Many have learned tht growing fruit requires more than a tree and a few years’ time. We will look at how you can overcome challenges to fruit culture.

AdAgrA 2018: Something Better

<p>Many have learned tht growing fruit requires more than a tree and a few years’ time. We will look at how you can overcome challenges to fruit culture.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Session 6

Brian Dunne

Seed Independence is Food Independence

Precious Father, Lord, what a privilege it is to be alive, especially in these last days.

And what a wonderful revelation that everything around that's created is created to communicate your love and assurance to us that you care about us, that you have a better plan, that redemption is already in progress as we see in spring and the resurrection of the plants every year, that these are all pictures of the fact that you have a redemption in place despite the damage that we have caused.

And as we look today into the subject of your creation, especially looking at the seed and the physical seed and how the laws that make it up are so important to success in the physical realm of creating food or producing food, help us also to realize that these are primarily as lessons to teach us how we need our spiritual food from you, that you are the bread of life.

We pray that Jesus will be here through the Holy Spirit today to help guide our minds and help me to be clear in what I present, not confused, but to speak your word and to give your word the place it needs.

I will try to have a question and answer period.

Now I'm not, you know, a lot of the speakers here are highly qualified.

God called me into this message and I live to share Christ.

But the Lord led me into agriculture without my really realizing it and showed me its importance in several ways.

And not only agriculture, but in physical recreation, physical redemption, you know, the things that God has left in our lives.

Cursed is the ground for thy sake, right?

In other words, God is saying is I've made some difficulty for your benefit, that's what it means.

So because you now need a certain amount of difficulty to discover me because you've pushed me further away, I want to come closer to you.

So to avoid you me drifting further from you I put some things in the way to make it easier for you to stay close to me and that's what we're facing in a fallen world and that's why gardening is not always the favorite thing of young people to do because many young people haven't figured out yet that ease is often their enemy.

Now they do figure it out in time, most of us when we become parents we figure that out right?

But you know that toil is actually our friend in the way that God designed it when properly understood.

So keep that in mind when we talk about the whole subject of heirloom seeds because 1 of the things you're going to hear even from presenters here are well heirloom seeds are good but they're awfully difficult to do, they're really difficult.

And 1 thing we'll talk about what even an heirloom is, but an heirloom is the way that farming happened to heirloom or open pollinated would be probably more scientific term, to natural seed production is how the world survived up until the 1900s.

You exist, you can pinch yourself and you're here.

In other words it can't be that difficult if they succeeded to grow natural seed methods for thousands of years and here we all are because of that and now we're saying oh but you can't do it.

It doesn't make sense and what I've come to the conclusion of is that what we mean by it's very difficult is it's not convenient.

We are creatures in this production culture, in this culture of consumerism that Bob talked about the first night.

Bob, about the consumer society, and it's not our fault.

We've been sucked into it, we've been born into it, but in the consumer society righteousness is determined as ease, as righteousness in the world's view is mechanization, it's getting rid of toil, you know, and that's the world's view of what's right and what's good.

And what we're going to discover through God's plan is that that's not actually so, that what's easiest is not always what's best, and it's not a way of determining what's right at all in God's view.

Jesus said straight is the gate and narrow the way that leads to eternal life and few there be find it and what about the other road?

You know there's a great quote on that I just found in the Spirit of Prophecy.

I don't have the reference off hand, but I can tell you what it said.

And it said, do not represent the way of Christ as difficult.

The meaning of straight and narrow means it's selective, it does not allow sin to be carried through the passage.

It's too narrow for sin, but it's not too narrow for us.

It lets us through, but it doesn't let us through with our sin, and that's why it's straight and narrow.

And she said, actually the way of the transgressor is hard, and that's a scripture quote, the way of the transgressor is hard.

So at the beginning it seems difficult because it restricts something, but we can go on through without any problem if we let those things go, if we're willing to let them go, right?

And so that's the spiritual lesson, that's also true in agriculture.

There are ways to do things that are really easy.

You can Go to the store, buy your Miracle-Gro, get your plant from the store, and you can buy all this expensive equipment to grow your 1 or 2 tomatoes or whatever in your room.

And it's fun, it's a hobby, but it's not really practical.

And it's also very expensive, and it seems easy, but in the long run, it doesn't really do very well.

In fact if you only use miracle grow on your soil you end up killing a lot of the natural mechanisms that God has in the soil for sustainability, for long term.

That's a common phrase today, sustainability, and it has to do with the idea of something being able to be perpetual.

And everybody is looking for sustainability, but the only real sustainability is in the kingdom of God, right?

And in his methods, and in his laws, isn't that correct?

Sustainability, true sustainability is only in God's ways.

So anyway, let me move on now to the PowerPoint and we'll start with our devotion.

As I was saying, we're going to start with the spiritual lesson of the seed.

So the name of the PowerPoint is, Whose Seed is in Itself?

And a testimony that I would like you to remember is 6 Testimonies 140, just write that down, 6 Testimonies 140, paragraph 1, and it talks about the fact that obedience to all that God has said is the only method of true success, okay, and I'm premising that behind this presentation, But God said of the herb of the field and of the plants that he created that the seed was in itself.

The ability of the plant to reproduce is fixed in there by God to produce itself, right?

How many of you have ever read any of the writings of Jones and Wagner?

Great messages from the 1890s that the Sister White says the Lord sent these messengers, and we know they went astray, but she says in the time when they were speaking for God, those messages are still from the Lord today, they're still to be read and they're still to be studied.

But Wagner wrote this incredible book on the gospel in creation and he goes through the days of creation and I invite you to look that up in the Ellen White collections that you can get on your phone app or whatever or in your library if you can find them and the gospel in creation is beautiful.

It just shows the love of God illustrated all through his creation.

But whose seed is in itself, there's a spiritual law here but we're going to discover what that is.

So let's read this in Genesis 1, 11, and I'm gonna have to move fast.

And God said, "'Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth, and it was so." So when the Word of God said it, it was so.

That's why the Word of God has the power to create, only the only power to create.

We can only procreate, which is a cooperation with creation, but we cannot create.

We say we create, but we really procreate.

We cooperate with creation that only God has, okay?

And that even in the reproduction of children it's not really something we're creating, it's something that's already been in there and contained in Eve that God put there from the very beginning, right?

All that information began with Eve and what God put in there, and Adam of course as well.

Genesis 2.1 says something interesting, after God creates this beautiful system and we see it in a microscope view in the seed because the plant and the seed it's all complete in itself, Genesis 2.1 says, thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the hosts of them.

That's King James Version which is probably my favorite translation and 1 of the most you know accurate I think translations.

But I do occasionally look at other translations when I see certain words and I actually looked at the Hebrew here and khala is the word used for finished but if you look it up it also means complete and complete means more than finished doesn't it?

Now I can be finished a task but it doesn't mean the task is complete, right?

It's been, it's been, wow, I'm struggling for words here.

That's a good American English, thank you.

Or in British English, which I learned was done correctly.

And Genesis 2.1 in the BBE, whatever that is, and the heaven and the earth and all things in them were complete.

Now this carries a little fuller meaning than just finished, and I want you to think about that.

Its seed was in itself, and the creation was complete.

Complete gives you the sense that nothing can really be added to it.

Curtis Harraway

Farming for Life: Body Mechanics and Farming

Dear most kind and gracious and loving heavenly father Lord we ask and invite your holy spirit to be with us open our minds that we may be receptive to the things you want To teach us today We thank you in jesus name.

Amen All right, good evening everyone Just a little bit about myself.

I am Curtis Haraway from Monticello, Georgia.

I am Presently not farming, but we have had gardens, but I have my family and I have bought a farm in Virginia And this summer we will be moving to Virginia this is my lovely wife of 28 years and the our boys just finished an apprenticeship at the Dysinger farm and so we're going to start farming this summer.

And so my son is on the board and that's how I as a chiropractor got hooked into the agricultural conference.

And so I've have had over 22 years of experience working with farmers.

So I've have as a chiropractor, several of my patients are farmers, mostly dairy farmers, but they grow their own food and things.

And so they really do everything involved in farming and so I have had a lot of experience working with farmers.

Farming for life using body mechanics in farming and gardening first thing Genesis 2 15 says and the Lord God took man and Put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

Yes, man's first occupation was agriculture and when man sinned and it was interesting that John last night even was talking about the same thing, when we sinned, that occupation didn't change.

Became a little more challenging, but the occupation remained the same.

And so farm work, according to the National Institute, Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, they said farm work is hard work.

Farm workers get back aches and pains in the shoulders, arms, and hands more than any other health problem.

A third of the injuries that cause them to miswork are sprains and strains, and a quarter are back injuries.

And so this is very prevalent when we're looking at agriculture.

So how many of you that are farming or gardening have ever hurt yourself?

My next question is, there's a few of you, What kind of injuries did you experience?

Of course, I mentioned sprain strains, but carpal tunnel is another big 1, arthritis, fractures, you know, low back pain as well as upper back pain.

Those are some of the injuries that are experienced when it comes to farming and gardening.

Those are called musculoskeletal disorders, MSDs.

They are the leading cause of disability for people in their working years.

Conditions in which parts of the musculoskeletal system, which includes the muscles, the tendons, the ligaments, the joints, or bones, are injured.

They occur when part of the body is asked to work harder than it's used to.

They stretch further or otherwise function at a greater level than it is prepared for, something we're going to get into.

It can be acute, such as a herniated disc.

Arthritis basically is degeneration of joints in the body.

And the last thing there says, 1 and 1 half times more prevalent, this is MSDs, are more prevalence of back pain in production agriculture compared with all other industries.

They can affect not only the worker's body, but they also affect the worker's earnings as well as the grower's profits.

And when someone's out of work, you can't make money.

Loss of the ability to earn, which ultimately hurts whoever the owner is, whether it's yourself or your boss, per se.

Many people in the farm industry may believe that these kinds of tasks and the resulting sprains and strains are just an unavoidable part of farm work.

And that's also taken from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Southern states, in an article, this is a company that sells tools to farmers, they made this statement.

Did you know farmers and agricultural workers are at a higher risk of musculoskeletal injuries than most workers in the United States?

Daily Chores like lifting, carrying heavy objects, shoveling, stooping to pick crops, driving farm equipment, and more can cause a lot of unnecessary wear and tear on the human body.

Not only do these chores affect the workers' bodies, they can also negatively impact workers' earnings and eventually decrease the farmer's profit margin.

Unfortunately, many in the agricultural field see backache sprain strains and pain in the shoulder arms and hands as a byproduct of their jobs.

You don't need to make it harder on yourself.

That's why Farmers are now beginning to incorporate ergonomics into their daily routine.

And here's another statement from Southern states.

Let your workers know that pain should not be a regular part of their jobs.

Many farm workers continue to work very hard and fast while experiencing pain.

Remind them, that's the 1 thing, we get going, we're thinking about the profits and everything, and we don't pay attention to how we do things.

Remind them that there is no shame in slowing down if you are hurting.

In fact, it could benefit the worker and farmer as the sooner the workers slow down, the less likely they will miss a lot of work or file for workman's compensation.

Another part of how it affects whoever the owner is of the farm.

Green Heron Tool says it is the utilization of correct muscles to complete a task safely and efficiently without undue strain of any muscle or joint.

And then Farming with Arthritis Project says it this way, it is the way one's body is held and moves daily doing different activities.

So in other words, how you use your body, okay?

Ergonomics, This is the other word that I've used already.

It is an applied science that coordinates the design of devices, systems, and physical working conditions with the capacities and requirements of the worker that's taken from Webster's dictionary.

Ergonomics is the study of the physical capabilities and limitations of a worker in relation to that person's work tasks, tools, and environment.

Ergonomics seeks to reduce stress on the body and increase safety, comfort, and productivity.

So ergonomics, in other words, is fitting the workplace so that your body can able to do its job with little effect upon the body.

Here are some high risk behaviors that occur in agriculture.

1, lifting and carrying heavy loads greater than 50 pounds.

2, sustained or repeated full body bending or stooping.

4, twisting and a combination of 1 or more of these increased risk.

5 whole body vibration and 6 excessive physical strains.

These are high-risk behaviors that are taken on each and every day pretty much or like it says in number 4 a combination of these can have a negative effect on the body if they're not overcome.

So first Corinthians 6 19 and 20 says this what know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you which you have of God and you are not your own for ye are bought with the price therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God's so in other words when man sinned and the work became hard he never God never said in there that we would destroy our bodies in the process.

As a matter of fact, when you look at Moses, for example, Moses at 40 years old started working in agriculture.

When Moses died, he basically walked up a high mountain and laid down and went to sleep.

And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, 120 by that time.

Weston Adams

Feasible Fruit

And dear Lord, I just want to thank you for all the people who are able to come.

That we all want to learn about agriculture, but more than that, we want to learn about what you want us to do.

So I just ask that you would give all of us some humility, myself and all of us, and bless us as we seek what you want for us.

My name is Weston Adams and I planted my first fruit trees in 2013.

It was more of a family project when we started it, but as we did it, more and more I became interested in it.

And I'm currently 19 years old, so I've been doing fruit trees for, how many years would that be, 5 years?

And I live in central Tennessee with my family and that's where we do fruit trees as part of a larger homestead project.

So let me give you a brief overview first of what we're going to look at.

1 thing I really want to stress with this is we want to grow fruit feasibly.

You can do so many things to make your fruit growing and your trees do better and better and better But it's got to be something that we can do It's got to be something that we can that can fit into our lives.

So I'm going to talk a little bit about that I'm also going to talk about some general principles that apply to fruit growing.

These principles are large principles that would apply across the country, not just things that would apply in 1 region.

So, they're not so much specifics as far as what to do with your soil or your specific location.

There are general things that you need to implement that would apply anywhere across the country.

Third, we're going to talk about some, I'm going to do some regional spotlights and that is going to be some information for local areas, just some select local areas across the country.

And that's going to consist of some interviews.

I interviewed a few people from different parts of the country.

And so that will be what we're going to talk about there.

So if you have any questions, let's wait, hold them.

It makes it work better for the recording if we wait until the end to do the questions.

To start with, let's talk about feasibility.

I am going to be talking about some different information, but I want to preface it by saying don't let all the information overwhelm you.

And if it's overwhelming, Still plant the tree.

It's better to plant the tree than to not And like I said there in general people who plant trees get more fruit than people who don't.

So we're going to talk about some different things.

Do what you can, and then ask the Lord to bless it.

And I have a little verse from Ecclesiastes that I think applies here.

It says, in the morning sow your seed and in the evening do not withhold your hand for you do not know which will prosper Either this or that or whether both alike will be good.

And that's something that I think applies to fruit growing You don't always know what's going to do best But you just kind of have to dive in at some point and start planting and do the best you can at each step but you've got to get in there at some point.

The general principles we're going to look at first 1 will be site selection choosing a site for your orchard second we'll look at soil preparation then tree selection then tree planting and then I'll briefly touch on pests and disease management.

Maybe you have a new piece of property or maybe you're even looking to buy a piece of property and you're wondering what is the best place to plant my trees.

I would say that probably the number 1 thing you're going to look for, at least among the top, is going to be full sun.

If you don't have full sun, there are certain trees, especially certain species, that will grow, But you're going to have a limit, an innate limit set on your orchard because you just don't have enough sun to, even if everything else is right, you don't have enough sun to really get what you could out of your trees.

Second, you want to look for fertile soil.

And I'm going to talk about that briefly here.

If you have a higher section of your land, I'll explain this in just a minute here, that's good.

Sometimes, at least in our area, sometimes the most fertile soils are actually in the lowlands, but there is an advantage to having higher ground and a northern slope.

You're looking to make use of all that energy that the Lord sends every day, and we just need to make use of it.

You may have seen up there, I had something about the lazy land clearers error.

Soils in general, you're going to want to look for soils that support good vegetation.

Deep soils, soils that aren't waterlogged, soils that have fewer rocks.

If it supports good native vegetation on your property, then it's likely to be more conducive to supporting trees.

And I'm going to talk a little bit about the lazy land clearers error.

This only applies if you have to clear your site.

Many of us have spots that are already cleared and that's nice to be able to plant our trees.

But if you have to clear a site, the lazy landowner, a land clearer, would love to clear a site like this.

You only have a few trees here, a few trees here.

But the problem with this is that the reason you only have a few trees is because the soil is poor.

So I just want to warn you all, if you're clearing your land, don't clear the easiest spot to clear, because that's going to be the spot that doesn't have very many trees.

And the reason it doesn't have very many trees is because it's poor soil.

So that's something you're gonna wanna watch for if you're clearing the land.

Make sure you choose a spot that, for example, maybe 1 like this.

It's gonna be a lot more work, but obviously the soil there is going to have a lot more potential for supporting your trees in the long run.

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Series

Session 6

Feasible Fruit

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Parts

Seed Independence is Food Independence

51m

Farming for Life: Body Mechanics and Farming

57m

Feasible Fruit

56m

Irrigation for the Home and Market Gardener

1h 3m

Sound Doctrine