SMOKEHOUSE SPIRITUALITY--WHEN EVERYTHING IS LEANING WRONG AND GOODNESS SHOWS UP AGAIN, AND AGAIN.
There are easier ways to make a living than coaxing life out of the soil and asking animals to trust you along the way. That much has always been true, though we seem to be proving it more efficiently these days. Folks wonder why there are fewer farmers left in this wide and generous country, and they point—rightly enough—to diesel prices, fertilizer bills, equipment notes, and the long shadow cast by operations so large they forget the names of the land they work.
All of that is true. But truth, like a good fence, often has more than one post holding it up. This past Friday, I found another. We had set out with purpose—four sows, heavy with promise, headed toward another pasture 700 miles away and a farmer ready to receive them. There’s something hopeful about hauling animals like that. It feels a bit like carrying tomorrow in a trailer, provided you can get there.
Five minutes from the farm, the brand-new trailer—new enough to still smell like fresh paint and optimism—gave up a tire with a sound that stops you in your tracks, literally. There we were, not even properly underway, already reminded that the road has a say in things.
And yet, before discouragement could get a good foothold, grace showed up in the form of a young man from across the road. Brandon came with tools better than ours, hands willing to help, and no reason at all except neighborliness. He jacked up that trailer, swapped the tire, and even offered water for the pigs—said they might travel better if they were cooled off a bit with a hose and nozzle. We wet them down good.
We pressed on, made it as far as Ruston, Louisiana and laid our heads down with the kind of tired that still carries hope. Morning came, and a peek into the trailer revealed that one of the pigs became a mama overnight to 10 piglets. Now that is good news in part but the trailer is now cramped space for a four big pigs and 10 little ones. We had to get on with our trip and fast. Another ten miles of good road before trouble found us again—this time in the form of smoke curling up from my truck like a bad omen.
A torn transmission line, as it turned out. Struck by something the road had left behind. One of those unseen hazards that doesn’t care about your plans, your livestock, or the miles yet to go. We limped into a state rest area—thankful for the space—and waited three hours for a tow truck. Three hours of watching the clock, doing the math, and realizing that farming isn’t just about growing things—it’s about enduring things. Somewhere about then I started praying, and asking God to lead our steps and those of the ones who would help us get home to the Stillwater Farm with pigs alive and well.
At the dealership, good people went to work. A service employee named Tami and a mechanic named Tim took an understanding about our plight and concern for the pigs. They hustled parts from Monroe, turned wrenches with urgency, and did what they could to put us back together. But time, like a stubborn mule, refused to be hurried. If that truck could not be fixed by closing time it would be next week before we would be rolling and the pigs just couldn’t wait. So we improvised.
A rental car to Shreveport. A rental truck to haul the trailer. A plan reshaped by necessity and aided by a young woman named Erin who appreciated the need to get us in and out and on our way. And somewhere along the way, the quiet understanding that Florida wasn’t going to see those pigs that day. Or the next. This rental truck would get us back to our farm in East Texas.
By the time we turned back toward home, what we carried wasn’t just livestock—it was the weight of a long day’s unraveling. And yet, alongside it rode something steadier: the calm presence of my good friend Scott who never once let frustration take the reins. That may be the rarest resource on any farm.
By evening, the truck was fixed—better than we expected, sooner than we imagined. We hitched up again, returned what we had borrowed, and made our slow way back to where we started. The pigs, none the worse for wear, but they did need a good wetting down. I shared my need with a young man name Tyrone at the adjoining convenience store. He hooked up a 100 foot water hose and I had a nozzle and we satisfied the pigs one more time. And we headed home. The farmers, maybe a little wiser and definitely more tired were still wound pretty tight. So we did the right thing to save the little pigs and turned back to the west and headed for home, which was just three hours away. When we arrived at the gate back home there was John, the one who feeds the animals daily and knows them by name, what a friend to me and the gentle beasts.
And here’s the thing: none of what went wrong Friday will show up on a balance sheet the way diesel or fertilizer does. There’s no column for “blown tire five minutes in” or “three-hour wait watching your plans dissolve.” No tidy accounting for the strain of uncertainty or the cost of trying again. But it’s real all the same.
Farming asks a man—or a woman—not only to work, but to absorb. To take in the blows of weather, machinery, markets, mischance, a blown tire and a broken engine and still find a way to rise the next morning and tend what’s been entrusted to them.It’s not just expensive. It’s taxing.
And yet, for all of that, there was goodness stitched through the whole hard twenty-four hours: a stranger with a jack and an impact wrench, a woman with a heart for little pigs, a mechanics who cared enough to hurry, a woman calling the shots on a rental truck, a friend who stayed steady, and one who was waiting on us when we pulled back up at the gate, and pigs who trusted us despite our imperfect stewardship of their journey. I call all of these, with the exception of the pigs, angels with skin on.
That’s the part folks don’t always see when they count the cost of farming. Yes, there are fewer farmers. The reasons are many, and most of them make good sense. But if you want to understand it fully, you have to reckon with days like Friday—days when everything leans the wrong way, and the work asks more of you than seems fair. And still, you carry on, maybe backtrack a bit but move forward.
Somewhere beneath the breakdowns and the bills, there remains a quiet calling—a belief that tending land and livestock is still worth the trouble. Even when the road reminds you just how much trouble it can be, but goodness shows up again and again. Thank you Lord for hearing my prayer.