A FARMACIST'S PRESCRIPTION-A NEW SLANT

Most folks who follow my writing know that I usually gather my thoughts beneath the heading Smokehouse Spirituality. That porch light will remain burning. I still intend to write about the things that stir in the soul—the grace I find in Scripture, the lessons hidden in ordinary days, and the ways God continues to shape a person long after he thinks he ought to be finished learning.

But alongside those reflections, I am opening another notebook. I am calling it A Farmacist’s Prescriptions. Let me share the inspiration for the title. I was born into a family of pharmacists. My grandfather had drugstores in West and East Texas and he was an apothacary. My dad was a pharmacist for six decades. I like to say, “God saw my chemistry grades and called me to preach.” My sister took up the family pharmacy mantle. Of late I see my new call as being a Farmacist, and I do see the wisdom in good food, grown right being good medicine. I have come to believe that good pork, like good preaching, begins long before anyone arrives at the table.

I preached my first sermon at the age of sixteen years old. And for four decades I wrote a manuscript for a twenty-five minute sermon every week. I don’t do that anymore, I do this and with this understanding. A sermon is not written on Saturday night. It is shaped by decades of listening, praying, loving, grieving, and paying attention. In much the same way for example, exceptional 

pork does not begin at harvest. It begins with attention to the microbes in the soil. It begins in the pasture. It begins in the daily choices of stewardship that honor both the land and the creatures entrusted to our care.

The title comes from my growing conviction that the farm itself is a kind of pharmacy—not in the modern sense of bottles and labels, but in the older sense of remedies found in creation. Why write about healthy soil, clean water, fresh air, honest labor, sunshine, wholesome food, and animals living according to their created purpose? Because it is my prayer that this writing will contribute, even if in a small way, to the healing of both land and people.

These writings will be less about what I am learning in prayer and more about what I am learning in the pasture. I will write about soil microbes and cover crops. About pigs and pecan trees. About rotational grazing and regenerative practices. About successes, failures, mistakes, surprises, and discoveries. I will share observations gathered from my own fields and wisdom borrowed from farmers who have walked this road much longer than I have.

I do not write as an expert. The world already has enough experts and those who claim to be. I write as a fellow traveler. I am simply a retired preacher with dirt on his boots, trying to learn a better way of caring for the earth and the animals placed under our stewardship. I am a student of the land who has discovered that the soil often teaches more honestly than a textbook and that pigs can sometimes reveal truths about creation that are easy for even sophisticated people to miss.

My hope is to walk alongside others who are asking similar questions. Farmers who want to regenerate rather than deplete. Ranchers who want to partner with nature rather than dominate it. Gardeners who believe healthy food begins beneath the surface. Young people wondering whether there might still be a future in agriculture that honors both profitability and stewardship. But these prescriptions are not intended only for farmers.

I hope to come alongside those who simply want to eat better food—food grown locally, responsibly, and transparently. People who understand that what nourishes their families matters. People who recognize that the health of the soil, the health of the animal, and the health of the person are all connected by threads that cannot be easily separated.

The theologians call such work apologetics—the practice of making a case for what one believes to be true and worthy. I suppose these essays will be a kind of agricultural apologetic. They are my testimony to a way of farming that I believe is better for the land, better for the animals, better for rural communities (and urban communities alike), and better for those who gather around the table.

I do not claim that regenerative agriculture will save the world. But I do believe it points toward a healthier relationship with creation. And in a culture that often mistakes extraction for stewardship and consumption for abundance, perhaps pointing in a better direction is its own kind of ministry. So consider these pages an invitation.

Pull up a chair on the porch. Walk a pasture with me. Listen to the soil. Watch the pigs root beneath the pecan trees. Pay attention to what the land is trying to teach us. And together, perhaps we can learn a few prescriptions for living that are good not only for the farm, but for the soul as well.

RX: So here is your prescription Read this substack and wait for more to come. Pass them on to your social media circle, or if you think it’s down a friend’s alley, tell them what I’m up to. Let me know what you think about this.