Farm Market Set to Open July 12

This Saturday July 12 will see the opening of our farm market on the church property located at 1401 Lee Victory Pkwy, Smyrna, TN in the picnic pavilion to the left of the church building. Through the rest of the season, the market will be open mornings on Saturdays and Tuesdays. This Saturday we expect to offer two varieties of yellow summer squash and zucchini. We may also have green beans, pickling cucumbers and okra. In the coming weeks we will be harvesting beefsteak tomatoes, lima beans, peppers, and sweet corn. As fall approaches we will continue to offer the above as they are available in addition to pumpkins, decorative corn and decorative corn husk arrangements. If you are adventurous, we also currently have a small variety of greens native to Burma. In addition to our vegetables, some of our church members and friends will make available homemade crafts that they have contributed to our efforts, including traditional Karen garments and bags, homemade goats milk soap and other items subject to availability. All of our vegetables are grown on site, in view from the market stand. We do not use any artificial ANYTHING on our food. It's clean, it's locally grown, it's even been prayed over and blessed! Lastly, please know that 100% of all proceeds go directly to sustaining Kurios Farm and the significant refugee ministry of All Saints' Episcopal Church. This is a labor of love in service to our Lord Jesus Christ and to our neighbor. Come and see us!

More pictures

What we've been up to this year

Time has been precious this year and I have not updated this site very often. In spite of my belief that one must not always rely on seeing to believe; here are some pictures. We've been planting, and growing, and celebrating, and praying, and planning, and hosting, and thanking God for the ways in which he has acted mightily on our behalf. All things come of thee, O Lord, and from thine own have we given thee.

Nashotah Missioner Article

It has been some time since I posted to the blog. We have all taken a nice winter break from the work of farming, though not from the planning of farming. Over the past two weeks we have been very busy plowing ground and planting seed and tomato plants. There will be more to come on that later, but for now, I thought I would provide a link to a fine article that was written last year about the work we are doing. I am indebted to my friend, Fr. Steve Schlossberg for the fine article he wrote for the Michaelmas issue of The Missioner, the alumni publication from Nashotah House Seminary.

You can read the article by following the link to Nashotah House's publications page and downloading the Michaelmas 2008 edition of The Missioner.

The article on The Rev. John Keble is well worth looking at too.

Those floods. . . .

In the last post I briefly quoted from one of the prayer book canticles. "O ye seas and floods, bless ye the Lord." Last night at a dinner, I had occasion to sit next to our Canon to the Ordinary. I was asked how our vegetables were doing and I mentioned the weather extremes from the past week. When I mentioned that the creek had neared overflowing its bank, this elicited comments of slight concern because our fields lie in flood plain. In past meetings with our Bishop & Council, this fact was brought up as a concern, for it is possible that one year we might find our work washed away should we experience heavier than normal rainfall. But, it is also a fact, that testing performed by our local agricultural extension agent has shown that we have some of the most fertile soil in the county. Last night Canon Snare reminded me of that fact when she made the comment that it was probably those past floods that contributed to the quality of our soil. It's often interesting how a seemingly slight comment can stick with you. I have been meditating on that comment ever since. My impulse, all along, has been to trust God and pray that he would prevent anything catastrophic such as a flood from hindering our ministry. But what if our fields did flood? Mightn't that be the way in which God has so ordered his creation that the depositing of rich, fresh sediment is the means by which He tends land? I might not prefer the, to my mind, messy, chaotic way in which he tends it, but perhaps my way would starve, rather than feed. Don't we sometimes prefer starvation to the free flow of God's blessing? Our prayer might be, O Lord, let you blessings flow, but let them run shallow and let them run narrow, and above all let them run neatly. Amen. Rather, we might pray that God give us a heart like the one he gave his son; a heart that has yet to crest.

A Song of Creation

The weather merits comment this week. Stewarts Creek runs along the back property line of the farm. This body of water is our irrigation source. During the summer it never ran dry, but ran very low. When we began the farm in June our irrigation system consisted of a bucket that was lowered to a small pool in the creek, filled, then raised back up the approximately 13ft tall creek bank. The water was emptied into a metal watering trough. 1 gallon watering cans were then filled and individuals would walk up and down the rows hand watering our seedlings. This was very labor intensive as was much of what we did in the beginning. In time, God provided us with a water pump. When our seedlings were approximately 3-4 inches high we were faced with a problem. We needed to either water or weed the rows on a massive scale. We had received a handful of contributions and around July we had $900 in the farm account. The pump and hoses were going to cost $800 or a tiller was going to cost $500. Our dilemma was which ought we to buy first? We finally determined that water was more essential than weeding, so we purchased the pump and were left with $100. The very day I bought the pump was the day that a retired priest from St. George's Church in Nashville dropped by to see me. This visit was unexpected and prompted by the type of kindly frienship this priest embodies. I took the opportunity to show my colleague the farm. We never discussed our needs or finances, but the next day I received $600 from this priest which allowed us to purchase the tiller and begin weeding as well as irrigating. So, that was how God provided us with a tiller. Now, the pictures you see below are very interesting to us who work out back. The creek itself is a blessing because that is the means by which God provides water from the earth, when it's scarce from the sky. This week has given us a glimpse of its nature. The first pictures are from the summer when the creek was at its lowest. They are taken from the top of the bank looking down, and the one of the pump was taken from the creek bed. This week we have had heavy rains and, just yesterday, snow. At its height, the creek ran level with the 13ft bank. The next day it had dropped to half. A comparison: In the summer, if I waded to the middle of the creek, my ankles were under water. Tuesday, if I could have waded into the middle, there would have been over 6ft of water over the top of my head.

"Oh ye wells, bless ye the Lord; O ye seas and floods, bless ye the Lord. . . . praise and magnify him for ever."

November Update

It's been over a month since I updated the blog and so much has happened in that time. Right after the Bishop came out for a visit with the Karen, we completed the work on the inside of the church we were hoping to accomplish. We painted the main hallway a brighter color so that it is no longer the dreary blue as it was before. We cleaned, painted and rearranged the office and classroom space to a more practical arrangement. So, things are brighter and somehow more convenient with the updates.

Just prior to a visit my wife and I made to Nashotah House, I was paid a visit by Bill Gentry, one of the farmers who helped prepare our fields this summer. He gave us a lead on a tractor that turned out to be just what we were looking for and in the price range we were hoping to pay. So, the day before my wife and I left for WI we bought the tractor and while I was away it was delivered and is serving us well. I thought I had some pictures of it in use, but I must have been using someone else's camera at the time. Anyway, it's a late 1950s Ford 600 and has been a major help in clearing the fields as the bulk of our growing season has drawn to a close. While I was at Nashotah, their latest issue of their alumni publication, The Missioner, was published. Kurios Farm is featured in a two-page article in that issue. As soon as they update their website, I will provide a link to the article.


After returning from Nashotah, we had an All Saints' Fall Festival. This was an opportunity for the church to gather and celebrate the blessings of the past year and to give thanks to God for a harvest that exceeded all expectations, even by the most hopeful among us. We had a nice cookout and shared some delicious Karen dishes. Members brought crafts that were sold and we raffled a quilt that one of our members, Merry Adams, made. The kids played games and a serious pick-up game of soccer developed. The day ended with a bonfire and so we logged another good day in the common life of this congregation.


Not long after that, Bishop Bauerschmidt returned for his episcopal visitation on All Saints Sunday, confirming eleven members and receiving one. Afterwards he addressed the adult Christian education group and we were grateful for the encouragement and support he expressed regarding our ministry with the farm.

Sometime in October we planted our cold-weather crop of spinach, lettuce, beets, turnips, mustrad, collard and turnip greens. The crop is thriving and we hope to have some of those items ready for sale within the next one to two weeks.

Last night, November 13th, I and two of our lay volunteers, Michael & Judy Williams, attended the Rutherford County Soil Conservation Board dinner. When we first began the farm, the board members were very generous with advice, a small grant and induction into a new outreach project called CROP (Conservation Resources Outreach Project). All Saints' and Kurios Farm, along with two other participating elementary schools, were recognized for their participation in the first year of the program. We are so pleased and thank God for the relationship that has developed between Kurios Farm and the Soil Conservation Board members. We feel we have true friends in the board members who have been generous not only with their knowledge of farming, but also with themselves.


Lastly, see this person? This is Angie. She and her husband Bill (Bill built the red storage shed you see in the background of the latest picture of the cold-weather crop. The materials were donated by the son of Ladale Doty, a long-time All Saints' member.) attend All Saints' along with her daughetr, son-in-law and grandson. Angie grew up on a truck farm and tells of how hard her mom and dad drove the kids. As Angie put it, there was always one more row to be hoed, one more row to be picked and the work never ended. She's a nurse now, and swore she would never do farm work again. She told me her mom would never believe she was helping on the farm if we didn't have photographic proof. That's what the past year has been like for most of us at All Saints'. When you surrender yourself and your life to God, expect that he'll send you places you never thought you'd go, to do things you never thought you'd do, and quite possibly, become the saint you never thought you could be. Six months ago God turned our world upside down and we are all the better for it. Thank be to God.