Welcome April
April is a busy month for farmers and our farmers market. April brings all the hope of spring-warmer temperatures, rain, and the desire to plant all the things. In East Texas it can also bring a late frost, snow, hail, damaging winds, tornadoes, and hot temperatures-all of which are no good to the plants. As leafy greens, brassicas, radishes and carrots slowly make their appearance on market tables prayers start going up as summer plants go into the ground. Please let this be a good spring. Everyone knows the #1 draw to a farmers market is—-fresh fruits and vegetables. What is the #1 hardest item to get to a farmers market? Fresh, locally grown fruits and veggies. Weather is unpredictable. Plants get disease. Land has been stripped after long years of poor use. At the end of the day, it becomes easier to sell that land and go buy produce at the grocery store which is almost never local and often not even grown in the US. We settle because farming is hard and only a few people are willing and even fewer are able to truly making a living at it anymore. No one can dispute the fact that there is nothing like that first tomato picked and eaten right off the vine on a warm summer evening. Maybe you have fond memories of eating plums off the tree until you made yourself sick. What about summers spent eating watermelon and having impromptu seed spitting contests with your friends? Those just don’t happen with grocery store produce. We know that and the special breed of person that decides to grow their own food knows that. Which is why in April we pray with the farmers. We buy whatever they bring to the market. We marvel at their photos of plants sprouting in the fields. We pray those sprouts make it. And sometimes, we weep with those farmers when tornadoes take out greenhouses and hail damages entire fields. We listen as farmers tell us about the clever ways they are coming up with to keep predators out of the chicken coop and we rage with them when the predators decimate their chicken populations. We help build fences, gather cardboard, replant crops, and clean up limbs and fallen trees. Farming can be lonely, isolating, and heartbreaking. We thank farmers for not giving up. We pray that they find the strength and community that inspires them to keep going on these tough days when it’s easier to just throw your hands up in the air and go buy food at the grocery store.