Life As Stewardship

I love living in the country for many reasons, but perhaps my greatest joy comes from the opportunity it affords me to give back something to the land.

After the onset of winter last week, the last couple of days have been unseasonably warm.  As the weather inched into the upper 50's, I decided to clean the horse stalls and chicken house.  The scrapings totalled between twelve and fifteen wheelbarrows full of muck and soiled bedding, all of which made a very nice dressing for the raspberry canes.  Today after church, I took the dogs and walked down into the woods to check the game runs.  There was a significant amount of fresh deer sign from last night and early this morning, but pretty much all of the animals had moved on by the time we arrived.  The squirrels seemed well fed on the fall's ample supply of black walnuts, and cuttings littered the ground at several locations.  I re-stacked some brush piles, which should help the rabbits and squirrel to find some relief from the hawks and owls.  While the springs have never recovered from the Corps of Engineers' last "improvement" to the watershed, I was able to get far enough into the wet areas to make some plans for restoration in the coming months.  The recent losses of Ash and Elm trees in our area have cleared up some nice plots where I hope to plant Shag-bark Hickory in late February or early March, just before I plant the first peas and potatoes. 

Husbandry is a lot like the Christian life.  We start with wonderful opportunities fraught with serious limitations, and we apply a combination of love and reason to make something better than what was there when we began.  By God's grace and through many mistakes, improvement is measured in the long term and seldom appears either quickly or easily.  Then at the end of it all, we go on to our reward and leave the legacy to someone else, just as we received it from those who preceded us.  What a blessing it is to know that we make a difference, even if only for a little while.