Keeping Body and Soul on Speaking Terms

I’m reading Christy by Catherine Marshall.  My teenage daughters will read it later this year for their homeschooling.   It is set in 1912 when a young woman goes to teach at a mission school in Appalachia.  When she arrives a kind woman feeds her and afterward asks,  “have you eaten well enough to keep body and soul on speaking terms?” 

What a potent question.  It makes me ask myself the same thing.  Have I eaten well enough to keep body and soul on speaking terms?  I think that actually they've maintained a polite distance for most of my life and are just beginning to get reacquainted.

I've already noticed that food tastes different when I cook it.  Perhaps it's because I pay attention in a different way, wondering if I would change the recipe the next time.  Eating food that we have raised has taken on a similar quality.  There is a depth to the experience beyond flavor and texture and chemical calories.  Every time I eat our own food, part of me is thinking, "I did it!"   I marvel at the way I contributed to its production and at the same time am in awe of God’s creative power.

A month ago I tried to plant lettuce for a fall crop but it was too hot and few of the seeds germinated (the weeds did fine).  So I started some in the basement under lights.  Today I put them in the garden for their final month of growth. 

When I went out, I discovered that God had a similar idea.  A plant I had let go to seed had fallen over and under its head was a forest of little lettuce plants.

Today we spin another rotation on a cycle of the land.  Chickens need lots of calcium for all that egg laying.  We can buy crushed oyster shells, but that can get pricey over time.  Instead, we save our egg shells, toast them in the oven, crush them, and give them back to the chickens.  We could probably give them the shells straight, but I don’t want them looking at their freshly laid eggs with hunger.  I’m told that happens sometimes.  So we toast and crush (and still occasionally buy oyster shells).

toasting egg shells

ground egg shells
Now I just need to find a little girl to take it out to the chickens.

Tonight at 3am is the fall equinox and with it comes the official beginning of fall. We will celebrate this mid-point in God's seasonal design with strawberry rhubarb pie and ice cream (homemade and mostly homegrown, of course).