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

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

Lately I have been thinking about how the 250 years of freedom in America that we are celebrating this weekend wouldn't exist without a historical foundation of faith and farming laid down at great cost by those who came before me.

The European settlers of America made great sacrifices to leave the comforts of their old homes in order to seek the freedom to worship God according to the Scriptures, not a state-run church.

This form of personal faith in Jesus produced a self-governing people who didn't need the strong hand of a dictator to maintain order.

They voluntarily organized themselves to cooperate and meet the needs of their communities. We see an example of this in the Mayflower Compact, which the Pilgrims drafted and signed before even landing at Plymouth.

Later the colonies worked hard to establish local agriculture and production of food and textiles in order to wean themselves away from their dependency on British imports.

Rather than stick to specialized plantations producing raw product, they learned to diversify and produce everything they needed in their own colonies. And when pressured, they even gave up deep rooted cultural comforts like tea rather than submit to tyrannical taxation.

It was the strong Christian faith and the small-scale farmers that created the independent colonies that became the United States. General George Washinton's military victories didn't create an opportunity to build a great nation. What they did was protect and establish the freedom of a nation that had already been built.

Later the Constitution was written to provide stability and maintain freedom for a people who were already self-governing. It was not designed to work for a godless people who were unwilling to make sacrifices to serve God and their neighbor.

Lately our family has been re-reading a book that takes place during the American War for Independence. Every evening we gather together after supper and sing, read the Bible, and read a story book.

Recently that book has been Celia Garth, a historical fiction book from the 1950's that takes place in and around Charleston with Francis Marion (the Swamp Fox) and the southern campaign of the War for Independence. If you have ever watched the movie The Patriot with Mel Gibson, it is the same setting.

While the story is a family favorite, the book reminds us of the people who were willing to give up everything in order to work, worship, and raise their families as free people, rather than submit as slaves of a tyrant who had abandoned rule of law and treated them as enemies to be conquered rather than subjects to be protected and justly ruled.

As farmers we know how much we put into our farms and homes and families. Would we be willing to risk all of that to stand for the freedom of future generations?

Not everyone was willing, even then.

Interestingly enough, dependency on farm subsidies over-ruled any thoughts of freedom for some farmers. The British subsidization of indigo meant that many indigo farmers sided with the British against the patriots.

Called 'Tories', they fought with the British against their own neighbors, often with hopes of being awarded farms confiscated from patriots.

Part of the warfare of the British and Tories included the destruction of rural farms and plantations; burning homes and barns, destroying crops, and butchering livestock, often with civilian deaths occurring.

Many farmers lost everything to take a stand for the freedom we enjoy today. And these were the men who stubbornly fought alongside Francis Marion (whose farm was also destroyed) and kept General Cornwallis in the south long enough for General George Washington to eventually show up and capture his army at Yorktown.

It is such a good reminder to hear about the cost that people had to make to establish a nation that was free to express their faith in God in the way they lived their lives and governed their communities.

Not free to do evil, but free to be self-governed as a moral people who acknowledged God and his Word as relevant to all of life, including government.

Are we faithfully guarding the freedom handed down to us? Or are we letting it be taken away, or even willingly giving it away, merely for the sake of cultural pressure or economic security or personal convenience and comfort?

We have much to be grateful for on this 250th anniversary of the birth of this nation. As we celebrate, let's commit to guard and invest in the amazing heritage of faith and farming that has contributed so much to the freedom we enjoy and want to pass on to future generations.

If you want to hear more of my thoughts on this you can listen to my podcast episode released this week, Faith, Farming, and the Real Cost of Freedom

​Click here to LISTEN to the podcast.​

Click below to WATCH a video of the podcast.

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Your Fellow Steward of the Soil,

Noah Sanders

P.S. If you are interested in purchasing your own copy of the book we have been reading, Celia Garth, by Gwen Bristow, AND support Redeeming the Dirt you can click here to use our affiliate link.