I was outside working when, from the house, Tay called me. “Jason, the baby’s coming,” she said.
“That’s great!” I said. “I’ll give the midwife a call, and she’ll be here in a couple of hours, and—”
“No, Jason, you don’t understand,” Tay said. “The baby’s coming right now!”
My stomach dropped to my ankles. “Right now?” I said. “Like now now?”
Tay and I have always believed in having babies as naturally as possible. When I was playing with the Baltimore Ravens and we were expecting our first, JW, we prepared and prayed over an awesome birthing plan. We shared it with the birthing team at the hospital, and they seemed fine with it.
But hospitals have their own worries. Even though women have been giving birth for thousands of years, well before the first hospitals were built, it can be dangerous. Doctors don’t want anything bad happening to mother and child, and they certainly don’t want to be liable for anything that might happen. So, if something unexpected occurs, doctors and nurses tend to fall back on things they’re familiar with. And that means drugs.
The unexpected happened with JW. The labor went on longer than any of us hoped it would, so the birth unit suggested that Tay accept some Pitocin, a drug that makes the contractions stronger and much more intense. Then, when Tay was really feeling those harsher contractions brought about by the Pitocin, they offered her an epidural—a strong painkiller that gets injected right into the patient’s back. But those epidurals sometimes can impact the baby’s own heart rate, and that’s what we saw with JW. While he was still inside Tay, his heart rate dropped, so the doctor decided to perform an emergency cesarean section.
“Don’t worry,” the doctor said. “We’ve done this procedure countless times. Everything’s going to be fine.”
And it was. When JW finally decided to see the world, he came out as healthy as could be. He’s twelve right now and the engineer of the family. He loves to tinker around and build stuff. He already drives everything we have on the farm—the truck, the tractor, the forklift, you name it—and it’s in part so he can figure out how it all works. Even if you tell JW not to drive something, well, you better hide your keys. Just in case.
Still, the birth at the hospital felt very unnatural to us. And when our second child was due to be born while we were living in St. Louis, Tay and I were determined again to do it as naturally as we could. Again, the hospital thought that our birthing plan was just great. The staff was on board with everything we hoped to do, until it came time to give birth. Naomi’s birth story was a carbon copy of JW’s: for the second time, we were forced to do an emergency C-section.
Naomi is nine now, and an artist—like my brother was. Last year I bought her a sketch pad for Christmas and she’d filled every one of the pad’s two hundred pages with art by the end of February. She draws beautiful scenes, especially of the farm: the barns, the silos, the trees and ponds. Whenever I need to send a special thank-you note to somebody, I ask Naomi to draw me a picture. I tell her who the card’s to and what it’s for; I tell her exactly what I need. And in thirty minutes, she’ll have a beautiful card ready for me. She’s like our home’s very own Hallmark store.
Tay and I had always wanted at least three children, and we were determined this time to do the birth the natural way. But even though the second C-section didn’t change our desire to birth our next baby more naturally, doctors and hospitals were skeptical. As we talked with doctors about our plans, none of them would take us on. To perform a vaginal birth after two emergency C-sections was, at the very least, unusual, they told us. And Tay’s history made her too much of a risk to go a different route. Her history suggests that a C-section is the best way to go, they’d say.
We weren’t going to do that again. Not if we could avoid it. If a doctor wouldn’t help us through a more natural childbirth, we’d take matters into our own hands. We decided we would have the baby at home. We hired a midwife, not a doctor, and in December 2012, she helped bring Noah into the world, a very short time after we’d bought the farm itself. He was the first baby born there.
Noah has spent seven whole years on the farm now, and he’s the household’s little preacher. Sometimes he’ll just stand up and start preaching to his little brothers and sisters as if he were in a church pulpit. This is what Jesus said, he’ll say, and, This is what Jesus did, and Noah knows. He knows the stories of Jesus backward and forward. He’s the family bookworm too. We homeschool the kids, and every day we have time where they can go outside and play—recess time so they can burn off their excess energy and, once they’re back inside, pay attention again. But Noah, even though he might be the child who has the most pent-up energy and needs recess time more than anyone, will try to work all the angles so he can stay inside and just read.
“Dad, can I stay inside and read my Bible?” Noah will ask.
“No, don’t read your Bible!” I find myself telling him. “Go outside and play!”
I never thought I’d be telling any of my children to quit reading their Bibles, and I bet most Christian moms and dads would love it if their kids wanted to skip playtime to be in the Word. But you don’t know Noah.
By 2014, the year Tay gave me that anxious call, she and I were mother and father to those three wonderful children. When it came to having babies, my wife was a seasoned pro by then.
I was not. Sure, I’d been around when Noah was born. I helped where I could. But Tay and the midwife did all the real work. It was a beautiful experience—awesome, in the truest definition of the word. But I appreciated the moment mostly on the sidelines, admiring the miracle of birth like an art connoisseur might appreciate a famous Renaissance sculpture, or like a fan in the stands might cheer an overtime win. It’s all well and good to appreciate the process and celebrate the final product; it’s another thing to actually help bring it about.
I was expecting my role to be much the same this time around. Our midwife, though, knew that babies aren’t that predictable. This baby might decide to show up when she wasn’t there, or he might come much faster than expected. So, a couple of weeks before Tay went into labor, our midwife pulled me aside and handed me a small box.
She said, “Hey, Jason, just in case anything happens—if there’s an emergency or something—let me give you this. There’s some material in it that you should look over if I’m not here. Read it over. Get comfortable with it.”
I smiled and nodded and thought, Read it? Are you kidding? If I could do this myself, why would I be paying you? You’ll be here. Everything’ll be fine. I pushed the whole conversation off to the side, and I didn’t think of it again. Well, not until…
“The baby’s coming right now!”
In that moment, as Tay was shouting at me over the phone that our fourth baby was on his way and that he was coming as fast as a runaway train, I came to a staggering realization: I was going to have to deliver this baby myself.
As gently and calmly as I could, I said, “Um, Tay, do you remember what you did with that birthing kit? All that material that I was supposed to read?”
Well, she told me, and I had to skim through all that reading in about fifteen minutes. I gave myself a crash course in delivering babies, reading the stuff that looked important, flying through the illustrations and feeling very unequal to the task of helping bring a new life into the world.
It took me more than a year to really learn how to bring sweet potatoes into being. Now I was going to have to deliver a child?
Tay had no confidence in me whatsoever. Her stress level was straight through the farmhouse’s roof. The fact that I didn’t know where the birthing kit was or that I hadn’t read over what was in it didn’t help Tay’s trust in my abilities one little bit. And I couldn’t blame her. She knew the truth: that I didn’t really know what I was doing.
When I played football, everything we did during the week pointed to getting ready for a three-hour game. The coaching staff sometimes tried to make it feel as if those games were the most important three hours of our lives, and the preparation we underwent for those three short hours was unreal. Now, in what was really one of the most important moments of my life, I felt woefully underprepared. I didn’t have a pregame meeting to go over the game plan. I didn’t have a coach to help me work through the techniques. And that afternoon, I was definitely far more terrified than I’d ever been before going up against the Pittsburgh Steelers or the New England Patriots. This was real. I knew exactly what was on the line: the life and health of my child, and the health and safety of the wife I loved. This was my family.
So I did what I always do when I’m way out of my depth: I prayed.
“God, You know I have no idea what I’m doing,” I admitted as I prepared for the birth. “So, God, I need Your help. I need You to anoint my hands. I need You to give me the wisdom right now. In my time of need, give me the strength and understanding I need to bring this little baby safely into our family.”
After the prayer, I took JW and Naomi and Noah and sat them down at the table. I made their dinner as fast as I could and put it in front of them.
“All right, let’s say our prayers and eat,” I said. I led them in grace, smiled reassuringly, and went over to the kitchen sink and washed my hands like a surgeon. And then I walked, absolutely terrified, into the next room where my wife was in labor.
I tried to be as calm and assertive as I could. I reminded Tay of various breathing techniques, trying to coach her through the pain. I held her hand, wiped her forehead, and assured her that everything was fine, everything was great, everything was okay.
But on the inside, I was freaking out. I knew things were not okay at all, because I had no idea what I was doing!
“You’re doing great, dear,” I said. “Breathe. Use your breathing exercises.” I needed some of those breathing exercises too. Our fourth child hadn’t made his big debut just yet, but let me tell you, there was still a baby in that room—or, at least, some big farmer who inside was crying like one.
I went back in the other room to check on the kids.
Praise God, I thought. They’re all doing fine. No one’s screaming, no one’s crying, and no one’s bleeding.
“You’re doing great!” I assured the children.
I called my mom and dad, who live just forty minutes away, and told them the glorious, terrifying news.
“He’s on the way!” I shouted maybe a little too loudly.
And I went back in with Tay.
A few minutes later, I helped Tay into our bathroom, where we’ve got a big tub, and settled her in there. And right there—in our bathtub—I helped our son into our home, our family, our world.
After the delivery, my former sports agent, Harold, got wind of the story. And he either misunderstood the circumstances or, like some people, decided to embellish it a little.
“You remember Jason Brown?” I imagine him telling folks at parties. “The center? Played for the Ravens and the Rams? Had this crazy idea of becoming a farmer? Well, get this: he delivered his own baby out in the middle of a meadow!”
Nope, no meadow. Just a bathtub. I wasn’t fending off coyotes or raccoons—just my own fear. But I think it makes for a pretty good story anyway.
We named him Lunsford Bernard Brown—in honor of my father, in honor of my brother. He’s the third member of the Brown family who’s borne that name, and because of that, we just call him Trey.
When Tay and I first met, one of our first conversations was actually about the number of children we wanted. Between three and five, we decided at the time. Ultimately, we combined those two numbers and now have an even eight: JW, Naomi, Noah, Kahlan, Trey, Judah, Olivia, and, as of December 2019, Isaiah.
That’s a lot of children, and the world doesn’t quite know how to handle families as big as ours. They don’t make minivans big enough for ten people, so when we all go somewhere, we go in a big used church van. Obviously, we can’t sit at a restaurant booth, so when we go out, we make due however we can, whether splitting up or squishing tables together. Even when Tay and I had just five or six children, people would actually stare at us as we walked down the street, pointing at us and counting up the kids as if we were a gaggle of geese with a bunch of goslings trailing behind.
But two or three generations ago, large families were the norm, especially those raised on farms and around agriculture. Men and women from those generations don’t find it strange at all. They’ll come up and tell me, “Oh, I was one of eight,” or “I was one of twelve.” We’ve met people who come from families of fifteen or even eighteen. I don’t know if Tay and I will ever have that many kids. Even now, when we’re practically halfway there, I can’t imagine trying to raise eighteen children. But at the same time, if God blessed us with that many kids, we’d celebrate each and every one.
All our babies are so different from one another. Some people think that we have so many children that we wouldn’t be able to keep track of them all. But Tay and I can’t envision what life would be like without even one of them. God made each one so special, so unique, so precious.
You look at society today, and the preciousness of life often isn’t valued as much as it once was. Life spans are certainly longer now than they were sixty or seventy years ago, but we’ve gotten stingy with giving that gift of life. Some people look at children as expenses: you pay to feed them, to house them, to pay for braces and dance lessons and college. The US Department of Agriculture says that the average family spends more than $233,000 to raise a child to age seventeen. And that’s not even counting the emotional cost. Kids can try your patience too. They can break your heart. I understand all that. Tay and I are fully aware how much it costs to feed a big family every day, and our kids—as wonderful as they are—have given us plenty to worry and stress about. But what our babies give us in return—the value they bring to our family, the joy they’ve given Tay and me, the memories they’ve given each other—you can’t put a return on that.
From where I sit here in my farmhouse—a farmhouse filled with all this love and laughter and, yes, noise and chaos and sometimes tears—I know that life is a blessing. Every single one of our children, with their characteristics and quirks and outsized personalities, is a treasure that can’t be measured.
When you get to be a certain age, you start thinking about your legacy. What have you brought into the world? What have you given? Some people look at their career achievements or their bank accounts. Some have streets named after them. I think about the Ravens’ stadium, now called the M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore. A Ring of Honor circles the field, filled with the names of twenty or so Baltimore football greats (from both the Ravens and the old Baltimore Colts). Two statues stand outside the stadium: one of legendary Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas, and the other one of Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis. Many kids look at those statues or the names around that Ring of Honor and believe that’s the kind of legacy they want: to have someone to think enough of you to stick your name in a stadium for everyone to see or to mold a hunk of bronze in your image.
All that stuff is great. But if you’re really thinking about your legacy—what you want your memorial to the world to be—don’t build a statue. Concentrate on your children. That’s the sort of legacy the Bible holds dear. You can read Jesus’s earthly genealogy all the way back to David, and then all the way back to Adam if you want. That shows how much the people of the Bible valued family—how much they valued the shared history that passes down from parents to children to grandchildren.
Families are complicated things, and not a one of them is perfect. But God’s blessings flow through a family’s veins just as surely as blood does. We’re shaped and molded by our mothers and fathers, who were shaped and molded by theirs. And because of this, we’re all influenced in some way by generations long gone. I never really knew my grandfather Jasper Brown. I never got to hear his stories. But who he was helped make me the man I am today. There’s a piece of him inside me. And because his grandfather was a piece of his upbringing, there’s a piece of him in me too.
Family is our real legacy. It’s a big reason why Tay and I moved out here in the first place. We want to raise our kids with whatever wisdom we have to offer and give them whatever character we have to give. We didn’t want to see them just at dinnertime. We didn’t want to ship our babies off to school to be raised and taught by strangers. They’re our children. We want them to grow up learning our values. We take our responsibility as parents seriously.
If ever I feel my focus on family falter, I think about something that Tay told me one day.
“Jason, we grow a lot of food on this farm,” she said. “We help feed a lot of people, people we don’t even know. We raise a lot of animals. We give a lot, and we’re a blessing to this community. But don’t you ever forget that the most important thing growing on First Fruits Farm is our family. The love between a husband and a wife. The love that we share with our children. That is the most important thing growing here.”
You want to talk about being centered? Tay is centered, and she helps center me. She reminds me of what’s important. She reminds me of where we were in St. Louis, when our bank accounts were full but our hearts were empty—when we had more money than we knew what to do with but not enough love for, or time with, each other.
Most of our kids were born on the farm, so it’s all they’ve ever known. Only JW has any memories of our lives before we came back to North Carolina. If he’d been older—if we had left St. Louis when he was twelve—he might’ve been sad to leave that old life, with its ridiculous mansion and luxury lifestyle and NFL-playing dad. If the popular culture had sunk its teeth into him then, he might’ve felt the pull of that life a little bit more. And, listen, I get it. It’s very attractive. When I go out and give talks to schools, many of the children and teens I speak to can’t comprehend giving up the life of a professional athlete for the life of a farmer. To them, it doesn’t make sense. Some of them look at me as if I were crazy.
But JW was four at the time, and for him the farm wasn’t a step down from wealth and security. It was a step up—a new adventure. Wow! A real pasture! A real pond! Look at all this land! What more could a boy want? And it’s a life that not many children get to experience now. Many people have no idea how the food they see at the grocery store ever gets there or the work it takes to make it happen. Many have never even seen a farm. And because of that, with the right attitude, farming can feel as exciting as sailing on a pirate ship or blasting into outer space.
When JW was seven or eight years old, he and I were cleaning out some of the stalls in the barn. He was helping do a few little things, but I was doing most of the work, and all of the real dirty work: mucking all the animal poop out of the barn. It was heavy and filthy and smelled to high heaven.
He watched me work. He could see how hard it was. He could smell that loamy scent of animal poop, just like I could. But he still said, “Dad, can I do that? Please? Please!? I’ll do a good job—I promise!”
He’s begging me—literally begging me—to shovel poop.
“You mark this day down and don’t forget it for the rest of your life,” I told him. “The day you begged me to shovel poop out of the barn.”
It was a good reminder to me of what a gift this farm is. More than that, it’s a gift to be able to work on this farm. As adults, we forget about that sometimes. I look at all the work First Fruits requires of me, and I can think of it as drudgery. It feels like the punishment of Genesis 3:19, when God told Adam that “by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food” (NIV). But even work is a gift, too, and sometimes our children remind us of that. And in that moment, when JW begged to muck out the stalls, I thought, Why can’t we all look at work with that kind of enthusiasm? Hey, it’s got to be done anyway, right? Why not enjoy doing it? Even today when I get weary and tired, I look at my children’s enthusiasm they show for every day. They can be happy for no reason at all. That gives me encouragement. My children and their love of life give me extra fuel in the tank.
They love the farm too. They don’t always love everything about it, and you never know how that will change as they get older. But they see the beauty of it, even as they do their own share of work. Maybe that work helps them see the beauty all the more. This place of sweat and toil can sometimes look like Eden to them. It looks like one of Naomi’s beautiful pictures.
Naomi gets it. She’s a step back in time. She would’ve been right at home on a farm in the 1920s, I think. Whenever anyone needs help in the kitchen, she’s the first to volunteer. She loves to cook. She loves to clean. She loves to make things with her hands. Naomi already knows how to do some sewing and knitting.
I recently took some of our babies to the North Carolina state fair, and I think all the arts and crafts on display there—the variety and the quality—nearly blew her little mind. All the quilts, all the artwork, all the hand-carved crafts—it was incredible. I knew that Naomi was already plotting what her own booth would carry in the future. I tried to stoke that creativity.
We met a gentleman at the fair who makes amazing hand-woven baskets from strips of wood he pulls from oak trees.
“Hey, I have oak trees on my farm!” I told him.
“That’s great, because I need some new oak for my baskets,” he said. “Would you be willing to barter? I’d give you a couple of my baskets right now if you’d let me come onto your property and get some wood.”
“I don’t want your baskets,” I told him. “I want you to teach me and my daughter Naomi how to weave them.”
This is an example of what the farm allows us to do. It’s like a time machine back into the past. Most people, when they need something, just head out to Walmart or buy it on Amazon. Admittedly, we do our share of that too. But the farm gives us a window into simpler times, when people made more of what they needed. It helps us see and appreciate and even value self-sufficiency—the ability to create what we need all by ourselves. Very often what we create with our own two hands is more unique, more beautiful, and sometimes more functional than anything we could get at the store.
Our farm is practically self-sufficient now. Oh, we still buy plenty, but we don’t have to buy that much extra food. After all, we don’t just grow sweet potatoes. We raise chickens. We harvest fruits and vegetables. We even extract our own honey from the bees we keep on the property. Sure, putting on my white protective beekeeping suit makes me look a little like a marshmallow, but that’s okay, because the fresh honey is delicious!
How many children have a chance to enjoy their own homegrown honey? That’s an opportunity we never would’ve had if I’d stayed in the NFL. Making honey is not a fast process. Buying a plastic bottle of the stuff is certainly more convenient. But the process, just like much of what we do on our farm, teaches our children the real value of that honey—how hard the bees work to make it, how laborious (and fun) it is to extract it. And that makes that honey all the sweeter when they finally get a chance to taste it.
Like that honey, life on the farm is a little slower for our children, but a little sweeter. They’re learning that doing their best means taking the time to do it right and do it well. They see the beauty and creativity that goes into the work here. Managing and growing things on a farm isn’t just work; it’s art.
When I think of those baskets that Naomi and I saw at the state fair, one thing’s pretty obvious just by looking at them: every single one is different. These aren’t manufactured by machine; they’re crafted by a skilled hand, just like God crafts each of us. Some of the differences are due to design, but some of the more subtle variations come simply from the material they’re made of. No strip of bark is exactly the same width or color or density, which makes each basket—even among baskets that are essentially the same size and shape—as unique and individual as fingerprints.
You look at our farm, and you see that God-given individuality everywhere. We have tons of the same kind of oak trees, but each one is still unique, shaped by its own environment and experience. All the millions of sweet potatoes we’ve grown might look the same at first glance, but no two are identical.
Children are the same way. That goes without saying, really. Any parent knows each child is unique. But in most places, that doesn’t matter. We stick them all in the same box and expect them to thrive in the same environment. We have to. There’s no way that one educational system, no matter how good or creative, can truly hone in on each child’s individual needs and styles.
Because we homeschool our babies, and because we live way out in the middle of nowhere, we have the ability to tailor our children’s upbringing in a way that not many parents or teachers can.
Take Noah, for instance—our little preacher.
Noah is smart, man. He didn’t just memorize the Twenty-Third Psalm when he was four; he also learned how to read. When Tay was teaching Naomi how to piece together her ABCs and sound words out, Noah was in the same room, soaking it all in. He’d look at these books and listen to the lessons and puzzle many of those words out all by himself. When he was just five, I sat him down on my lap and tried to teach him a little something out of my old King James Bible. And he started reading it to me! I knew he was reading, not reciting something from memory, because when Noah would get to a word he couldn’t pronounce (and there’re a lot of them in the King James Version), he’d stop and work through it, syllable by syllable.
“Ne-buh-ke-ne-zer?” he’d say.
But he’s also very energetic. If he were in a public school, they’d have a label for him, no question, and maybe a couple. “Hyperactive.” “ADHD.” You name it. And then they’d suggest some medication to calm him down.
I get it. When you’re in a classroom catering to thirty other kids, you can’t have one disrupting the class. You don’t have time for special treatment.
But on the farm, when I see that Noah’s getting particularly wriggly and not focusing on the lesson, I’ll lead him to the back window.
“Do you see that tree out there?” I’ll say, pointing to a solitary oak tree a quarter mile away.
“Yes, Dad.”
“Noah, I want you to run to that tree and get me a leaf.”
“Okay, Dad!” And he’ll dash outside and get one for me.
When he returns, I’ll say, “Noah, you tired yet?”
“No, Dad!”
“Okay, go back to that tree and get me another leaf!”
Sometimes he’ll need to make that run three or four times, but he’ll eventually say, “Okay, Dad, I’m tired now.”
“Good,” I’ll say. “Now let’s get back to our schoolwork.”
It’s the beauty of homeschooling. It’s the beauty of living on the farm. We’re able to treat each child individually, just as God made them. A teacher in a classroom just can’t do that. As much as he or she might want to, the system doesn’t allow it. Our kids, just like all kids, have different needs. They all learn in different ways. They all have different hopes and fears and problems, and they all respond to different motivators. Out here, we don’t need to have a single, solitary box that all eight children have to fit in, as they’ve got a thousand-acre box to explore.
Our kids usually are up by six-thirty to do their chores. But in early 2018, I thought my oldest, JW, was ready to dive into some man-sized study. So I told him, “JW, I want you to be sitting down at the table by six on Monday morning.”
Sure enough, he was there, and we started going over Proverbs. I wanted him to begin to understand the value of biblical wisdom and God’s Word.
I wasn’t showing favoritism. It was, if anything, an extra duty I saddled JW with. But Naomi and Noah didn’t see it that way. All they saw was that JW was getting some special alone time with Dad. So, about a month later, they walked up to me and gave me a petition.
“Dad, we want to come to your Bible study,” Naomi said.
“But it’s so early in the morning!” I warned them.
“We don’t care!” Naomi told me. “We want to come down and read the Bible with you too!”
“Are you sure?” I asked. I watched Naomi’s and Noah’s heads bob up and down.
“Well, all right!” I said. “The more the merrier.”
So they started diving into the Scriptures with me too. Can you imagine? Kids clamoring to study the Word of God? They started soaking it up like a sponge, so much so that they eventually kicked me out of their little Bible study.
“Dad, we know you’re busy,” JW said. “We got this. If we have any questions, we’ll ask.”
I had mixed feelings about that initially, especially since my babies were so young. Running a Bible study by themselves? It’s strange. And, because I know that they aren’t going to be kids forever, I want to spend as much time with them as I can.
But Tay and I are grateful. It’s like Proverbs 22:6 tells us: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” We’re training our children in the Word of God, even if they’re partially training themselves.
Here’s the thing: children should, in part, train themselves. They need to learn stuff on their own. Parents are there to nurture and teach and push, but we also need to remember to let go at times. The best lessons—the most memorable lessons—aren’t the ones you’re read or told but the ones you experience for yourself.
Don’t get me wrong: Tay and I protect our children from a lot of things. Our farm protects them from the dangers of city or suburban life. Our homeschooling protects them from teachings we don’t approve of and helps guard them, to some extent, from some of the cultural hooks that sink into so many kids. And, as our children grow older, we’ll have rules and guidelines to help deal with social media and dating and all the other perils that come with growing up. But the farm also allows our children to be children. They do their chores. They climb trees. They skin their knees, get into things they shouldn’t, and, in JW’s case, sometimes even drive the tractor when I say not to.
We don’t want to be helicopter parents. On a farm this size, we need to be able to trust our children even when we can’t see them. Eventually, all parents, no matter where they live, have to find a way to that same sense of trust. Children aren’t children forever. They’ll be out of your care quicker than you think, and they’ll be forced to make their own decisions without your input. Sooner or later, you’ve got to let go. All parents do. Better to do it in stages, we feel. Better to give them a sense of both freedom and responsibility when they’re still at home.
In 1963, just eighty minutes away from here, my grandfather Jasper Brown risked his life to offer his children better ones. He took them to a segregated school, hoping to give his children the sort of education that so many black children in the state were denied. Maybe his sons and daughters wouldn’t have to be farmers. They’d have a choice.
He succeeded in that. He helped give them that choice. And, nearly fifty years later, his grandson chose to be a farmer. He chose to return to those roots made by Grandpa Jasper all those years before.
Education, as I think my grandpa knew, isn’t just something you squeeze out of schools and books. Wisdom sure doesn’t just come from a class. Oh, we don’t skimp on knowledge on First Fruits Farm. Our children are getting what I’d consider a first-class education. They’re learning things that most kids today will never even have the chance to experience: how to milk cows, how to drive tractors, how to extract honey from heavy, sticky honeycombs. And, through those chores, they learn lessons they don’t necessarily know they’re even learning. They are taught what it takes to grow food and what it means to work hard. They see the beauty and logic of God’s creation all around them and how bountiful He’s provided for us. They see in Tay and me, hopefully, what it means to be a mother and father who love and sacrifice and discipline and raise children in God’s Word.
Tay once told me that the most important thing growing on First Fruits Farm is our family. She’s absolutely right. Thanks to God, it’s been a bumper crop so far.