, until Moses introduced them back to their ancestral God Yahweh. To think that the Israelites were monotheistic is wrong, they were supposed to worship only Yahweh, but they believed every people group had their own god or gods, and they often went back to worshiping how they had in Egypt or how their neighbors worshiped. So, right from the beginning and throughout their history the people at Dan reverted to worshiping Hawthorn, the goddess of the golden calf. Check out the photo with the metal bars above the ruins, that’s where the giant alter was. I think the metal structure is to show where the alter with the calf would have been. The ruins here actually date all the way back to the time of Ahab, around 800 BCE, 2800 years ago!

Go read 1 Kings chapter 12 and you’ll get the whole story, it’s pretty cool. All the pictures above are from the area of Dan.

Second we went to Caesarea Philippi also in the north. This was an amazing place and it was the place where Jesus asked his disciples “who do you say that I am” and Peter says, “You are the Christ, the Son of God”. My question when we got there was, why would Jesus come all the way up here, days worth of walking through the desert and wilderness, to ask that question. Nothing else happens here or anywhere near here in the gospels (accept the Transfiguration)… why this one question?

Well, first of all, you have to come here, or at least understand what was here, to understand why Jesus might have come so far to ask this question. At Caesarea Philippi there was an amazing cliff with a massive whole in it where a river flowed right out of. During the middle ages an earthquake apparently caused the river to flow out from beneath the cliff instead of out the cavern, it’s still an amazing sight. Next to this were what’s called niches, carved arches in the rock, where idols were placed. Many different gods were worshiped here, judging by the detailed carvings and artifacts still here it was an breath taking place. These Gods were not boring statues, they included the God Pan, the god of fun, parties and orgies. He was believed to be half goat and half man and he played a flute. This is where Jesus brought his disciples and asked, “who do you say that I am?” I imagine that he might have taken them all the way up to the cliffs where all the other gods sat in their stately places, being worshiped by travelers and city-folk alike. Jesus may have been making it clear that he was Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, incarnate, by asking this question in front of all the idols at Caesarea Philippi. “Here are the physical manifestations of the gods, Pan, Nemesis, Zeus, who do you say I am?”

Wow, this was amazing, and it adds so much to the biblical texts! Not only do most people not come to Israel, most people who do come don’t have tours guides with enough biblical knowledge to know the theological importance to these more remote and out of the way archeological sites.

Next, it may have been up on Mount Hermon that Jesus took Peter, James and John to witness the confirmation of Peter’s confession of Jesus as Lord. If it was not Mount Hermon, then it would have been one of the other smaller mountains around Caesarea-Philippi.

I like to think of these places as the region where Jesus took his disciples on a week long intense backcountry experience. They hiked miles and miles, probably did mission work in Caesarea Philippi, and then the bravest friends climbed a mountain and met Moses and Elijah. Most importantly they all came to know Jesus as Lord and Messiah.

Pray for me, tomorrow I teach on a boat while in the sea of Galilee, it’s my only time to do the teaching and I’m among some VERY good bible teachers.

Israel: Day 1, Galiliee

2008-09-02T10:59:00.007-04:00

My first full day in the land of the bible has been amazing. The flight to get here was long. We left Newark New Jersey around 10:30 Sunday night and arrived in Tel Aviv around 4:30 pm on Monday, it was a long flight and a seven hour time difference.
For the first few days we’re staying in the Galilee region right on the Sea of Galilee. It’s an amazing place. The sea (lake) is about seven miles across and eleven miles long. As you can see in the pictures it is surrounded by mountains. The sea is actually 700 feet below sea level. All the water from the surrounding hills drains to the Sea of Galilee, including the Jordan River, which also exits the Sea of Galilee to travel south to the Dead Sea. This year has been extremely dry so the sea is very low and the Jordan River is also very low.

Today we visited three sites. First, the Mount of Beatitudes. There is of course a Catholic monastery there and a gift shop, but also a great place for teaching and a great place to start the trip. It was amazing to stand on the hills where Jesus would escape the crowds and find solitude with God. Jesus would seek alone time, only to be sought after by his disciples and then the crowds. Here, on the Mount of Beatitudes Jesus gave the sermon on the mount. My uncle pointed out that Mathew 5 – 7, the sermon as recorded in Matthew, would have been easily remember by the disciples. This was like Jesus’ favorite sermon, even he probably recycles sermon material. Each place they would go, depending on the audience, Jesus would probably preach a version of this sermon. Luke 7 is a good example of another version of the sermon, except this time it was probably given just down from this mountain, on the plain. The acoustics on and around this mountain are amazing, overlooking the Sea of Galilee and sloping upwards, the mountain makes many spots that act as a natural amphitheatre. This first stop of spiritually important to me, a place where Jesus retreated to and taught from. A place where thousands of people came to hear him preach.

Second we traveled to Capernaum, the first archaeological site of the trip. Capernaum is also on the Sea of Galilee and it is where Peter lived with his wife and his step-mother. Read Mark 1:21 – 39 to get an idea of what it was like during Jesus’ time in Capernaum. It was pretty amazing to stand in the synagogue and look across the ruined street about 70 feet to Peter’s house (now with a 1960s modernesque Catholic church actually hovering over where the site where Peter lived). In the pictures you can see where the houses once were, I didn’t get a picture of Peter’s house or the church. There are many artifacts at this site, including some beautiful sculptures. It seemed very Romanized. The synagogue was amazing, a 4th century AD structure on top of the ruins of the synagogue where Jesus regularly taught while he lived with Peter in Galilee. This is the place where Jesus made his Galilean headquaters. He would preach and teach here, heal people here, and then escape to the nearby mountains for prayer and time alone.
And our final stop for today was Beth Saida. This is another town on the Sea of Galilee where Jesus often taught. The site is very undeveloped, no gift shops or churches, nuns or monks. We were the only group. It was very, very hot during our mid-afternoon exploration of this archeological site. Interestingly, as the archeologists searched for proof that this site actually was Beth Saida, they found what they believe is an 8th century BCE Palace, that’s from around the time of David and Samuel, very old!
I’ll post more tomorrow and so on as I have time and as I have internet access. Here at the Kabutz, which I’ll talk more about later, we only have internet access in a certain place for $2 a 15 minute session. Be blessed everyone!

This is part of the devotion I led this morning at the Mount of Beatitudes:

Meditation for Day 1 at the Mount of Beatitudes

It is a difficult
lesson to learn today,
to leave one's friends
and family and deliberately
practise the art of solitude
for an hour or a day
or a week.
For me, the break
is most difficult ...

And yet, once it is done,
I find there is a quality
to being alone that is
incredibly precious.

Life rushes back into the void,
richer,
more vivid,
fuller than before!
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The rhythmic life of Jesus
- Solitude with God
- Alone with closest disciples
- Teaching
- Healing

- Read Luke 6:12 – 22; solitude, alone with disciples, teaching.
- Following the teaching on the plane, Jesus heals in chapter 7.
- What is the rhythm of your life? Do you find God in the beauty of creation like Jesus did? Does your solitude with God fuel all that you do?

Creative Song Rewrite by Téah

2008-08-29T22:12:00.002-04:00

Funny Micah

2008-08-29T21:31:00.003-04:00

Breaking the Fast, starting a new one

2008-07-30T12:27:00.003-04:00

If the average American eats only locally produced food you'd nearly cut your personal gasoline consumption by half. This is according to Barbara Kingsolver.

When life is busy blogging doesn't happen. I've been wanting to write about our attempts as a family to become what some call "locavores". It simply means we attempt to only eat food grown and produced locally. This time of year is the easiest time to eat only local food, I'm actually able to eat a lot of food that we've grown right in our yard. But that will change in the winter. But if anyone can do it, we have a good chance. We have two farmer's markets that we can walk to weekly, one that is a year round, in door farmers market. Both Whole Foods and Giant Eagle are stocking more local produce right now, though neither is much of a help when you're trying to only eat locally produced food. It's pretty easy to eat some local food, that great. But I'm sometimes drawn to extremes, I'd really like to get to a place where we can eat about 90% local. With this goal in mind I've ceased being a vegetarian. If you know me you've seen this coming for a while. After 10 years, I broke the fast on July 4th. Now, you might ask why. From the reading and research I've done I've found that eating locally produced food, even meat, is more environmentally responsible than eating organic food that's been shipped thousands of miles. Now the amount of meat that I'll eat is very little compared to most Americans and it's only from farms of which I actually know the farmers and can drive out to visit the animals. The one organic beef farm that we're using actually not only produces their organic beef, but also organically grows all the food for the cattle on their property, again eliminating the transportation of grains and use of fossil fuels. These are all small farms where people care for the animals. So this winter we'll eat a small amount of red meat from a farm about fifteen miles away and another one from eastern Ohio, instead of eating out of season veggies grown in Chili.

For many years I was a strict vegetarian, people thought is must have been so hard. It was easy compared to my attempt at being a "locavore". Eating local food means have true abundance during this time of year, but I'm not sure how we'll handle the winter. We're already stocking up though. Alyssa has canned dozens of jars of jam and jelly form fresh berries she's picked at local farms with the kids. We even made a really good jelly with mulberries, a tree that grows all over the city like a weed.

We'll also be buying a large chest freezer for pounds and pounds of frozen fruit, since strawberries only grow for one month of the year around here, the rest of the time we'll be eating them frozen, canned or dried. Same with pretty much every fruit.

I have no idea how far we'll be able to take this, it's fun to try something and give it a real go. I'm sure we'll have our splurges at our three year old's pleading requests.

If the average American eats only locally produced food you'd nearly cut your personal gasoline consumption by half. For those of us who drive very little you'll easily cut it in half and probably more.

Micah

2008-07-16T12:38:00.003-04:00

Micah is now at that stage of amazing development when he starts crawling, walking, talking, and eating lots of solid food in about a month or two period of time. We've had a lot of fun with him, he's an amazing kid. He's much more laid back than Teah was (thank goodness).

I've really missed out on blogging over the past few months. There have been so many things to write about that I've not written anything. I'll have to post some before and after pictures of our back porch that collapsed a month ago. It was not a full collapse, only the floor. I've worked on it a lot over the past month and have almost completely rebuilt the structural supports.

The big problem is that the back porch was the last major lead infested area of our house. Construction work on a house always stirs it up. We just had Micah checked and he is very high. Pray that his lead level will go down very quickly as we continue to take every precaution, and now that all the lead is gone from the back porch.

Zaza

2008-06-23T10:30:00.006-04:00

I always used to say I was a dog person, cats weren't for me. Then Alyssa decided about five years ago that we needed a pet, but we couldn't have a dog in our small apartment. Problem was I'm allergic to cats, so they were out. Until she found a breed called Siberian that did not have the same allergy causing dander as other cats. We went on a search to find one that wasn't too much money, they typically cost about $600 - $800. We found Esperanza, a three year old Siberian living at a catery in Erie. She's was only $150. We drove all the way up to Erie to get her. The catery was not exactly a good place for cats, just a womans house filled with dogs and cats. When we met sweet Zaza we were glad to save her from this place. When I first held her she immediately hid her face between my arm and my chest. She was very shy. That only lasted until she became the queen of our apartment. Soon Zaza came into her own, she became a very playful and outgoing cat. Always wanting attention and someone to play with her. She would literally talk to us, with many different sounds. Most of them meant give me some cat food, but others were just her way of saying hello. Our favorite greeting was the "silent Meow". She would whisper a meow to Alyssa or me whenever we whispered her name. The whispering of "Zaza" became her call, she would always come if we did it right. Over the past two years she's lived at my parents house, there was a time during those two years when we lived there too as we worked on our house. We always wanted to bring Zaza back home, but our house mate, Abraham was even allergic to Zaza (so was I, but I dealt with it). About six months ago we found small lumps on Zaza's belly. They turned out to be cancer. My parents graciously paid for a surgery that we were sure would do the trick. She was only 7 1/2 years old, we thought she'd be fine. But the cancer came back quickly and worse than before. We now have a little cat grave under the Linden tree in our back yard. She never lived here at our house, but she always remained our cat. Well, she had four owners instead of two, my parents loved her too. I have to say, she really was a great cat. So playful and always wanting to be loved, held, and snuggled.

Creasy Greens

2008-06-06T16:47:00.003-04:00

My families heritage is rooted in the mountains and hills of Virginia, a state I learned to love while backpacking and bicycling through Shenandoah National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway. My family vacationed there several times while I was young and I've visited a few times as an adult. We vacationed this year in North Carolina at the beach, the Outer Banks are beautiful, but I do hope to visit the mountains again soon. While here at the Outer Banks I bought a book for Alyssa called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver www.animalvegetablemiracle.com. Alyssa was very happy and had in fact been hoping to buy the book herself, but she was also already reading another book, so I started it.

It's the true story of a family who decided to move to a farm in southern Virginia and truly live off the land. They grow all of their own food or buy it from their farming neighbors. I've been inspired by this book, it's call to buying local food for the sake of saving our planet, and the complete change of lifestyle.

Near the beginning of the book Barbara mentions a native plant which she calls "Creasy Greens". I immediately googled Creasy Greens and found that it's a green that grows all over the place in the south, and it's supposedly very tasty. It's the kind of thing that you can find along the highway shoulder if you know what you're looking for. If you like Creasy Greens they'd be one of those things that give great joy to see popping up out of the soil, they're one of the first plants to sprout in earliest days of spring.

Creasy Greens were obviously named after someone in my family tree. And they were a food that the poor people up in the hills ate after a hard winter. I don't think we can imagine what it would be like to make it through a winter in the mountains of Virginia, seeing fresh greens to be steamed and consumed must have been a hopeful sight.

So I guess when you think of a hill billy in the 1800's out in the mountains of Virginia you can think of the Creasy family, eating our wild Creasy Greens.

And yes, I found that seeds are available on line and I'll be growing them soon!

Eco Sermon Contest published

2008-05-06T11:19:00.003-04:00

A few months back I was encouraged by a friend and co-worker of mine, Chris Brown, to submit a sermon to Warren Wilson College for their "Eco-sermon challenge". I submitted a sermon, but I didn't win, oh well. But they put it on their website to encourage the church and pastors to preach more on eco-theology and creation care.
eco-sermon The sermon, along with others, will also be featured in the Presbyterian Outlook.

Seedlings

2008-04-24T14:53:00.006-04:00

Yesterday morning I traveled with my wife, Alyssa, son Micah and friends, Lance, Mark and Courtney back up to the Bio Shelter at Three Sister's Farm outside Sandy Lake PA. We returned home with a few hundred healthy seedlings ready to be put into our gardens and be sold at local markets. The tomatoes, tomatillos and onions are all ready to be repotted and sold. Most of the hot peppers have a few more weeks to go before they'll be ready. Check out the pictures from a few weeks ago when we planted the hot pepper seeds at the shelter. There's also a picture of our make shift hoop house where our crop of greens have been growing since mid March.

May 4th and 18th we'll be selling seedlings and limited produce at 4pm at the Union Project in Highland Park before worship which is at 6pm. Come down and support the cause!