The Miracle and Mystery in Farming A Legacy

We signed the papers the week we got back from our honeymoon. The homeplace that has been in Matthew's family for the last three generations is now entrusted to us.

Wedged between main street and 150+ acres of abandoned ore mines, our little place is odd. It's in town but it feels rural. We see deer graze daily, yet we have neighbors. We deal with traffic noise, but we grow crops and keep chickens. It's strangely right for what we need and where we want to be.

Immediately after buying, we set about trying to put the house right and plant a garden. (I'll be sharing so much more about that in the coming days.) And one of the first things we planted?

Nannie peas.

You all have to hear this story. The story of Nannie peas.

At least that's what Matthew and his identical twin, Mark, grew up calling them. Their Nannie and Papa grew these peas in their garden for decades right here in Cass County. The family grew up with them on the table every family gathering and holiday meal. The tiny cream peas were a staple, and no one ever really considered what they were... they were just there. Papa bought them the first time from a long-gone feed store in the county seat, faithfully saved the seed each year, and grew and cooked them for decades. What were they actually called? No one knew. They were Nannie peas, they went alongside mashed potatoes and meat, and that's all anyone cared about.

In the 1990s, when Nannie and Papa died within months of each other, their children - Matthew's mother, included - found bags of peas from their last garden in the deep freezer. They divided them up and Matthew's mother carried a ziploc bag of the peas home. But cooking the last bag of her parents' peas? That would warrant a special occasion. And, as these things go, the peas waited in the freezer until, 25 years later, she came across them this summer. 

We all stood around and looked at the little battered bag of peas. The bag Nannie herself had shelled and packaged. Would they grow?, Matthew's mother asked. We were planting our garden and had space, but would these peas germinate after 25 years? Could they?

Miracle of all miracles, y'all, they did. The peas came back to life.

In July, we all gathered around the table as a family and had our first taste of Nannie peas in decades. The family said that the house even smelled like Nannie's. As I looked up and watched Matthew eat the fruit of his labor, I wondered how proud Nannie would be of her handsome grandson, all grown up now, growing her favorite heirloom crop and feeding her family once again.

All the feels.

After the cooler temperatures and the rain Hurricane Laura brought us this week, I expect the Nannie peas to set out one last good bloom before fall sets in. Tonight I plan to can about 10 pints of peas for the pantry, and shell several quarts more. It's a labor of love, and one I'm happy to help carry on.

It's a strange legacy, but one I'll gladly help pass down.

Hope you have a wonderful Friday and weekend, friend. If you need me, I'll be in the pea patch or the kitchen.

-Brin

P.S. We still haven't been able to identify Nannie's pea, and plan to send it off to the experts at Texas A&M this fall. 

Spinning and Telling: Symbols of a Beginning, Part Two

Ruins, for me, are the beginning.

With the debris, you can construct new ideas.

They are the symbols of a beginning.

-Anselm Kiefer

Ruins. Debris. Call it what you will, but these last few years, my life - my home, my plans - were a wrecked mess. They were unmade.

Each day, all day, I yearned for one thing: life. Color. Movement. I longed for anything that showed me promise of growth or renewal or that stubbornness to live ... that unyielding, seek-the-sun-reality our Creator bred into nature. I clung to realities such as Seeds have to be buried to grow, and What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly. Things like that. Whatever. It helped.

But from that season while I was away from you, friend, ideas were born. Then they grew into a dream. And then that dream had a name and a purpose and a life of its own. I officially started Balm and Honey Farm.
 

It began with the bees. With honey. Then it morphed into a small market farm with an active CSA program and weekly farmer's market. It took off so quickly I didn't have time to think. Or breathe. One minute it was an idea, and the next I was delivering crates of food to beloved customers. (That's how it seemed, anyway.) That first picture up there? That was my first season at market. The picture just above was the second season. And this here? This is one of the weekly CSA shares that soon followed:

 I loved every minute of farming. All of it. The challenges, the growth, the pressure, the living on a prayer. God used the work to busy and sustain me. The food was just bonus. 

But man, was it a bonus!

The vegetables and flowers and honey were fantastic, but I couldn't just leave those old henrybella's recipes in the past, either. (Remember that old bakery?) Some of those old favorites came out and were featured at market, too: the Country Bread..

... and Honey Cinnamon Rolls...

 ... and it was good. It was fun. In the midst of a death of a marriage and the loss of my home, a purpose and a vision were exploding into life. And strangely, all those small and seemingly disparate hobbies and interests and tragedies and setbacks throughout my life were coming together into a cohesive objective: to nourish, to house, to live simply and work with my hands, and to make lives better.

All along, He was doing the same to me. And He wasn't done there.

This past May, I had coffee with a childhood acquaintance who wanted to pick my brain about farming. He wanted to start a residential and occupational place, he said, for the disabled in our community. As a teacher and attendant for people with disabilities, he had watched too many times as his precious, misunderstood, undervalued students and clients were shuffled into homes or lost in the system, simply because they didn't have a place or a purpose. My heart burned as we talked and realized we had been carrying the same vision: to farm, and to house people there who had challenges, or at-risk behavior, or recently survived life situations like we had.

Then that dream got a name, and this new adventure swept onto the scene. We're calling it The ROCK Collective, and it's an emerging non-profit that seeks to provide homes and jobs and dignity to the overlooked and underserved in our community. We're starting a tiny home community in a farm setting. Balm and Honey Farm will merge into this mission. I can't wait to take you along for adventure. I can't wait to welcome you out to the place. 

Yes, ruins, debris... call them what you will. But from them, my life - my home, my plans - are being remade.

Symbols of a beginning.

Have a great weekend and we'll talk again soon. -Brin

Oh! You can follow the farm @balmandhoney on Instagram or Balm and Honey Farm on Facebook. Also, check out the new project on Facebook by searching: The Rock Collective or clicking here. Website is coming soon!