Hi,
Went out today and loaded a couple wheelbarrows of composted manure and transported it 300 yards uphill to my mini garden bed. There's got to be a better arrangement for the cows in relation to the garden (think permaculture, here...)!
This small garden plot is one I've kept up with minimal labor over the past four years. I'm using Steve Solomon's technique; one wheelbarrow, one spade, one rake, and one hoe. By spacing plants apart more than normal, there's less need for supplemental water. There have been good to excellent yields each year so far, and I haven't watered once! I aim to keep it up as long as I can.
As I'm in the small little garden patch, its easy to think its tiny and insignificant compared to what could be done on a large scale. That's true, but I find I enjoy doing it for other reasons. It's not so much the harvest I care about, it's the experience of seeing the union of heaven and earth at work.
What I mean, is that by the fact of Jesus victory over sin, the earth and the elect of man which were alienated from God at the fall, are brought back into harmony by the redemption of Christ. The soil and plants are allowed to continue to bear fruit for man because God looks upon the earth through the work of Jesus and sees it cleansed from the effects of sin. Jesus has bought it all back from the curse, and though it now "groans and travails," it is (like we are) waiting expectantly for the renewal of the heavens and the earth at the end of time.
It's kind of funny then, the more I spend time in the garden the more I enjoy gardening as a philosophical and theological meditation period. :)
Peter