The Gift Farm Garden grows, gives, and teaches 

The Rev. Canon Anne Privett introduced our readers to the Gift Farm Garden last year. Here is her May 2024 update.

Jesus said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:15)

A blessed Ascensiontide to all!

We so rarely hear Mark’s version of the Ascension where Christ tells his disciples: “Go and preach the gospel to all of creation.” The Greek is te ktisei – that which is created – and various English translations render Mark 16:15 as: all creation, the whole creation, every creature. We are called to share the Gospel with all creation, with every created thing.

Last time I wrote we had just been asked to care for 2,000 feet of berries at The Gift Farm-Garden (Kelowna, BC, Canada). The Gift Farm-Garden was born during Covid when St. Andrew’s Anglican Church realized that amid all the pandemic restrictions they could, and must, make one choice: keep choosing God’s Kingdom. Having put the Kingdom at the centre of everything, the parish discerned its way into new mission goals and a whole new parish structure.

As the soil of our common life was being renewed, we were gifted with the use of land, water and the vocational expertise of two newly retired organic farmers who moved to Kelowna in the middle of the pandemic. The Gift Farm-Garden began at Easter 2021 to gift organic food to anyone living in food insecurity in our city.  More than we could ever ask or imagine….

The berry harvest came so abundantly that we couldn’t keep up with the harvests and the birds feasted as much as we did. Horrific fires hit last summer (2023) and while much of the City evacuated we stayed, harvesting food in our N95 masks for our unhoused neighbours who did not have the luxury of driving away from the flames. Over one tonne of food was gifted in 2023.

When we returned to Farm-Garden this spring we were not only gifted with the use of more land but we also discovered that the earth we had been tending for the last three  years was full of worms!! After three years of amending the soil and growing organically it is truly good soil. And after three years of learning how to exist in relationship with all of creation as gift, we as a faith community are also becoming good soil!

Over these last three years it has been eye-opening to realize how deeply formed we are by Western capitalism and how much re-formation it takes to begin to live from a place of gift, or from “the gift economy.” Proclaiming the Good News to all of creation, we have learned, is to be in relationship with all living things as gift. Proclaiming the Good News is to treat all of creation, each other, and ourselves as gift, grounded in the ultimate gift of God in Christ Jesus. In this place of mutual gift the land is cultivating us just as much as we are cultivating the land.

With the worms came the request from a local middle school to partner with the farm as part of their educational enrichment courses. Wonderful Wednesdays are now in full swing and students of all abilities come to the farm to learn and to work. We also received a request form the Vancouver School of theology to offer an on-site course this summer with a guest lecture by Norman Wirzba author of (most recently) Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land. It is time to start sharing what the Spirit is teaching us about proclaiming the good news to all creation. It is humbling and it is marvelous. From seed to cupboard, all is gift.

Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation.

Please consider joining Anne, VST staff, and special guest Dr. Norman Wirzba this summer in Kelowna. Highly Recommended KJG