The Faith of a Farmer

Farmers have a unique connection to the land.

It takes a lot of faith to be a farmer.

Today I’m writing about farmers, God, and the place of faith on the farm.

It was a gutsy thing to post a whole blogpost on something like this. I worried people would dismiss it as preachy.

I assure you I’m not trying to preach.

But after spending 10 years with my husband, I feel like I can’t help but bring it up. It’s such an important element to what goes on out here. It’s a source of tension, direction, and hope every waking day.

And I don’t think the average person knows it.

First, a little background.

Many people don’t know that my first “calling” in life after college was actually into the ministry. I worked for 12 years in three different Lutheran congregations, serving as a youth minister. I even spent 2 years in seminary.

So you might think that I knew a thing or two about “faith.”

I preached about faith. I guided students to grow in their faith. I wrote curriculum about faith. I sang songs with my guitar about faith. I prayed with people for faith.

I’d even venture to say that I was “faithful.”

But man. It wasn’t until I lived the world of farming that I began to live my “faith” on a whole other level.

See farmers use their faith every day in ways that I think would make the average person uncomfortable.

Can I be honest? When my husband Kurt first suggested that he leave his full-time day job at ADM to become a full-time farmer, I was skeptical.

I mean, I wanted to support him and be a good wife. But it was WAY out of my comfort zone.

It was more than just the usual “entrepreneurial” anxiety that comes with running your own small business, and having to be responsible for your own paycheck.

It was fear of the unknown. There were so many variables I couldn’t control.

You can’t control Mother Nature.

Which is a problem when you’re a farmer.

Two years ago, the farm received over 3 inches of rain in two days. Something like this happens every year it seems.

I joke about it now, but a “moat” always appears around our house when we get this much rain, and my boys have to construct a land bridge to get to the garage.

Staring at the relentless downpour and the saturated soil that slowly caused the waters to rise, I felt the old familiar anxiety creep into my spirit.

“What will happen to our potatoes? Will they rot?”

“Will the field tile be able to handle this?”

“Our poor carrots!”

My Type-A control-freakism wanted to take over and find a way to solve the problem and bring order to chaos.

But I couldn’t stop the rain.

I couldn’t do anything but wait. And pray.

And trust.

This is the reality of farming. Every day, you wake up and realize your livelihood is utterly beholden to your Maker.

In 2019, we lost over an acre of garlic to the wet-cold winter conditions.

If the flea beetles come and eat your crop, you trust.

If the rains never stop, you bite the bullet, dig everything out, replant, and trust.

If the rains never come, you irrigate what you can, and you trust.

I pray a lot more now to be able to trust.

The year of the big flood, I had a break-down moment on my living room sofa. We had lost a lot of our crops thanks to a 2 week rainy period, and our CSA boxes were going to show it. As I bared my soul with my partner and husband, Farmer Kurt – here’s what he said….

Through it all he remained composed and calm. “Corinna, have faith,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do to change it. It does no good to worry about it.”

“How can you say that?!” I cried. “Are you for real? How does this kind of stuff never get to you?!”

My friends, incredibly, he did feel that way. And incredibly it doesn’t really get to him. (Okay a little bit, but not so bad).

I wish you could have heard his advice to me that day on the sofa.

About how God has always taken care of us. About how things somehow just always work out.

About how growing up as a farm boy, you experience this risk every year of your life.

And every year, you come out the other side. Some kind of resolution comes.

This consistent pattern of “plant, obstacle, resolution” is so constant, that my farmer husband relies on it.

A field of winter squash — one of our best yields — was later significantly destroyed by wet conditions.

He leans into it season after season. And it never fails him.

I have a hunch that other farmers feel this way too.

You might even say that of all the professions, farmers are uniquely positioned from birth to exercise great faith on a daily basis.

And so every day I must wake up and face the reality that I cannot control the circumstances that define my success.

I cannot depend on my own strength.

And boy is that a daily slap in the face to this suburb-girl-turned-farmer’s-wife.

Maybe that’s why so many farmers are also humble. And resourceful.

But as scary as it is to live day-to-day in this risky no-man’s land, it is also thrilling.

I have witnessed some pretty incredible moments of God’s “provision” as a result of leaning into this faith-zone.

Like the time my husband was almost run over by his tractor, and my 4 year old son Jed pulled it out of gear and rescued him from certain death.

Or the time staff member Bartolo’s truck broke down in Atlanta, and our 400 member CSA pulled together to supernaturally rescue his family and bring him home. Or when our other worker Jairo lost the roof of his trailer home down in Florida in a hurricane, and our members raised thousands of dollars to replace it.

Or the season of the great rains, where we lost almost everything in the field, had to replant, and our CSA members stood by us as strong as iron.

Kurt is right. When you’re a farmer, you grow up seeing God’s concentrated presence show up like this on a regular basis…

To the point that you almost count on it.

I know. It sounds crazy.

But it’s real.

It takes a lot of faith to be a farmer.

Maybe some day, I won’t have to work so hard to feel it.