personal development on Farming

If your vision is for a year, plant wheat. If your vision is for ten years, plant trees. If your vision is for a lifetime, plant people.

The most exemplary nature is that of the topsoil. It is very Christ-like in its passivity and beneficence, and in the penetrating energy that issues out of its peaceableness. It increases by experienc...

Even the richest soil, if left uncultivated will produce the rankest weeds.

We say that Nature rests, yet she is working like mad. She has only shut up shop and pulled the shutters down; but behind them she is unpacking new goods, and the shelves are becoming so full that the...

The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is; and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear tr...

An experienced gardener knows the value of not watering their tomatoes. Well, there's a little more to it, but that's the headline. Suppose you go to the nursery in the spring and get a tom...

One of my favorite sections of Home Depot is the power garden tool department. Even though I have all the tools I need, I still like browsing through Home Depot’s collection of power mowers, chainsaws...

The novel Martin Chuzzlewit , written by Charles Dickens, is one of his least successful works, though Dickens himself commented to a friend that he believed it was his greatest work up to its pu...

The story is told of a farmer in a Midwestern state who had a strong disdain for “religious” things. As he plowed his field on Sunday morning, he would shake his fist at the church people who passed b...

In this excerpt by a Welsh Farmer, Wilf Davies, we hear about someone who finds his routines life-giving, as opposed to soul-sucking. I can’t help but think it has something to do with his occupation,...

The couple in the garden was to multiply, so providing the citizens of the city. Their cultivation of earth's resources as they extended their control over their territorial environment through th...

Gardening, besides being a practical, life-nurturing task, is also always a spiritual activity. In it people attempt to make visible and tasty what is good, beautiful, and even holy. Every act of gard...

[A gardener cultivates soil more than plants.] He lives buried in the ground. He builds his monument in a heap of compost. If he came into the Garden of Eden he would sniff excitedly and say: ‘Good Lo...

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.

Before the reward there must be labor. You plant before you harvest. You sow in tears before you reap joy.

The inordinate desire in the west to increase productivity, to go faster and faster, especially in business, can actually become counterproductive. In this short story from the Chinese philosopher Men...

We are exploring together. We are cultivating a garden together, backs to the sun. The question is a hoe in our hands and we are digging beneath the hard and crusty surface to the rich humus of our li...

An empty-nester friend of mine was recently reflecting on the long days at home with a growing family. “You just gotta keep slinging chow,” she said with a laugh. I laughed too . . . but not quite as ...

What is clear on all accounts is that a garden was an enclosed area designed for cultivation... [so] what we have, then, rather than an image of primitivism, is one of an area that is bounded, probabl...

He who plants kindness gathers love.

Almighty and most merciful Father, giver of every good and perfect gift, we give you thanks for blessing us so richly with your good Word and the holy Sacraments, and supplying so abundantly all our d...

Save my soul, Good Gardener Evil flies in wanting to steal my hope Work piles up, insecure boulders ready to crash, leaving no room to root My faith begins to wither as does our relationship Distract...

In spite of sorrow, loss, and pain, our course be onward still; we sow on Burmah's barren plain, we reap on Zion's hill.

As the gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree into one or two vigorous limbs, so should you stop off your miscellaneous activity and concentrate your force on one or a few points.

We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?

A. Parnell Bailey visited an orange grove where an irrigation pump had broken down. The season was unusually dry and some of the trees were beginning to die for lack of water. The man giving the tour ...

Looking through the lens of Holy Scripture, human work must be seen first and foremost as value contribution, not economic compensation. We can have a flourishing, fruitful life even if we don’t get a...

The earth had been completely unformed and empty; in the six-day process of development God had formed it and filled it—but not completely. People must now carry on the work of development: by being f...

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread; and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. ...

First, God placed humans here on earth to work the land where we are standing. The Hebrew here literally means to “serve” the land, implying that we humans are designed to serve the place where we liv...