Six Arrows Farm Update

The subdued hills and woods and fields are waiting with bated breath to be washed and clothed in snow-light like a bride.  When the last saturated splash of living color fades, I long for that flood of dazzling frosty flashing white.  There was a hint of it this morning before the sun kissed the grass...every blade and twig was encrusted with a thousand diamonds.  The annual foraging for a harvest of venison begins tomorrow.  At least three Lenz men will rise in the wee hours and seek out their quarry from the plentiful summer-fattened herd.

I stoked the fire before tumbling into bed last night.  A blessed old habit born again after months of cold hearth and empty wood box.  Broad smooth tiles before the sooty black stove that cooled my dusty summer feet glowed in the dim light and dancing heat...a silent invitation to bask.  Stepping into the house to be greeted by these permeating mingled scents of life and ashes is a continual joy now.  Back it comes to paint its familiar ever-changing scenery on the family room wall, throwing fantastical shadows and lights over familiar framed faces and new colors on beloved old bindings marching rank and file along the shelves.  Even as the death of the outer world sweeps away every vestige of color and life, firelight inside echoes autumn's song and carries a flashing refrain into the depths of sleeping winter.  

Here in our home a new kind of summer grows strong, careless alike of numbing cold and rushing blast.  This refuge where God grants to us quiet and rest is of all places in the world most sacred and cherished.  Anyone who knows us will believe me when I say that this quiet and rest in our house has almost nothing to do with dullness or inactivity.  A subversive kind of energy radiates from the house in every kind of enterprise...and by mid-afternoon, begins to culminate in the kitchen.  If your day of work leaves you exhausted,  all you have 

to do is follow your nose.  Imagine pumpkin and squash baking slowly until the juices caramelize on the pan, followed by pumpkin seeds roasted crackling and snapping until they blush golden.  Potatoes and onions and venison all simmering in a pot all day until the meat lends its full flavor to the potatoes and soaks in the savory zest of the onions casts up the most delicious and tantalizing aroma.  

Then around the dinner table, a reviving aroma of another kind rises, regardless of seasonal swelter or chill.  Here the throne of family holds sway and teaches us time and again through sundry simplicity and familiarity how trivial the many aggrandized issues of men really are.  
So says the Maker of hearth and home:

"Thus says the Lord

'Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory n his might, nor let the rich man glory in his riches;  But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth.  For in these I delight,'

says the Lord."
Jeremiah 9:23-24

Here is a greatness in the beaming glow emanating from every face that puts the pomp and swagger of potentates to shame...a sovereignty of a different kind than that granted rulers and powers of the earth.  Here we learn that in all things, the small as well as the mighty, God will have dominion over men and in this we take comfort, since no device of men can bring of such servitude and mutual dependence more joy and contentment, nor lift the sons and daughters of mankind to more pure and lasting freedom.

“Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.  For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.  The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; He makes the plans of the peoples of no effect.  The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart to all generations.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people He has chosen as His own inheritance.  The Lord looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men.  From the place of His dwelling He looks on all the inhabitants of the earth; He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works.  No kin is saved by the multitude of an army; a mighty man is not delivered by great strength.  A horse is a vain hope for safety; neither shall it deliver any by its strength.

Behold they eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope in His mercy, to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine.  Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield.  For our heart shall rejoice in Him, because we have trusted in His holy name.  Let Your mercy, O Lord, be upon us, just as we hope in You.
Psalm 33:8-22

The affairs of the world are in turmoil and set before us a constant battle to be fought. The imaginations of men grow dark, but around the family table, before the family hearth, we are reminded of this:

All the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before You.  For the kingdom is the Lord's, and He rules over the nations."
Psalm 22:27-28

Six Arrows Farm Update

It begins to be pleasant to be indoors now because of the deepening chill...but it is still even more pleasant to be out of doors because of the bracing air.  Everything alive is going to sleep, but the sun of a hundred summer days is being coaxed out of the earth by stretching frosty nights until, even on a cloudy day, the wind smells exotic and rich like a breath out of the orient.

The dark arms of the trees strike out against shades of azure so arrestingly beautiful they take my breath away. 

A growing crowd of winter wraps are hugging the hooks by the front door...masses of heavy coats capped by the light jackets and swathed in trailing scarves.  Minnesotans have a distinctive penchant for winter fashion and, small wonder, we especially love our coats.  The polar fleece vest and the heavy down snow coat, the formal trench coat and the light jacket all hold their own indispensable place.

In our house at least, winter garments far outnumber summer garments...and astronomically outweigh them.  All my favorite clothes belong in this category.  I love bundling up in them.  Scarves to settle my chin into, layers to wrap around my shoulders, socks to cozy my toes.  There is comfort and security and rest wrapped up in the look and feel and smell of winter clothes.  Yes the smell...they spend hours imbibing the scents of countless fires, settling onto the creaky family room couch with hundreds of comfortable guests in the light of aforementioned fires and saturating the rich aromas of a thousand piping winter dinners.  A thick wool sweater evokes images of some of our favorite things on the farm...steaming cups of coffee and tea, snow, early mornings, long days cutting wood, good books.

Something about all the tucking away and storing up inspires its own kind of anticipation...similar to the keen thrilling craving that comes in spring for plowing and sowing.  I find myself nearly ready to open a seed catalogue again with relish...but not until we have completely buried ourselves in the hot, spicy, steamy, gregarious, bursting-at-the-seams Thanksgiving kitchen.

Better even than eating good food is planning it...conjuring up images of everything that brings comfort to the palate and hence enthusiasm and contentment to the conversation.  Right about now I am dangerous on a shopping trip.  My eyes are bigger than our refrigerator and cupboards combined.  Mama and I couldn’t resist the dates on our grocery trip today...she said “dates in your oatmeal” and I grabbed extra boxes.  Every kind of food sounds appealing...to make.  And I’m not even dreaming about eating anything yet!  This is the special privilege of the cook...a double measure of anticipation.  Our fresh diet is still supplied almost exclusively from the farm...loads of steamy squash, smooth buttery potatoes, strong sweet onions.  Throw in a favorite herb and some frozen beans, pull a savory so-tender-it-falls-apart-in-your-hands chicken out of the crock-pot, drench the potatoes with gravy from the drippings and eat like a king.  I am beginning to plan for bacon and eggs or ham and cloves and the pigs are nearly ready for market. 

The last market just rolled into the gathered endeavors of the year.  The remaining bounty is for us to enjoy.  When we are powerless to bring food for ourselves from the ground, we are made glaringly aware of our absolute reliance on our Maker.  The time will come to break out the first jar of tomatoes, the first bag of beans...when we will be compelled day by day to give thanks.

God thunders wondrously with his voice;
he does great things that we cannot comprehend.
For to the snow he says, 
‘Fall on the earth,’
likewise to the downpour, his mighty downpour.
He seals up the hand of every man,
that all men whom he made may know it.
Then the beasts go into their lairs,
and remain in their dens.
From its chamber comes the whirlwind,
and cold from the scattering winds.
By the breath of God ice is given,
and the broad waters are frozen fast.

~Job 37:5-10

Listen to the farewell songs of the birds that fly away south, telling their tales of foreign climes and balmy glades; then pull your hat down over your ears, drag your socks up past your boot tops and whistle the merry brittle tunes of winter down their soaring wake to speed them away from the frigid blast.  They’ll not come home till the new season wends round at the appointed time; and here we’ll bide awhile without them in good cheer, with faith in our Father to bring the year round.

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows

A Six Arrows Farm Update

We have a new list...well...The List this time of year really takes on a life of its own, so I'm not sure whether we have it or it has us. In any case, this list comes a size large, so you have to make the time grow into it and "fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run" as Rudyard Kipling advises. With categories for the farm, a fast approaching open house and various individual projects, it looks something like this:

Freeze cornbread for the Cornbread Salad

Wash the floors

Cut the dead tree down

Make dinner

Clean the kitchen

Quartet rehearsal for a wedding

Plant tomatoes

Weed and mulch gate flower bed

Make dinner

Clean the kitchen

Plant foxgloves and wisteria vine

Throw in a load of laundry

Put in the pig fence

Make dinner

Clean the kitchen

Burn brush

Order bread making supplies for market

Teach music lessons

Make dinner

Clean the kitchen

Clean out the neighbors goat barn

Weed the strawberries

Fix the chicken waterer

Make dinner

Clean the kitchen

Cook chickens for Chicken Cherry Walnut Salad

Write the farm update

Call about a stock trailer

Make dinner

Clean the kitchen

Get field stone for the root cellar

Clean the garage

Hill the potatoes

Make dinner

Clean the kitchen

...

Notice the consistent and regular nature of dinner and clean up? In the near-frenzy of work on the farm, one of the few things that maintains sanity and regularity is mealtime. The fact that suppertime during this season is rarely at the same hour shouldn't come as a surprise. The kind of regularity our meals lend is of a different type. Whether it happens at five or eight, it gathers us together, comforts our stomachs, clears our minds, reminds us of the Provider of our daily bread, inspires aspiring cooks...and common table courtesy usually enforces a blessed silence for a short time (in most of us at least).

And then there is the kitchen, that place most of us know every inch of. Dishcloths are often a reliable barometer of the advancing state of one's kitchen. Ours are mostly threadbare and tend to be either mortifyingly grubby or bleached clean, with very little time transpiring between the two states. In a proper sense, perhaps our kitchen could be called threadbare. At the very least, it is well used. We know we are busy when the plates and cups go from the drainer to the table without touching the cupboard shelves. With at least three and more often eight people using the space regularly (mostly at the same time), it would be a stretch to say that there is a place for everything...or that everything is in its place. From a practical perspective, the geographical layout is deplorable and more than one of the outlets is finicky enough that you have to "nurse" it to get electricity (perhaps related to the frequent blown fuses; usually the result of trying to run three waffle irons or two crock pots at the same time). In spite of these minor glitches, this is where we are perfecting the art of efficiently feeding a large family on a healthy, economical, sturdy and even palatable diet. :)

Our kitchen is no bigger than it ever was, yet as we grow and change, it remains the hub of activity in our household. The attraction it commands it is as palpable as it is enigmatical. No one has ever really been in our home until they have come into the kitchen; preferably at the high tide of production when most of the doors and drawers are open and something is splashing over the top of a pot while half a dozen knives are clattering and at least three conversations are in progress. It is one of the less "beautiful" places in the house, but I can't tell you how many deep conversations are held over that battered counter, how many tears have been shed into the old stained sink, how many merry laughs have rung from the jumbled cupboards. Who could count the cups of coffee, loaves of bread, cans of tomatoes, burnt pies, broken mugs, favorite cookies, caramelized onions, mountains of dishes, saucepans of gravy, cut fingers, soggy hands, watering eyes, tingling noses and savoring tongues that are laid to its account. Never for a moment believe that kitchen work must be drudgery. Only drudges can make it so. Families can tear down the walls that divide them and establish the cornerstones of society while building the structure of a cake or reducing a mountain of dishes.

Around the old traditions and familiar habits of the home grow the changeful days, full now of new life, new plants, new gardens, new chicks, new pigs, new projects, new businesses. We even added a new bread variety for the Farmer’s Market along with the standbys and favorites...the common man’s Whole Grain Pumpernickel! My favorites are still the Rosemary Garlic with cheese in it and Aubrey’s famous Cardamom Braid. As you can probably imagine, by late morning every Friday, just walking in the house will make you hungry.

While your back was turned the woods tangled themselves together in a summer jungle and the grass grew rank and file all over the heated soil. The iris unfurled his shimmering walls and donned his feathery waistcoat and gold lined lavender suit. Leaves on the tree heights cast back the sun's golden eye from their smooth faces and shimmer on the breath of May breezes. The cool regal halls of the forest echo with a myriad chorus of birds and shelter the secrets of their nests. Every bit of the world, the vast sky, the fine dust of the blossoms of fruit, the jeweled feathers of the rooster, just shout "Glory!" day and night. This is the time when the farm is at its best, greenest, cleanest, when the shadows dance through hours of golden sunlight, while the bee hums his own tune at every flower. Here you can learn from the growing things what it is to be busy while at rest. The peaceful and idyllic surroundings disguise a ceaseless hum of energetic industry in the folds of their splendor. In fact, whether most know it or not, no one could truly enjoy the apparent glory if it were not for the apparent presence of effort.

Signing off to clean up for dinner!

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows

Six Arrows Farm Update

Well, here is spring, and no spring flood to dabble in.  The spongy mud around the house cracks open like a mouth begging for water.  Yet, though this year’s spring ground is thirsty, moisture still hangs in the air.  I can taste it in that breath of tang that flavors the sharp, stale winter wind. It clings to the trees in a ghost of dew and turns the old moss livid green.  Hold your breath, and you can eave’s drop on the

haziest shadow of an eave’s drip echoing off dead boughs.  It is always misting the world, so one cannot go out of doors without coming in dry and yet feel inexplicably wet.  March is here, when the wind will toss everything about in a gale of spring cleaning. 

Already the dominion of growing things is trickling out of the house.  Aubrey is gutting the greenhouse today and setting up heaters to warm  it for the first of the “babies”.  Honestly, someone needs to make a scented candle called “Greenhouse”.  It beats Vanilla by a mile.  I forget how much I miss that heavy draft of living breath until it hits me the first time I open the greenhouse door every year.  For now flats of delicate green march along the top shelf while lonely stacks of pots and tipsy mountains of empty trays tumble over every superfluous inch of space below.

Talk is all about what we will do in the garden, how big it will be.  There is yet a month until we can safely plant anything out of doors; but let the sun come out for just a week and pour liquid life onto the earth and we will pounce on the fallow ground with the voracious hum of tillers and puttering of tractors. 

An update this late is perforce short.  Signing off for now!

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows

A Six Arrows Farm Update

Well, the Minnesota winter held its breath for a staggering couple of weeks, peaked the effort with an almost unheard-of 50 degree January day, and let it all go this morning in a frigid blast of the arctic.  From the balmy-forget-your-hat-and-wear-a-light-jacket day to a biting-button-your-coat-collar-and-wear-long-underwear day; all in forty-eight hours!  If the weather-man isn’t selling exaggerated news (which he almost certainly is either way since the poor fellow truly can’t win), the thermometer will finally drop to the more familiar few degrees above zero tonight and the wind will drive a chill through your bones at a ghastly 10-15 degrees below!  Instead of sniffing stale autumn air when I step outdoors, I can gasp enough to swallow a snowball when I turn the handle and the crack between door and jam wuthers in my face.

Yet again the family room in the basement becomes a natural retreat after dinner and during the short mornings and afternoons.  Here every day has its fire and across the floor and festooned over chairs and sofas our papers and projects bask with us in the heat.  Now we can delve into the deep ingenuity and musical wonder of Bach’s double violin concerto, study reams of evidence and talk thoroughly and frequently on the subject of the United States Jury System, piece and perfect the lines and seams in an 1860’s military frock coat, pour over documents and study guides and reference books on every topic from calculus to air brakes.

Now we can rise early in the blessed dark of waning winter nights to unborn mornings with coffee in the pot and socks on our toes.  Hot food, however simple, is suddenly banquet fare when the aromas meet the freezing howl at the door.  The satisfaction of “beating the cold” by fetching fresh onions from the root cellar (now in official working order!) to concoct a big batch of spaghetti sauce is even better than pulling them right out of the garden!  The precious food we stored away for these long, “garden-less” months is reappearing to grace the table and Aubrey’s famous pesto remains the favorite by far!

I got a little jolt last week when a small package arrived in the mail with a Burpee Seed Company return address on it.  Yes, the first of the seeds!  Here we are planning to fill the garden yet again while the ground sleeps deeply.

Finally I can truly sign off,

Stay Warm!

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows

A Six Arrows Farm Update

The Lenz family never stays in one mode of action long enough to be stuffed into any kind of box of modern identification.  Just when you have us comfortably settled into the musical family mold, we pop out with a day of chicken processing on the front drive.  As soon as you are sure we can’t be anything but farmers, the tendency to dress up and play at history pokes suspiciously through a cranny. It happens accidentally on purpose.  We can’t be satisfied with the hum-drum of a singular occupation when our sheer numbers alone, not to mention the varied gifts and united purpose of the household, enable the most lively kind of economical enterprise and social development.  The danger is not doing too little, but trying to do too much.

Just as we transition a hundred times a week into entirely different kinds of work, our house morphs nearly as often into drastically varied forms of function.  Today it is a bakery, root-cellar, and sorting/packaging facility.  Tomorrow it will be a rehearsing venue for the Lenz quartet.  Sunday it may throw wide its doors for hospitality and Monday it will turn into a canning facility.

True to custom, the last of the tomatoes are gathered into the house in miscellaneous mounds.  From the first vine-ripened fruit to the last half-green straggler time leaps in a few short weeks.  The transient type of glory stored up in the brilliance of the dazzling red tomato is akin to its season.  Just as the abundant snow of winter melts away as if it had never been, so the fruit of the vine grows, ripens and vanishes again.  Seasons are like that.  They are enduring only because they are always sure to come back, for as long as they are ordained to, with a kind of persistence that savors of the changelessness of their Designer.  Since there are no officially designated tomato storage and sorting rooms in evidence on the farm, we establish the cheeky invaders on the floors of our basement and entry-way, honoring the future situation of a guest’s chair with the present habitation of a profuse harvest.

I can admit freely that picking your way from the front door to the stairs over boxes and buckets of tomatoes in various stages of ripening and decay is less than convenient.  And to be quite frank, stumbling blindly over them in the dark of night on the way to the kitchen for a drink is positively dangerous, especially to the toes.  In consequence, Ben, with substantial assistance from his brothers, is digging a 10x12 root cellar into one of our hillsides.  It is our sincere desire to avoid stubbed toes and mad rushes to clear the mountains of produce for visitors in future.  How successful the attempt will be remains to be seen.  We tend to be creatures of habit and, regrettably, often fly in the face of expedience with the traditional modus operandi when it comes to gardening.

The chill air is laden with one of my favorite scents today: fresh-cut hay.  Some neighboring farmer, compliant with ageless necessity, cut off his rich emerald crop and laid it in windrows on the shorn earth for the sun to turn to gold.  Wherever I am when I taste that ripe sweetness of mown alfalfa in the wind, I come home in my heart.  Here to the daily sameness and constant change, the relentless energy, the lasting rest, the old familiar and new every sunrise little taste of heaven.

When we aren’t digging in the dirt with our hands, our family loves delving into history with our minds.  Sometimes we do both at once…don’t ask me how, but the most engaging discussions usually take place during the more simple occasions in our lives.   Yesterday in particular, Aubrey and I were puzzling over the number of yards required for an 1860’s petticoat while strong-arming ambitious weeds out from between the tomato cages.  The deliberation was not in vain, since we decided on the correct yardage and “saved,” as you might call it, some fifty aspiring tomato plants. 

As if the garden and farm were not quite enough for a summer, the eight of us recently dove heart and soul into reenacting what many call the Civil War.  Thus while we are up to our elbows in the myriad colors and tastes and smells of high summer out of doors, we are up to our knees in the living room with scissors and pins and bits of bright thread and scraps of muslin "Too narrow breadths for nought--except waistcoats for mice," as Miss Potter’s Tailor of Gloucester said. (Unfortunately, we have no mouse-friends to do midnight miracles and save us the trouble of pricked fingers and aching necks as the aforementioned tailor did.)  And amid the feathery arms of carrot tops and out from between the ranks of onions, old battle songs and rallying tunes ring across the field like echoes from tongues long-silent.

The farmer’s market stand, in the meantime, blossoms into full splendor.  If one didn’t know how little of the beauty is truly beholden to one’s own effort one might be in danger of growing remarkably proud.  Setting out the most brilliant displays of produce is a privilege for those who are not afraid to break their finger-nails and scrub the ever-loving dirt out off their hands and feet, but he who is most familiar with the soil knows full well just how much he relies on his Maker for the increase.

I speak of dirt often, when I write about the garden, mostly because I think it is inescapable.  Yet there are also things there that cannot be described well because of their beauty, nor experienced any other place.  The sublimity and grandeur of even the Grand Canyon or a broad range of mountains is frankly hard-put to be more sublime than the scenes that occur in a garden.  There in our garden I stand often on a day-brink, at the top of our path through still-dusky, sleepy woods, my feet in a misty green sea of dewy grass and my eyes blinded by the million morning suns sparkling in our apple trees, dripping and shedding diamonds. 

There, if you linger till late, the sun will bid the day adieu with a glory of blazing smiles and, sweeping up the clouds with his train, send back a final fiery flash before withdrawing behind his counterpane.  Where but in a garden can you watch the bee at his business in his velvet suit; stuffing his pockets with dusty gold from the heart of the rose?  Where but in a garden can you walk down emerald halls under an azure arch and eat freely on every side a feast of heaven’s own making? Each of us is given good gifts every day so that, surrounded as we are by the dirt we so often stir up for ourselves, we remain unable to forget the goodness of God.
Craig, Karen and the Six Arrows

Blood Root, a kind of Wood Anemone, (thus named due to the “blood” that runs out of the red roots, or “rhizomes” when they are broken) is the first plant that blooms in spring here. I don’t truly admit of the possibility of spring until the flower’s tender thumbs poke up across the forest floor. The bright little buds relieve the dull brown of the spring ground like stars on a velvety dark night and the absolute purity and delicate nature of the remarkable blossoms is a glorious pronouncement of spring. As far as I’m concerned…it is now official!

I heartlessly pruned the raspberries last night, chopping away with a large clipper until my sore hands could no longer grip the handles. The work evoked memories of past springs...

I can still see Daddy pruning his trees and shrubs while my siblings and I, curious and adoring lads and lassies, bobbed around his knees, mildly solicitous for the welfare of the “poor plants.” After all, the trees bud so busily in spring, and he was cutting off all their hard work with remorseless brevity.

The first year I was entrusted with the task of trimming our rose bushes, I “executed” the job with a few cautious snips and a guilty feeling akin to that of…well…an executioner. When Daddy checked my work, he was kind, but told me I had failed to accomplish the necessary pruning. I have to admit to my shame that I protested a bit at first. Those bushes had sprouted up and out marvelously and it seemed a shame to cut back the tender green shoots.

My feelings in the matter have revolutionized dramatically, but I believe watching my characteristically tender and loving father trim with care and resolution year after year gave me a new understanding of love as well as the nature of plant growth. Experience taught me that the pruning of growth is a inexorable prerequisite to the bearing of fruit. Season after season showed me the abundance that comes out of healthy plants cut back and branched out.

In fact it is the expectation of fruit proves the love of the gardener for his plants even while he cuts back what seems to be good; because he prunes to make way for what is better. This understanding has brought a kind of joy and satisfaction to the task of pruning that supplants the naive hesitating cringe I used to harbor at every snip. Love knows when to gently cut away what is temporary so that what is lasting may be gained with patience.

So we cut back and train up and plant down and water in with faith and expectation…that the Lord of the Harvest will bring forth the bounty of His choosing in His good time.

Potatoes and Peas, Beans, Beets and Radish seeds are planted, with nothing as yet to mark their final resting place but trim rows of dirt and rugged stakes. Broccoli and Cabbage, frosty of leaf and sturdy in stature are set in neat squares, and feathery Onions march in regiments down the length of the garden. And chicks peep merrily from 207 throats and convulse any watchers with their clumsy antics. Our dear friend Gracie seemed to bring out the best in them!

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows

Cabbage and Broccoli and Peppers....

Sam commented in the midst of meticulously placing hundreds of seeds one by one in their cells that this job can be fearfully tedious. Conversation is limited because of the necessary precision and thought required in such labor.  But the reward of seeing little green shoots poke their heads out of the soil like vibrant green spires is ten times worth the effort! To see living, growing plants full of potential where before there was nothing is deliciously exhilerating! :o)

All we have left to plant now are tomatoes!... and various and other sundry things too numerous to mention.

Six Arrows Farm Presents at the Athlete Lab

Last Friday, two thirds of The Six Arrows gave a presentation about Six Arrows Farm at The Athlete Lab, Kate Klaers’ gym in the Twin Cities. We would like to extend an especial thank you to Kate Klaers for inviting us to her gym! Kate has invested in her clients, we can see they are truly her friends and she has a passion for healthy and responsible living.

The message at the gym that evening was healthy food. Our part was to present our farm story. We really enjoyed revisiting the path God has taken us and reviewing our methods in providing food to our customers and our family. By His grace, we are thankful for the wisdom we have received from others who are good stewards of the land and animals.

A few slides from our presentation...

1998...

The Lenz Men at Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm in Virginia in 2003... 

The Hens and their Eggmobile...

Pigaerator Pork...

 After our farm presentation, Kate showed the film, FRESH. We couldn’t have planned it better, the movie featured Joel Salatin, the farmer the Lenz “boys” visited in 2003, to learn about raising poultry, hogs, and cattle. Joel Salatin is a farmer practicing sustainable agriculture, who understands his responsibility as steward of the earth including “respecting the ‘pigness’ of the pig, the ‘chickeness’ of the chicken, the ‘cowness’ of the cow and the ‘tomatoness’ of the tomato”! :o) We have personally learned and benefitted so much from Mr. Salatin; he has developed so many wise and practical methods that are very helpful for farmers trying to practice alternate and sustainable farming. On the flip side, the film also interviewed farmers who know first-hand the regrettable state of the current poultry, cattle, hog and crop industries. Industrialized agriculture has had consequences we’re sure farmer’s didn’t imagine. The film discussed farmers who are producing antibiotic-resistant bacteria through over-medicating their animals. When animals are placed in huge factory farms, they must use chemicals and antibiotics to keep the animals alive! When farmers use antibiotics as a means of disease prevention rather than treatment, the danger of promoting mutant, antibiotic-resistant bacteria is almost inevitable. Also, when land produces one crop, repeated over many years, this can be a proponent to problems, like the development of the soybean aphids infestation. There seemed to be an especial focus on raising pigs that we particularly enjoyed. :o) Much of what was communicated we know to be very true. However, as with most films, we have a little disclaimer…not every view portrayed by the film can be endorsed by Six Arrows Farm.

Once again, a big thank you to Kate Klaers for hosting us and all our gracious listeners! Now we are really excited for Spring!