Caring for the Earth: a Franciscan value

Welcome back dear readers, and a special greeting to my readers in Russia and Serbia.  I hope you will take the time to write and ask any questions or make comments.

St. Francis was discovered preaching to the birds on one occasion, and he held that all of God's creation is part of His body--both plants and animals.  He is famous for his canticle about "Brother Sun, and Sister Moon" and taught that we must love and respect and care for everything and everyone that God created.  St. Francis said:

Praised be You, my Lord,

through Sister Earth our Mother

who sustains and governs us.

 

So, in this spirit, a number of religious communities have begun to cultivate farms on their land, in different parts of the United States.  They use the food crops in their kitchens and frequently allocate a portion of that as food for the poor, donating the produce to homeless shelters and soup kitchens.

Today I want to write about the Franciscan Earth Literacy Center here in Tiffin.  The sisters own about 500 acres of land, much of that being under corn and soybean cultivation by a tenant farmer.  The farmer works the land and shares the profits of sale with the community.

In addition to the farm, there is a six-acre garden where the sisters, staff, and volunteers cultivate a variety of fruits and vegetables.  There are grapes, raspberries, and some new young peach trees; also, there are many vegetables: several kinds of lettuce, cucumbers, zucchini squash, yellow squash, broccoli, asparagus, cauliflower, tomatoes...the list seems endless.  Although the weather is still quite chilly here, Elena the intern has already been growing seedlings and transplanting them into little pots in the greenhouse.  Soon she will begin planting them outdoors.  I should mention that this garden is completely organic, and is fertilized with compost only.  The biggest pest are the deer, which come at dusk or early dawn and feast themselves.  There is much debate about how to best handle this problem.  Some favor having the local hunters come and shoot them with bows and arrows, since firearms are banned on the property.  Others think that it is not Franciscan to kill the deer.  I don't object to that as long as the meat is given to the poor or used for food by someone. In the long run, I hope that the sisters can find the necessary money to get a really high deer fence all around the area. 

Sister Shirley teaches programs and day camps for children.  The science teachers like to bring their classes here for day programs about nature and general science, and in the summer there are camps with various nature-related activities for children.  On the weekends there are programs for adults on such varied topics as gardening, hydroponics, and wind power technology.

Here is a link to the website of the FELC: http://felctiffin.org/welcome/. Franciscan Earth Literacy Center