Monthly Update September 2024
Tomorrow Andreas Hempel is throwing a party. He has been at Hillfoot Farm near Chapel Row for forty years now, arriving from Germany with his family to manage the land and livestock. He was immediately central in the farming community. With his German Class forage harvester and combine and Mercedes tractor he organised us to work together. And he was the key man, whether planting maize, foraging grass for silage, harvesting corn, cutting maize, and then on to trimming our hedges. We loved working with him, stored a lot of his grain and supplied him with an extra tractor and my best man Turbo when necessary. At the end of the season it usually worked out that the work he had done for us equalled what we had done for him.
He wasn’t averse to trying new crops: lupins for protein, rye for Ryvita. Next he ditched his cattle for a bio digester. He used to fatten 300 head each year but now supplies 360 households with electricity. The bio digester uses the same amount of food as the cattle did, and produces methane to power a stationary engine which generates the electricity. And always, in spite of difficulties and setbacks, he is a tremendous man of warmth and courage and perseverance.
Perseverance is an important quality of being a farmer. You have to be available 24/7 for the animals and land and in tune with the seasons. The Gospel writer Luke talks about it in the parable of the sower. The story is well known. A sower goes out and hand sows seed, as they did here at Rushall Farm as recently as the last century. The seed represents God speaking into our lives. Some lands on the path and the birds eat it up, some on stony ground. This germinates, but soon runs out of water and shrivels up. Some is planted among weeds which choke it BUT Jesus explains that the seed planted on good soil stands for those “with a noble and good heart who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.”
Harvest has again happened, as a result of the perseverance of Andreas and many in the farming community. Is it time to stop and thank God for the abundance of food, peace and security that we have living here? Join us in our churches this Harvest Sunday to celebrate God’s amazing goodness and kindness to us.
John Bishop