The Farm

Normally on Wednesday mornings I'm doing one of three things:

1) Sitting in my office doing office-y things (administration, phone calls, emails, sermon prep, studying, etc.).

2) Out on a congregational visit.

3) Traveling to our denominational offices for a meeting.

Wednesdays are busy days, often stretching from early morning hours to late night hours. Like many churches, ours tend to schedule meetings, studies, and gatherings on Wednesday nights, as those nights tend to be lighter on school sports and obligations. Wednesdays are good, rich, full days.

But yesterday was a different sort of Wednesday for me.

Since I started having regular contractions two weeks ago (every 10 minutes for about 12 hours a day... yeah, that is getting old...), I had to take early leave. Rather than waiting for baby's arrival, I stepped back two days before my due date when pregnancy and pastoring became incompatible.

It was getting really hard to keep going. I needed to step back, and thanks to a wonderful, understanding church, I took leave two days before my due date. Our visiting supply pastor has started, and I am in napping, contraction-weathering, baby-waiting mode.

So this Wednesday morning my husband invited me along for his bi-weekly short trip to Angelic Organics Farm in Caledonia, Illinois, where we are CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) shareholders.

When he invited me along, my first reaction was, "No way. I am staying in bed."

But then I thought about it - it was close by, I could nap the rest of the day, and I had been dying to see the farm firsthand.

So I pulled myself together, put on two of the last five pieces of clothing that fit me (I'm now down to two pairs of pants and three shirts, plus my husband's hoodie that I keep stealing... talk about a simplified wardrobe!), and waddled down to the car.

It's the first time I've been out to the farm, and it was truly a delight. Every two weeks my husband picks up a big box of veggies, a medium box of fruit, and two dozen eggs from the farm. He brings them home and fills up our fridge and counter with our produce for the two weeks ahead.

Since we're shareholders, the farm often offers freebies, too, like the free pumpkins they offered this week.

And this time I got to come along, too!

(This is what 41+ weeks pregnant looks like... Yup. Lovin' the yoga pants.)

It was so fun to see where our veggies are grown and our eggs are produced. The farm is in a beautiful spot, and it is full of chickens and goats and tractors and lush green fields.

We bought some local honey at the farm yesterday, too. It's rumored to help a bit with allergies, and because of the hot, dry summer my poor husband has been sneezing himself silly.

It feels good to support a local business like this, and to live a little more closely to the earth. We've been incredibly happy with our produce all summer - the veggies are crisp and fresh, the fruits are some of the sweetest I've ever eaten (the blueberries alone made me call my husband mid-lunch to tell him to go to the fridge right now and try a handful), and the eggs have never let us down.

Our own garden suffered with the drought and our general lack of weeding (bending over got pretty hard for me, and my husband was finishing his dissertation proposal, so we fell behind really fast), so it was great to have Angelic to supplement our modest zucchini, watermelon, tomato, and cucumber harvest.

I love our CSA for another reason, too: It's so fun to get a big box of food every-other week and know that I can eat everything in it. I don't have to worry about any gluten or cross-contamination. It's fresh. All organic. All delicious. All 100% gluten free. All safe for me to eat.

Last night we were so happy with our boxes of food that I mustered some nesting energy and cooked up a pasta dinner with tomatoes, broccoli, fresh basil and cream sauce, and a radish-pear-romaine salad. They were so fresh they tasted like summer's last hurrah.

I cooked for over an hour, pausing to sit and chop veggies when the pregnancy backache or the contractions took over. By the time dinner was done I was sweaty and exhausted, but so, so proud of the meal. My husband came downstairs from his office, took one look at red-faced, sweaty me and said:

"Thanks SO much for dinner. That's the last big meal you cook until baby comes, okay?"

I was more than happy to curl up on the couch and let him serve me dinner. I was also happy to stay there through Survivor and the Top Chef Masters finale.

If I have to be in pregnancy purgatory (which is what being a week and a day overdue certainly feels like!), at least I got to see our lovely farm and eat some delicious food. It was well worth the backache.

Do you support local agriculture? Where do your fruits and veggies come from? Angelic delivers all the way to the Chicago area, so if you live around there or in south-central Wisconsin, you might want to check them out!

And, since it's now only a matter of time until we know for sure, any guesses on if the beh-beh is a boy or a girl?