God planted a garden east in Eden

and put man to work in it.   That's what we read in Genesis ch 2.   A garden.   Think fruit trees, herbs, seed plants..  today we call it permaculture.   Everything grows together with everything else, living off the soil which never gets ploughed to damage the structure thereof, worms and microbes can grow, feed and aerate the soil, and the biodiversity of the garden prevents the prevalence of one insect or pathogen or nematode over the other.   The whole works like a well-oiled machine, dying where they grow, dropping leaves and turning into humus for other plants to grow on.

This is not Eden I know, but there is a lot of food for thought right there in that tiny piece of scripture which immediately pales in significance beside the rest of the story which is about the snake and the fruit and the woman.   What we also seem to miss is how God went on to say that everything that was in the garden was for man's consumption (for free mind you), the berries and the fruit and the herbs and everything bearing seed etc, because we home in on the one tree they were not supposed to eat from.

This is what I tried to teach budding pastors at Back to the Bible Training College for a couple of years, until my own vegetable project became so huge I had to give up teaching there.   Nevertheless, without a tractor, without fertiliser and without one drop of insecticide, just replenishing the soil with veldgrass mulch and horse manure,
                                                                                    take a look at the size of the

cauliflowers and chinese cabbage we produced..

This is ONE plant!

We had fun

  Would-be pastors learning about farming

God's way

My theory is this, that if one person could be found, only one, out of each extended family in Africa, who would be willing to plant a garden no matter really how small, from which to also keep 10 chickens fed, healthy and contained, there needn't be hunger anywhere in Africa.   Four or five tomato plants, two runner beans, 20 onions, 30 beetroot, 30 carrots and 5 cabbages repeated every month, a lemon tree, an orange tree and a nut in the back corner to share with neighbours, some papaja and banana along the back fence for privacy, and sweet potatoes on the sidewalk will keep a family in perpetual supply of good nutritive vegetables.   

A rooster in the back with 10 hens will provide a minimum of 6 eggs each day, and if each of the hens sat on 12 eggs only once a year and produced 10 new chickens, that's 100 chickens for slaughter.   Each year.   That is about 2 chickens a week...!   The eggs and chickens come virtually for free, given the excess from the vegetables that they can be fed on, together with cooked foods like rice and porridge and so on, which they love.   In return the chickens will provide manure for feeding the vegetable garden again - speak of the circle of life!

One of the pastors-in-training took the concept to our local township Umjindini, where he ministered at a church on Sundays.   When the unemployed youths got together and planted a garden, they not only had fun doing something together and looking after it, they had heaps of fun harvesting it and handing it out to the aged in the community.

The kitchen team harvesting at BBTC.

There is something to be said for planting a garden.