Lots of people cry around onions, but for Steve Tierce, it’s okra — okra gets him a little choked up.
Okra and squash. And tomatoes. And eggplant.
“It’s all special to me because of my dad,” he said, wiping away a few tears. “I helped him when I was a kid. Then he helped me with my farm, and now I help him with his again. He taught me everything I know about gardening.”
And his father, Russell Tierce — a retired Alabama Baptist pastor — taught him a lot about the Lord through gardening, too.
“He would plant vegetables in the garden and then he would pray, ‘Lord, I’ve done my part. Please give us the increase now,’” said Tierce, pastor of rural Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church near Spring Garden in Cherokee Baptist Association. “He taught us to appreciate the increase as being from the Lord.”
He remembers how that “increase” panned out every day, too. Tierce would sit with his father on warm nights snapping and shelling peas and then eat the wonderful result, homemade vegetable soup, for up to a week sometimes.
“Dad taught us to always be thankful for what we have,” he said. “And we were.”
It’s a lesson not lost on Tierce’s children and grandchildren. As his house sits just behind his father’s, Tierce’s daughter’s family lives just behind him and thrives on peas and okra just as he did and still does.
In addition to sharing the veggies, Tierce is taking advantage of the opportunity to pass the lessons down, too.
“One evening last week, my 4-year-old granddaughter helped me put the fertilizer around the okra, and my 7-year-old grandson helped me hoe it,” he said.
“We enjoy it. We have a lot of fun with it, and I get to teach them something, too. It means a lot to us.”
Roy Horn knows the feeling.
Horn believes a day well spent is one spent working with the land, watching squash, zucchini, tomatoes, potatoes and green beans come up in spades.
And to him, a life well spent is teaching his children the rich taste of homegrown food, the prudence of putting up vegetables for the days to come and the pleasure of giving away the extra.
He’s always been that way, said his daughter Judy Kinard. “I can’t remember a time he didn’t garden. He grew up in the Great Depression, and he didn’t have a lot. He lived off the land — if you didn’t grow it, you didn’t eat.”
For her whole life, her dad has passed on to her the value of a hard days’ work, not to mention the importance of sharing with the neighbors, said Kinard, a member of Bayou Sara Baptist Church, Saraland, in Mobile Baptist Association, which Horn also attends.
She remembers keeping up her part of an assembly line each June, shucking, silking and cutting corn off the cob.
“We didn’t mind the work. We learned really quickly from him that we would appreciate it when wintertime came,” Kinard said. “And we learned to appreciate fresh food. Nothing tastes sweeter than something that comes from a garden.”
Nothing sweeter, that is, unless it’s a father’s love, but then again, Horn has demonstrated that through the garden, too, she said.
“He grows a row of sunflowers each year just for me,” Kinard said, explaining that she likes to eat the seeds they produce. “He started growing the flowers for my mother. She passed away seven years ago, and now he plants them for me.”
Stories like her’s and Tierce’s paint a picture of gardening as, what author and editor Cindy Crosby calls, “true soul-work.”
Love. Hard work. Patience. Prudence.
“The spiritual journey could start at no better place than in the garden,” Crosby wrote in her review of the book “The Fragrance of God” in Christianity Today magazine.
It’s a thought embraced by theologian Vigen Guroian, who penned the book about how growing things is an act of spiritual formation.
“Rather than interloper or exploiter, Guroian argues, man’s essential role on the earth is that of a gardener, gifted with the responsibility to cultivate creation and offer it as thanksgiving to God,” Crosby wrote.
Gardening is also a natural way to point children toward the “beauty and wonder of God’s creation,” wrote Laura Smith in Christian Parenting Today magazine, not to mention that it provides teaching moments.
“Enjoy ‘growing’ in the garden with your child as you explore analogies between gardening and the Christian walk. Explain the responsibilities of tending a garden to keep the plants nourished and plentiful,” Smith wrote. “When harvesting your garden produce, remind your child that much like your garden, people are waiting to be told of God’s love and ‘harvested’ for His Kingdom.”
According to Mature Living magazine, gardening with children builds strong bonds with them and helps them learn valuable lessons while having fun outside rather than at the computer or in front of the television.
“Use this time to encourage a healthy respect for the beautiful world that God created,” the article suggests, adding that gardening also offers the opportunity to teach them life lessons, such as patience, the rewards of labor and commitment.
Joe Staggs, a member of First Baptist Church, Cloverdale, in Florence in Colbert-Lauderdale Baptist Association, can attest to the truth of that idea.
“My wife and I have four sons and a daughter. I gardened with the children from the time they were little,” he said.
His daughter loved it so much that she and her family stayed on the family farm, helping gather and freeze vegetables each year until she died tragically in a car accident.
“Her daughter Kadi lives with us now though, and she has never forgotten her love for us or for gardening,” Staggs said. “Kadi is following her mother and still loves to help in the garden and plant flowers.”
And she’s an active member of First, Cloverdale, too.
“I feel the life on the farm and in the garden and our influence, as well as her mother’s, has made her the Christian girl she is today,” Staggs said.
“The Fragrance of God” is available by visiting www.thealabamabaptist.org and clicking on the LifeWay Christian Stores button.
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