We are in the process of preparing a small piece of dirt for our garden. It is by no means big enough to supply our food for a week let alone a year for the two of us. My husband cleared and tilled the plot with a tractor and left me the task of picking out the rocks. I've spent hours picking rocks and tossing them out of a small garden spot in order to till in steer manure and make the rows prepared for the seeds. To keep the animals away from the vegetables, we stretched a fence around it and made a small gate. It was hard work and I couldn't imagine having to do it without the help of machinery.
While this process was taking place, I couldn't help but think how hard it would be to know that you wouldn't eat if the crops didn't produce and your future depended on saving enough seeds from one year to the next to replant. I thought about the process of breaking fallowed ground by hand and hoping the weather would bring success to the seeds. I thought about Old Testament famines so severe women ate their own children. When I ran across the story of Moab's rebellion and Israel's retaliation, I couldn't help feeling sad for the women and children in their towns but surprisingly, the thing that hit me hardest was the destruction of their fields. It was a horrible scene to me.
"They destroyed the towns, and each man threw a stone on every good field until it was covered. They stopped up all the springs and cut down every good tree..."
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