Little Farm Miracle

Well, I hope I can do this story justice. I've been meaning to write it for several days now. As you know, we are doing a shared garden with our neighbors. Once we really started looking at the amount of space we had, and measured out the beds, we realized we have a huge plot! I invited another family to participate with us - officially making this a community garden. I could not be happier at how this is turning out. I feel so pleased deep in my heart that we will all come together and grow food - 3 families, many children, much experience, good company.

The only cloud on the horizon was the neighbor directly to the north of the garden space. I had overheard that he was not happy about us doing a garden so close to his property (in fairness to him - he has enjoyed virtual open space for years, with no activity near his property line.) This made me feel uncomfortable. I have never met this neighbor (or his family) and didn't want to intrude on his space, nor did I want the enjoyment of my garden curtailed by an unfriendly neighbor resenting my presence. What to do?

This past Sunday, we met with the third family to show them the plot and discuss details. I met Eric on the path and he explained that Jill would be joining us shortly, she was just feeding their friends' chickens, close to where our garden is. I asked him where exactly this house was, and guess what? It's the house right next to our garden, with the guy that didn't want us to have the garden! It turns out that they are very close to this family - they even home school their daughters together.

Do you ever get glimpses of fate working? Like sometimes we are so close to the tapestry of our life that we can only see the messy strings, but sometimes, in moments of divine grace, we can see the front of the tapestry and see the beautiful picture of our life, and it makes sense in a deep, internal, knowing way? Well, this felt like one of these moments unfolding. All of a sudden, it made more than perfect sense that we had asked Eric and Jill to share the garden with us, and it was perfect that they were good friends with this man who had grumbled about our garden, and just wait until you read what happened next!

So I shared with our new gardening partners that their friend was not happy about the garden and asked them to serve as "ambassadors" to smooth the way. They both assured me that he would get over it and not to worry about it, but I was still nervous. There we all were, congregating in the garden space, in plain view of the house, and out came the man, just back from his vacation. I was so nervous! He walked over to the fence and said hello to all of us. Then he went on to admit that he wasn't too happy about idea of our garden. I was so glad that he came out and named the "elephant in the room." We all let him speak his mind and really, it turned out that he was afraid that we weren't going to actually follow through and that he would just be looking at an unfinished project - an eyesore. I assured him that our garden would be a thing of supreme beauty for him to look at and that we would respect his family's privacy.

The more we all talked, the softer he got. He even said "I came out here thinking, you know, I could be against this garden, or this could be an opportunity for me to meet my neighbors." And we told him we were so glad he had. By the end of the meeting, he was offering his sand box and trampoline for our kids to play in, saying "the kids might need something to do if you're out here gardening" and he picked Sophie up to help her over the fence so she could look at his chickens. And the best part of all was when he leaned in close, with a smile on his face and said: "Let's do this...the next time you guys are going to have a big gardening day, let me know and I'll make a big pot of french-pressed coffee, and we'll make an occasion out of it."

Andy and I walked away full of joy and gratitude that our encounter had gone the way it had. Andy had tears in his eyes. I know this sounds corny, but I felt like our little garden was already bearing fruit (love) and we haven't even started planting!!! Yea.