About a month and a half ago I was in the middle of our corn field doing a happy dance. The corn was taller than me and looking so strong! All our hard work had paid off and the corn was growing taller and faster than we had hoped. The following day we show up to the farm and a great amount of the corn had fallen over! I was devastated! The previous night there was a huge storm. The rain flattened out the mounds that the corn root buried itself into and with no foundation; all 7 feet of the corn had fallen over. Also there were some casualties just because the wind was so strong as well. Upon seeing the damage that was done I knew that we needed to fix the problem. So I cancelled planting beans and tending to our other farm in order to keep this corn alive. We went through each row and created stronger rows and mounded them up. We went in the jungle and cut down 10 foot long sticks to dig in next to each plant and we tied the corn to the stick so it could stand up straight. This process took 3 days to accomplish.
The students were so excited that the corn stood taller than me!
Hser Nay Paw and Hser Nay Say harvest our 3rd batch of corn. 60 kilos!
During those 3 days I had many different thoughts. I was upset that we had to do this extra work but I was also mad at myself because I had looked at the corn a few days before the storm and noticed some of the corn’s root out of the bed it lay in. I saw that some were flimsy and needed a stick to support it if it was going to get any taller. Instead I figured we could do it another day. I kept putting corn maintenance on the back burner. After I was done with the frustration stage I began to think of the spiritual lessons I am learning as I work on this farm. The day of my happy dance I was amazed at how strong the corn looked and glad at how tall it was getting. It looked great on the outside and we were happy. I felt content even though I saw that the foundation needed help. It looked strong so I thought that it didn’t need any help or encouragement. How wrong I was. Just like in my life, I can fool myself into thinking that I am living a godly life and the way that he wants it. I can pretend to be strong and grounded in His faith, but in reality I know that I have a lot to work on. We all do. We can look so great and godly and strong on the outside but God doesn’t care about that at all! When we see a slight character flaw in us, we aren’t supposed to ignore it for another day! We need to fix it right away or else we are not only going to fail in that part of our life but that character flaw will bring other positive things in our life way way down. When one weakness continues to hinder us, we will see more and more weaknesses creep up and creep up fast! At that point we don’t have one thing to work on, we have a huge web of weaknesses, trials, character flaws and hardships coming our way all because we decided that since we looked pretty righteous on the outside, bettering ourself wasn’t a top priority.
The corn now stands up to 12 feet high!
I am happy to say that today we have harvested our corn 3 times already. The biggest harvest so far was 57 kilos! As we are harvesting we can’t see each other because the corn is so tall and thick. I would say they range from 8-12 feet tall which is great since we were estimating them only growing to about 6 feet! Thankfully we all love corn and are enjoying corn in a lot of meals and corn on the cob late night snacks. All our other crops are doing very well. We have sweet potato, long bean, bush bean, winged bean, cucumbers, squash and watermelon that are truly thriving. We have tons of other plants and veggies that are doing very well too.
Everyone working hard at the “Old Garden,” clearing a path for more rows
Managing to have fun on the farm too!
It is just so amazing how much faith you need to put in God, that He will provide rain, good soil and nutrients and protection. Without all of that, the farm would fail. The land Sabbath begins for our land when the sun goes down for the Feast of Trumpets. That’s tomorrow! We have been doing a lot of extra work on the farm and making sure all of our crops are strong and healthy before we put the farm completely in God’s hands. It will be up to God’s amazing protection and I pray that myself, the other Ajaans’ and the students remain faithful and trust that He will let our crops produce within the next year’s rest! God is good and has delivered so much to us here already! I had no idea we would be harvesting cucumbers everyday! I didn’t know that the corn would produce that much! I didn’t even think that the watermelon would be able to successfully grow here. We are being blessed by God with our farm work and it makes me so entirely happy.
Happy Feast,
Ajaan Lacee Hilgen
Note: Lacee is a volunteer teacher at Legacy Foundation Leadership Training Project in Chiang Mai, Thailand. She is the organic gardening teacher even though she has had little experience as a gardener. But she does have a green thumb and loves to garden. We all love Lacee’s positive can-do attitude.
T. Leon Sexton
