It was 20 years ago today, the newspaper gave me the new name. I write about my compost pile, but I’m guaranteed to raise a smile. So may I introduce to you the farm you’ve known for all these years, Barefoot Farmer’s Long Hungry Creek Farm.

We get by with a little help from our friends. The farm runs on love, from my best friends who work here with me, to all the helpful neighbors, eager apprentices and appreciative customers. Would you believe in our farm at first sight? Yes, I’m certain that it happens all the time.

Picture yourself on a farm in a garden with berries and trees and vegetable crops. Beautiful flowers of yellow and green towering over your head must be a row of sunflowers. Newspaper columns appear every week waiting to take you away, into a world of organic living and caring for the landscape.

It’s getting better all the time. Our soils are getting better with gentle tillage, remineralization and biodynamic compost. I’ve learned how to improve the soil tilthe and humus, raising the sugar content of the crops so that insects and diseases don’t bother them.

I’m fixing a hole where the cows get out and stop my mind from wondering. Where did they go? Agriculture requires cattle, and I’ve been chasing mine around for forty years. They are teaching me about rotational grazing. The realization that ruminants excrete more fertilizers than their own crops require gave rise to the domestication of animals and the dawn of civilization.

They’re leaving home after living together for so many years. This log cabin has been the home of my family, and a bunch of friends. Most recently, I’ve been blessed to have two young grandchildren staying here with me and helping with the chores. We are all leaving this home, and four other families from our neighborhood are leaving their homes, too.

For the benefit of the chicken fight there have been shows at night several times. From the benefits in Nashville to out gatherings at the Armour Hotel, donations and support have poured in. the common threat has brought a diverse group of people together. As one of the community members said “The chickens came and families had to move, but we have made lifelong friendships. We won!”

We are talking about the space between us all and the people who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion. Lots of people are realizing the environmental and economic disaster that the corporate control of food has caused, but many are still unaware. In our local history, gardens and small farms created a culture around meals that also generated income and caring for the land. Healthy farms won’t want CAFO’s, gas fracking and other menaces threatening Tennessee.

Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more? Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64. Farming requires long-term thinking. We make decisions based on what will be happening on our farm twenty years later, not by sacrificing the future for short-term profit.

Lovely Rita by the creek, give us a wink and make me think of you. Hundreds of students and thousands of visitors make their way to the Long Hungry Creek. Many have fallen in love here and consequently we’ve had several weddings. Farms are for people, protecting nature and building a future.

Nothing to do to save the farm put your arms down. Going to work, got weeds to pull, it’s a hoedown. I’m going o move into the old Purcell house on Heady Ridge, after we fix it up. I will live again on the big farm and have my good mornings near the chickens, pigs and cows. As for the 40,000 chickens 450 feet from where I live now, the Tysons executives were certainly correct when they told me, “It will stink.”

We’re Barefoot Farmer’s Long Hungry Creek Farm, we’re sorry but it’s time to go. We’d like to thank you once again. The tremendous empathy and compassion you all have given me in the last two successful years has touched my heart. It has given me the strength, courage and hope to continue to work for a healthy agriculture throughout Middle Tennessee.

I read the news today, oh boy, about a lucky man who had a farm. And though the news was rather sad, I just had to laugh, I saw the photograph. A giant CAFO dwarfed Tennessee’s most famous gardens, with three hundred acres where it could have gone. I’d love to turn you on to homegrown, organic produce, an d help you learn to grow your own, without the Beatles.

You may not agree and you may become angry with my take on the death of this 22 year old friend of mine who died recently, but I am not alone in my viewpoint.  However, your opposition won’t move me one iota and you wouldn’t like my rebuttal.  In fact, not wishing to be mean, you might be embarrassed by it.  I know whereof I write. 

            Though Brad had only a grave side service, it was not without friends—especially young friends.  Many of the young men and young women he graduated with from R.B.S. High were there to say goodbye to Brad.  They came from Tennessee Tech—young women and young men, hugging each other, remembering how Brad made them laugh and how he reached out to them and helped them in various ways.  Some even gave up a days work to be at the service for him.  Something, more than all the sadness of the day touched my heart, and that was when our paralyzed grandson, Allen, rolled his wheelchair up to Brad’s casket, with tears running down his cheeks, and laid his hand on Brads cold hand.  Brad came to our house numerous times and lifted Allen into his truck.  Allen and the other young men, when they could, shared their money with Brad and he was grateful. 

            Brad didn’t have a father to go fishing with him or to watch him play football, but he had a lot of friends rooting for him. 

            Our family always found him to be a good hearted young man who had at times only a platform rocker for a bed, for his mother was poor too; but a very hard worker.  Some of us didn’t really know how much Brad suffered until recently.  But whatever people did for him, he was thankful.  We had him at our house for Thanksgiving and I’ll not forget that after the meal he went into the living room and said to my wife, “Thanks for allowing me to be a part of your family today.”  Several members of our family along with others in our community gave him money from time to time but I am sickened that we didn’t do more for him. 

            Brad was sick and the medical attention he received was not enough.  When he was younger, I have learned, that he was told by a doctor that he needed surgery but it never happened.

            Brad died the way he lived the most of his life—poor.  In fact, the last year or two of his life he was homeless in Red Boiling, staying wherever he could.  There was no money to bury him, but several helped and though the burial was minimal, he was lovingly buried by some who cared.  Any person wishing to help complete the payment on his funeral expenses or help erect a small monument in his memory should make checks payable to either Anderson & Son Funeral Home in R.B.S. or Lafayette Monument Company. 

            Brad didn’t always make the best decisions, but he knew how to do something some who sit in the pews three times a week haven’t learned how to do—care for people.  Maybe some need to pay better attention to what the preacher says, and go out and practice what they heard in the assembly.  Some apparently find it easier to care for the well-to-do then those whose lives are filled with poverty and struggles.  A little message for all—that was not how Jesus operated.

While you’re on your way to the meeting house, and your religion never really goes beyond the meeting house, turn to Acts 10:38 and read where the Bible says “Jesus went about doing good.”  We need to follow His example.

            Brad, friend, you didn’t die in vain, for some have been made to realize what a sorry example of Christianity they have been.  May we not be a Priest or Levite, but a Good Samaritan.

Democracy will not self-destruct.  Its staying-power will not weaken.  It is some of the ingrates who have been blessed by it who will bring about its demise.  Ignorant and greedy citizens who have been fortunate enough to live in this great nation have cast their votes against the continuance of democracy, out of loyalty to some ignorant cause, while putting their parasitical hands in the pockets of Uncle Sam.  Whether they know it or not, they are the enemies of America.  Those of us who believe in the Constitution are not the enemies of democracy.  No, it is those whose minds are clouded with ignorance and whose hearts are filled with greed—standing by with open hands, hoping the liberal politicians will fill their hands with loaves and fishes and take over the job of running their lives while they take another bath in self-induced ignorance.

            A classic example of the uninformed took place recently in Macon County Tennessee when there were those who criticized a billboard “52 West By-Pass” which told nothing but the historical truth.  Yes Virginia, there was a man, wicked I might add, who did live and who did start World War II, whose name was Adolph Hitler, and did declare that to first take over a nation, the citizens thereof must first be disarmed.  He did that all over Europe.  Whether it is a hand gun, bow and arrow, or my little sling shot which my father made for me when I was 12 years old—it is mine and I have the Constitutional right to have it, and all the bleeding heart Democrats and “scary-cat” Country Club Republicans “ain’t” getting it.  It is not those who stand for the Constitution that is causing the trouble, but those who are willingly ignorant of the horrors of living in a nation which has lost its freedom.

            It is alleged that those who criticized the correct statement on the billboard did so trying to avoid controversy, hogwash!  Haven’t they heard?  We are already in the midst of the biggest controversy since World War II.  The cemeteries throughout Macon County Tennessee and America are filled with the graves of young men and women who proudly and willingly put down Adolph Hitler and his wicked and ignorant followers whose ambition was to rule and conquer the world.  What a controversy!  But thanks be to the men and women in the military who were not afraid of a dictator and his wicked zealots and put down those who wanted to rob the world of freedom.  And to all who believe they are creating a new order, and will ride rough shod over America’s citizens, while creating a new constitution, forget it, because countless millions of us love freedom too much to roll over and play dead.  And to the Liberal Democrats and Country Club Republicans, consider moving to Iran.  None of you fit in here.  We will not allow you to destroy our America.  God is too strong and we will pray to him often.  God Bless America!

            I read of two service station attendants in a town in Michigan who refused to hand over the cash to an intoxicated robber.  When they didn’t, the robber threatened to call the police.  They still refused, so the robber called the police and was arrested.

            Then there was this pair of robbers in Michigan who entered a record store, waving their revolvers in the air.  One yelled, “Nobody moves!”  His partner moved, so…he shot him.  “I was a little nervous,” he was quoted as saying.

            Trying to hide secrets from God is even more foolish than the two illustrations above.  All things are open to Him (Hebrews 4:13).  Everything we do is open to God.  Do you think you are smart enough to pull the wool over God’s eyes?  If so, you are a fool.  Don’t believe for a single second that you will get away with sin.

            We can’t hide our actions from God.

            However, God loves us and wants to forgive us.  Though we can’t hide from God, we can confess our sins to Him and they will be erased by His forgiveness.  This of course applies to the erring Christians.  Christians must be faithful by walking in the light (I Jno 1:7).  If we’ve become Christians in the past, but stopped walking in the light, we can repent of ours sins and confess them and pray for God’s forgiveness, and then He will forgive.  I can’t erase your sins and you can’t erase my sins, but our God can.

An Ordinary Member?

“Just an ordinary member of the church,” I heard him say, but you always find him present, even on a rainy day.

He has a hearty handshake for the stranger in the aisle,

And a friend who is in trouble will find sunshine in his smile.

When the Sunday sermon helps him, he tells the preacher so, and when in need of comfort, he lets the elders know; He always gives so freely and tries to do his share, in the ordinary tasks for which others have no care.

His talents are not many, but his love for God is true; His prayers are not in public, but he prays for me and you.

“An ordinary member”?- I think that I would say,

“He’s an extra-ordinary member in a humble sort of way!”

-Author Unknown

The Most Dangerous Sin

Both the Old Testament and the New Testament warns of the danger of neglect. In fact, the sin of negligence is one of the most dangerous. Sin is divided into sins of Commission and sins of omission. Most members become upset concerning sins of Commission but seem never become alarmed with sins of omission.

1. Neglect is dangerous because it requires no effort. It takes no effort to avoid the needy, visit the sick, to attend Bible Study- all three of which must be classified as sins of omission.
2. Neglect is dangerous because it is the root of other sins. 
3. Neglect is dangerous because it is contrary to the purpose of the Gospel.
4. It is also dangerous because negligent people will be lost.