In the beginning, life was lived in relationship to the land and, to this day, the rhythms of farming resonate with readers of the Bible’s Old Testament. In Deerfield, Rabbi Benjamin Weiner works a homestead farm while serving as spiritual leader of the Jewish Community of Amherst (JCA). In East Charlemont, the Rev. Kate Stevens can be found in the flower gardens of Wilder Brook Farm, a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm. Both Weiner and Stevens have discovered that faith and farming go hand in hand.
“Our Bible — particularly, the Torah, the first five books — are not all about agriculture, but (they’re) a lot about agriculture,” said Rabbi Benjamin Weiner of Deerfield. “It’s very much about a rhythm of life that has to do with planting and harvest and anxiety and gratitude. When we get back to the land, we see the extent to which our tradition has to do with living in relationship to the land.”
Weiner, 46, and his wife, Elise Barber, and their son, Efraim, 7, own a 3.2-acre homestead, which Weiner describes as “a property on which we live, where we concentrate on growing food for our own table, as opposed to a farm where we’re growing for market.”
He’s been living his dream since his days as a rabbinical student in Philadelphia. “I began just having a small vegetable garden and it was very satisfying. I discovered I really love growing food and I just kept thinking, ‘How can I do more of this?’
“And then after I graduated Rabbinical School, there was a job available in Amherst in the Pioneer Valley, which I knew to be an agricultural area. The fantasy was, I’d go there, become a rabbi and have a small homestead farm and, lo and behold, I managed to do just that. We moved into this property in the fall of 2011 and have been developing it as a productive piece of land for our needs since then,” he said.
The Weiner-Barber homestead farm raises dairy goats for their milk, cheese and yogurt, and chickens for their eggs. “We don’t eat the animals,” Weiner said. “We just eat their produce; we’re kind of vegetarian-tending.” Their property supports perennial crops like berries and some fruit trees that are just starting to give fruit. A quarter-acre of gardens supply cabbage, broccoli, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squash, onions, garlic and more. What they don’t eat fresh gets canned, frozen and, of course, shared. “We seldom have a meal that doesn’t have at least one or two ingredients that were grown here,” Weiner said.
Weiner admits to a learning curve as a newbie farmer. One of his more successful strategies was to embrace no-till agriculture, “which is about growing things in established beds as opposed to tilling every year,” he explained, noting that “it’s easier on the farmer. You don’t have to begin anew each year.
“I think about three or four years ago, I kind of hit my stride and I’m actually managing to do it while maintaining a full-time job as a spiritual leader.”
Weiner cites the Torah’s mention of a Sabbath. “That’s the biblical notion that every seven years you let your land rest. Every seven days, we have a Sabbath, and there’s the notion that the land also needs a Sabbath — the land also needs rest, such that if you’re constantly working it, it’s going to get exhausted in a way that’s considered unholy and not sacred.
“I incorporate that principle into my understanding of what it means to grow food, which is that you need to be paying attention to that which is sustaining you, and I understand that being very much a Torah principle in regards to agriculture.”
Like Weiner, the Rev. Kate Stevens came to farming from a city background — in her case, inner-city Boston. Stevens and her partner, John Hoffman, moved to Western Massachusetts 25 years ago to start a CSA farm in East Charlemont. “A CSA farm is community supported agriculture,” explained Stevens, “where we grow the food and people join, become members of our farm. We get paid up front so we can afford to buy the seed, and we’ve done that since 1995.
“But I didn’t come here to farm — I’m a minister, I had already served two churches in Boston and I came out here assuming I’d do ministry somewhere. It took me a year and a half before I was called to a church, so I actually came here first doing farming. I love what I do now, but at first, I was trying to take on things, like growing all the lettuce. We were selling the lettuce to stores and one day I remember waking up, going, ‘I hate the lettuce!’ and I realized I wasn’t primarily a farmer, I was a minister.
“And then I got a call from the church in Conway, United Congregational Church. And then I took a few years off, did some other work and then I was called to the Ashfield Congregational Church, where I served for 13 years. And all that time, we were running the CSA; I did the financial stuff and I came to be in charge of the flowers. We have our regular members but we also deliver food to low-income seniors once a week.”
Also like Weiner, Stevens feels a profound spiritual connection to the land.
“I feel like the whole creation story and my place as a two-legged in nature and in the creation is so deeply a part of my faith journey. Partly, that means I care about the environment and I am an environmental activist. But it’s deeper than that. It’s part of my faith — the holiness, the sacredness of the land and the creatures and the four-leggeds and those who fly and those who swim and what grows on the ground and I feel like, when I preach about Moses in front of the burning bush and he says, ‘Take off your shoes, you’re standing on holy ground,’ I sort of feel like I need to take off my shoes — I’m standing on holy ground.”
Stevens finds a parallel between a CSA farm and a congregation. “When I’m serving a church, I have a church family, but I also have a farm family and they’re members, and they come each week and we have potlucks and we get to know them. So in some ways, it’s another church.
“It’s become a family for us that has roots deeply spiritual. It’s not a religious community, but it’s a family that’s full of spirit because we work on the land.”