Jeremy:
So should every family team grow their own food? One of the things that Jeff and I want to talk to you guys about is that it doesn’t mean that necessarily should grow all your own food but I really think that there is something special and I think almost universal about getting in the dirt and growing something and that really helps the family team.

There’s a couple of biblical references to this. Obviously when our story began in a garden and it ends in a garden city. One of the things that consistently is said throughout the Bible is that when it describes the millennial kingdom or times of great peace and prosperity in Israel, it has this line and it’s used multiple times in the old Testament, it says that, “Every man was under his own fig tree and under his own vine.” It said that about the time of Solomon, the prophets say that about a future. Really, when it’s talking about kind of a glorious future for the Kingdom of God, it really describes people growing their own food.

It’s like a lot of times we think about the streets of gold or just a packed urban environment but I don’t think that’s ever really the picture in the Bible. It’s really a garden that is primarily described, in that even when we’re brought into an urban environment that’s more of a city, it’s a garden city. Every time it’s described, every family has their own fig tree, their own vine. We don’t know exactly how all that’s going to work, but it’s really, really important to think about that there’s something that it does to our spirit. Something that growing your food and experiencing that as a family, there’s something kind of broken about the modern spirit and Jeff I wanted you to maybe tease that a little bit.

Jeff:
Yeah, totally. I’ve tried to, been teasing this out or think about this too, of kind of like these families are either like factories or they’re like farms. In factories, kind of just have these conveyor belts that push you down a line, when farms are circular in nature. Everything comes back around to serve the next thing. They’re more like the circle of life; Lion King vibes, when a factory is the opposite. Factory is like a line that just pushes things out but it never reconnects to the beginning.

Gardening is just a really good kind of small act of resistance to do that and kind of remain in that spirit and just remind yourself of truth, et cetera and then I think there’s just so many multi complex layers, especially with toddlers, by the way, which we have. To me, it’s really difficult actually. One of the biggest challenges I think with toddlers is to think of things you can, kind of little, small ways you can do projects together, on mission, that’s like appropriate for everyone and everyone can kind of put their hand in and all that. Gardening is literally one of the only things and the best thing. Just like, you can all do it, it’s easy for all skill levels, it’s rewarding for all skill levels, it’s very easy to like teach at an elementary level. You just go on and on and then also use it and feed it and talk about, like there’s so many layers.

Talking about your table and the food and growing your own food and where does food come from and how do we work together and why is it takes so long? There’s like spiritual analogies, forever with gardening.

So I think, yeah, I think that’s a really, really helpful one and a huge one. Just start something small. Start a little herb garden. Go to Home Depot, spend 15 bucks, get some soil, get those 60, 70 cents little pre grown starter things and move on and go from there. I think it’s a really, really awesome…