As a youth minister’s wife, I tried to be domestic. I wanted to be a stay at home mom and minister’s wife for the rest of my life. In the spirit of domesticity, I decided to plant a garden our first summer in a real parsonage. With my county extension agent father’s help, I planted several rows  of corn, tomatoes, bell peppers, carrots, and zucchini. (I told my dad I only wanted one or two zucchini plants, but he gave me thirteen. I had no idea what I was going to do with all that zucchini!)

One morning, I stepped outside, knowing that my bell peppers would be ready for picking any day. The last couple of days, they had been small and not quite ripe, but the day was coming. I knew to pick them just before they ripened to help them last longer. I excitedly went to pick the first fruits of my labor.

Only they were gone. The pastor of the church had explained to me that the garden in the backyard was kind of a community garden. The pastor and his wife would take what they wanted out of theirs and let other members of the church have the rest of it. I felt relieved at this, because I truly had no idea what I was going to do with it all–we only had one freezer, and I had no canning materials nor any desire to can it all.

Over the next several weeks, people kept picking things out of my garden before I had a chance at any of it. Believing the best in people–that they just didn’t realize we didn’t have what we wanted out of it, I put out a very polite sign informing them that we wanted the rest of our produce. The pastor threw a huge fit about it to my husband. It made me mad because I was the one who put in the work, I should at least get some of what I was doing. I had not meant the garden as a community ministry–most people in our church were older and living in rural areas and therefore had gardens of their own–bigger and better than mine.

Looking back, I think it was the pastor and his wife taking the vast majority of it (I did see a deacon out there once) because of what happened next and because they were so angry about the sign. One morning, I went out to pick some corn, and there was the pastor’s wife picking some too. “I’m just helping you pick some of this ripe corn,” she said.

“Okay,” I agreed, and worked along side her. “You can have some if you like.”
“Thanks!” she smiled.

“Yeah, take as much as you want. We don’t have enough room to store all of it!”

That weekend, Bob and I went to visit my parents. When we came back, we saw a Wal Mart sack of vegetables on our front porch. Puzzled, I went to investigate my garden.

I was shocked. Every bit of produce was gone. Not a bit of corn, tomatoes, or bell peppers. Only zucchini and squash remained (and zucchini and squash were so abundant that year, that everyone had too much of it, and nobody wanted it).

Later, I ate some corn at potluck that I knew was mine because it was the same variety and everything (I know it probably sounds weird to say I knew which pot of corn I grew, and I don’t really know how to explain it).  The pastor and his wife had brought it. When later confronted, they said, “Well, you said we could have as much as we wanted!”

I don’t think any reasonable person would have taken that to mean they could have it all. I get a kick out of telling people now that the minister and his wife stole all of our corn. The looks on people’s faces as their jaws drop is actually quite funny.

But still, all that work for a bag of vegetables that would have cost me about $5 at the grocery store. I never grew a garden again.

Tags: Christianity, ministry, religion

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 12:12 pm and is filed under Life in General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.