The priest last year began to learn how to farm. He has been busy with preparing the land and planting the seed and with a hopeful heart preparing for the mystery of life. It has been a happy and precious time.
Pesticides, chemical fertilizers, vinyl, fossil fuels are not part of his farming methods.Those who have been accustomed to the customary ways of farming told him he would not succeed, but when they saw his harvest, it made them reflect on their ways. He wants to call this method the 'law of coexistence'.
In the area with weeds, and all kinds of bugs swarming in the earth; grasshoppers, butterflies and dragon flies fluttering around; many were those who told him you were not going to get an ordinary harvest. However, he read all about natural farming and deemed it possible, and the results were a grand success. When he planted the weak seedlings, he thought the bugs would do a job on the seedlings and not allow them to grow, but the results were not so.The cabbage seedlings that were planted after a couple of weeks showed less damage than he expected. There were signs of the presence of insects on the leaves and stem, but it did no harm to a good harvest. One of those who said that he had to use chemical fertilizers seeing the harvest: "Ah it's possible" he blurted out.
If, he says, he got rid of all the weeds in the area hoping for a larger harvest, the nesting place of the insects would have been eradicated, and they would have infested the plants in the garden.When we try to eradicate the bad insects by spraying with pesticide, we are also killing good insects that feed on the bad, and destroy nature's equilibrium, and we are eating our food mixed with pesticides.
Easter is a time to bring in a new value system and go beyond the fixed one to a new hope. With natural farming, the writer could see Easter in a new way.
