Photo: A view of the farm run by several families from First Mennonite Church, Bluffton, Ohio. Photo provided. 

This story originally ran in the Central District Conference Reporter. 

Several families, mostly from First Mennonite Church, Bluffton, Ohio, have spent the last 13 years growing their own food together, and, in turn, have grown closer in their relationships with one another, the greater community, the land and God.

Spurred by his longtime interest in gardening and sustainability, Ray Person, along with his wife, Elizabeth Kelly, purchased a 20-acre farm between Bluffton and Pandora in 2002. They joined with a few other families to establish a farm cooperative, together planting, tending, and har¬vesting fruits and vegetables and caring for animals and other aspects of the farm.

This past fall wrapped up the farm’s thirteenth grow¬ing season, with 17 families working on the farm.

The farm includes a large garden with more than 50 varieties of vegetables and a large straw¬berry patch. The farm’s orchard has a variety of fruit and nut trees and plants including rasp¬berries, cherries, pears, grapes, hickory and black walnuts. They also raise goats, sheep, chickens, ducks and pigs. Two dogs and a cat, and a variety of other wildlife wanders the farm, explained Person.

Steve and Monica Harnish, along with their three sons, have been involved with the farm co-op for 10 years.

“Besides the fresh food that the kids have learned to appreciate, we also enjoyed being a part of the farm community,” Monica Harnish said. “It also has saved on our food budget: a benefit when our three boys were all teenagers!”

She added that they have learned farming tech¬niques by being part of the co-op, but also how to use and cook many vegetables they hadn’t really used before, such as turnips, rutabaga, daikon and chard.

In a piece set for publication in a collection out in 2016 —Sustainable Agriculture and the World’s Religious Traditions edited by Todd LeVasseur, Pramod Parajuli, and Norman Wirzba— Person and Mark H. Dixon explain how the farm not only brings the families closer to the production of their food, but embodies a simple lifestyle.

While the families rely too heavily on gas-powered vehicles for farming and transportation, Person ex¬plained, much farm work is done by hand and many of the families often ride their bikes to the farm and back. Between a third and a half of the farm’s elec¬tricity is offset by a hybrid solar/wind system. The farm also uses organic fertilizers, such as manure, blood meal, bone meal and greensand, and encour¬ages the creation of holistic microenvironments that mimic what would otherwise be found in nature.

For example, wrote Person in the article, the “barn not only houses the livestock, but also bats, barn swal¬lows, and for a fifteen month period, a screech owl. The bats and barn swallows are welcomed to reduce the fly, moth and mosquito populations. The screech owl was an important part of rodent control.”

“The farm is a place where friendships have been made and strengthened among the farm families as they work, eat, and play together, but the farm com¬munity extends far beyond its 20 acres,” Person wrote in his chapter. Along with relationships with local vendors and businesses, multiple international friends and visitors have assisted on the farm.

“What we hope we have conveyed is that to live in the fullness of our own being in the world is impos-sible in isolation,” reads Person and Dixon’s chapter closing. “Being is a nexus that encompasses commu¬nities within communities within communities, each with inseparable connections to the others—con¬nections ecological, biological, social, philosophical, theological and spiritual.”