The following is a part of my “Rural Insights: Reflections from Pastor Randall” page in our church newsletter. Hope you enjoy
Benson, IL is similar to Freeman, SD. Farm ground had been carved into big mile by mile squares with random fence posts marking property lines. What marked one person’s land from another in my lifetime was if they planted the opposite crop to their neighbor (meaning one planted corn and the other planted soybeans) or if one of the neighboring farmers did not use auto-guidance to outline his or her field (meaning one set of rows on the property line would be perfectly straight while the neighbors’ rows would weave and bob in and out of the property line because the neighbor had planted by hand so to speak).
In the past, barbed wire fences marked off land with different owners, but most of the farmers around me growing up had gotten out of cattle at pasture and put them in a lot on the home place if they still had cattle. Almost all of the local farmers around my hometown are strictly grain or crop farmers now, but they have no problem telling stories of the years back in the day when they had plenty to do tending to their cattle, hogs, or chickens and farming the family ground. Farming has changed a lot just in my lifetime, even more in my Dad’s lifetime, and some might say drastically for my grandparents’ generation. With this change comes the challenge of embracing what is life-giving and fruitful and allowing the rest of “progress” to wither out and die.
I hope you are not reading this, thinking that I am saying that we need to toss out the old and bring in the new and “exciting.” As a younger person in the church, I look to those in our Hutterthal Community to speak their wisdom and discernment openly because my short time has looked so different and yet might be quite similar to the experiences of those who have gone before me. The decisions that we are making as young people are not new, nor are they unknown to our elders. We must trust that we are all in this together, and as we listen to each other, God will help us to discern how we take into account the present and the past and, then, walk boldly into the future joining God in her Kingdom work.
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