Welcome to this week’s edition of the Redeeming the Dirt Newsletter!

Redeeming the Dirt is the ministry of Noah Sanders and his family, committed to encouraging Christians to live for Jesus, excel in agriculture, and make disciples.

Summer is the time to put things away for winter.

This past week we didn’t put up much from the garden, but my sons and I split firewood and cut and raked hay. Loose hay. We don’t have a baler, but I really enjoy using rakes and pitchforks to stuff our barn loft full of sweet-smelling grass stems.

The week before that, my wife and I spent a week away together on a relaxing trip while the kids stayed on the farm with my parents. My oldest son just turned fifteen (crazy!), and he and my twelve-year-old did all the chores, including milking the cow twice a day.

Somewhere on that trip my wife and I put our finger on something we’ve had a hard time with: shifting from having our kids help us do everything around the farm and home, to overseeing and training them to do it themselves.

With a household of eight kids and one on the way, we face the reality that we can’t do it all unless we work as a team. First it was doing house and farm work while babysitting the kids. Then it was having them help us while we worked. Now the only way we get done what has to get done is by doing the management and training it takes for everyone to work together.

This is not about exploiting our kids’ labor. Most of the time it’s much harder. But even if the captain of a ship enjoys manning the lookout or swabbing the decks, it’s less productive for him to do that than to oversee and train the crew members who handle those tasks. If he has a one- or two-man crew, fine. Those of us with large families have to learn to delegate — and to appreciate each other.

What we’ve found is that when we give real ownership over an area of responsibility, our kids will eventually do it better than we would.

My fifteen-year-old handles the cows. He’s been watching videos on rotational grazing, designing our pasture rotation, assembling posts and supplies, troubleshooting problems and stubborn cows, and faithfully moving them almost daily. The grass in our pasture is thicker and more lush than it has ever been.

Who do you need to empower through delegating? God delegates His authority to us as stewards. I want to learn to reflect Him better by doing the same.

That question of delegated authority — who has been given what, and for what purpose — is on my mind in a bigger way too. Government regulations and subsidies have a lot of impact on agriculture, and this week I’m starting a podcast series on the biblical role of civil government in helping farmers.

Keep Redeeming the Dirt!

God Bless,

Noah Sanders