Justice Family Update/Photo Dump – January 2022

What we’ve been up to this year

Well, it didn’t seem like a lot until I tried to summarize it all a few weeks ago. Words escaped me and time as well with the holidays come and gone. Welcome, New Year. Below are some of the pictures that highlight our past year. There are so many awesome things that are not included – like our connections at church and in the city of Richland or Bethany’s work as a nurse or all the fun times with our extended families. Really, what is highlighted is the vision we moved to Richland for: To be more connected with what is Real.

One of our big goals for 2021 was to raise our first garden. We did that. And learned SO much along the way. A few highlights: 1) Always grateful for kind neighbors and generosity. So much knowledge and time was shared to help make our garden a success by others around us. Thank you!

2) We love getting our hands dirty. Well, I do. Emytt not so much. But he loved playing in the dirt as long as he had a shovel or hoe. Caring for living things takes a lot of work. And as you can see our garden grew grass as well as produce!

3) We love caring for living things – soil and plants included. It has brought us to life, rooted us in tangible rhythms and seasons, and given us a deep appreciation for the mystery of life, growth, fruitfulness, death. As we live in a more sustainable, whole, and healthy way we are excited to keep growing our own food. And perhaps share some with you one day! 4) There are a lot of shortcuts, but if you are pursuing health at all costs (not profit or yield at all costs) then you do whatever it takes to preserve and nurture health. I am talking about a garden and I am talking about life.

As I said above, we love caring for living creatures. This has put us in touch with the mystery of life, responsibility, and the amount of work, energy, and potential health that can be found in raising our own food. We currently have two calves fattening up for the butcher and three pigs. All of these are on a (mostly) organic diet. The pigs in our garden spot are “contributing” to next year’s growth. I am toying with the idea of butchering one of the pigs myself…we’ll see.

We also had the great gift of a few cats and a beautiful dog, Ellie. Thank you to the generous family who gave her to us! These animals have provided countless hours of company, fun, and play.

Emytt is excited to butcher the calves so we can have more hamburger. It is a harsh reality to be in touch with death, but I find this a better option than complete ignorance around what we eat. I know there are some who would rather just eat veggies. I am a big fan of those. But for where we live, cattle are also one of the best ways to care for most of the land. (Much of it is too hilly to be plowed for crops and need perennial cover to keep and nurture the soil.)

The pigs (Bacon, Pork Chop, and Sausage) have been a fun experiment for me. I grew up on a cattle farm and feel like I know a lot about cows, so that was old hat to me. Bethany had fun bottle feeding Clark, the calf, and Emytt enjoyed shoveling manure (Lord, please continue this). The pigs on the other hand, were all new. They are tough, eat literally anything, and eat way more than I calculated. As we pile all of our food scrap (especially from processing garden food) we are constantly amazed how much food we regularly throw away. And how much lighter our trash is now that we have pigs. Now our waste is going to feed our animals and nurture the life of the soil. Thank you poop.

We welcomed our daughter into the world in April. We have been witness to her growth this year and already see some of her namesake coming through – tough, resilient, beautiful, persistent. Our hearts have grown and flourished as we welcomed a new person full of love and beauty to our family. She is a garden girl, spending lots of hours out there as we harvested and processed. She is loud, loves Emytt, expresses all her joy and “upsetness”, and makes us all smile often. My 40 tomato plants did great this year except for a few bouts with Tomato Hornworms. Sweet potatoes have been one of our favorite and surprising harvests. Best sweet potatoes ever. We are excited to see how our lives and certainly our second garden grow in 2022.

Emytt learned how to fish and caught his first one by himself this year. I caught a few good bass and loved any chance I could get on the water. Emytt loved being on the kayak too! We try to get outside as much as we can (boo Winter) and engage with the real world. We live super close to a number of awesome river spots! We also went gigging for suckers a few weeks ago, which Emytt thought was cool and Bethany actually liked. If you don’t know what gigging is, it is a very traditional Ozark sport where you spear bottom feeder fish. This is one of just a few I got. I am way out of practice.

We moved Clark (the calf) to a neighbor’s pasture (thank you!) for him to finish growing out with more access to grass. I harvested a few deer this year and used a lot of ammunition to do it (again, out of practice). This is one I got near Richland and butchered in the church garage… Emytt loves deer meat, but was a little bored by all the work it took to process a deer. We also have a wood furnace, which we are putting to good use this winter. I LOVE cutting wood and Emytt usually loves to help.

Lots of fun with lots of food! We were able to can and preserve our first food ever. It wasn’t enough for a whole winter, but we will get there!

I won’t show you a picture of our house during our two bouts of COVID. This is us with some glut of incredible food our church family brought during our first bout with COVID. Emytt had a great time eating all the food. I enjoyed doing house projects and Bethany (who was sick and pregnant) slept.

This was my COVID project for Ivy’s room. Used some shiplap and old pallet wood. It was fun!

We enjoyed some super fun holidays this year. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. We are grateful for all the kindness, generosity and support so many have given us this year. 2021 has been surprising. Full of joy, new life, and certainly it’s share of hardship and continuing to discern what God is up to in our lives and those around us.

But it has been enough this year to be content with what feels somewhat small yet meaningful. Welcoming a new life to this world. Processing more and more who God is asking us to be. Leaning into healing and restorative rhythms with our garden, animals, and food.

We are still seeking in our own way to be connected to Reality and live a deep, full human life. Increasingly, this is leading us to be connected to our sources of life in the world all around us – land, soil, animals, food, and a community of people that value caring for these gifts of God too. As you enter a new year, may God bless you. May He give you discernment for your future, may the restlessness you feel find deep rest in God as you say yes to him and his leading. May you know the difference between settling for status quo and cultivating a deep contentment in the midst of ordinary life. May God give you a dream that makes you come alive and may you courageously pursue him and that dream every day. Even if it leads you back to your roots, back to the dirt. At least, that is my prayer for myself, my spouse, my children, for my church.

As Wendell Berry says, “Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed. Connection is health. And what our society does its best to disguise from us is how ordinary, how commonly attainable, health is. We lose our health—and create profitable diseases and dependences—by failing to see the direct connections between living and eating, eating and working, working and loving.” Connection is health and 2021 has been a year of deeper connection. For that, we are grateful.