AdAgrA 2023: Digging Deeper

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

True Education and Agriculture

Angelica Gomide

Homeschool: Parent’s Opportunity, Children’s Privilege

Welcome, I'm very happy to see all of you here.

And I see some faces that I know, so that makes me happy.

And my friends are here to encourage me and help me.

So I'm here to share with you a little bit of my journey and also some principles I learned, some mistakes I made that I don't want you to make and some right things that God allowed me to be part of so that I will share with you, so maybe can be a blessing to you and your family.

Dear Father in heaven, thank you so much for life.

Thank you so much because you gave us this beautiful day and we praise your name because you are our creator.

And I want to ask your blessings Lord in this presentation.

Give me the right ideas, the right thoughts.

Give me especially your Holy Spirit, not just to me, but to everyone here.

We want to do your will, we want to do the best to serve you through the education of our children, and we ask in Jesus' name, amen.

So first I will introduce myself because I don't know most of you here.

So this is my family and this picture is from 2 weeks ago.

And I have a couple, this is my family, kind of like a little while ago.

When they were teenagers, we were working at the Amazon.

Well now in this picture we work for Washington Hills College when my 2 sons attended, they studied college there.

My husband's a pastor and my 2 sons, they are studying theology.

So we are all together, we have the privilege of they study, they are in college in a very good place, and they're still living at home.

So it's a blessing we want to keep together until the Lord says, okay, now it's time to part, but we want to do the best we can and we want to strive together until the end if possible.

Of course, when they, the Bible says, you leave your father and mother to get your wife, so if you're not with father and mother, how you will leave them?

So I hope they can stay with us, but that's the Lord, if they decided, if he decides they have to go somewhere before it's up to him, so We trust him.

So this picture, we were living in the Amazon where my husband was teaching the seminary there.

He worked for the South American division and I was homeschooling them.

And this was when our journey was starting.

I was already making mistakes, but also having victories, and we were at Andrews University at this time.

And this was when they were just, my second son was just born, so I felt like, okay, now we are father, mother, son, and brother.

So we felt that completeness in the nest.

And I was very happy and I had to decide that we were going to homeschool.

I always looked at children as like tender plants even when I was just single.

I loved children and My dream was to be a preschool teacher, but I obeyed my parents and I did pursue other careers because they told me to do and I obeyed and I was happy.

But I always had this dream about education.

And I came to the United States when I was 23 years old, and I was married.

And my husband was pastoring 3 churches in Massachusetts.

And we went to this retreat, Unicake, I don't know if anyone is from that area, but we went to that camp and I had no children and I met a family, a beautiful family, father, mother, I think 4 or 5 children and they were smiling and they were always around each other and they were happy and a little boy was just like look at me smiling all the time and I was like those children are wonderful And I came to them and I said, Hi!

They would talk to me, talk to elderly people, they would talk to anyone.

And some of them were small, but some of them were like 8 or 7.

I never heard that about homeschooling before and I was a pastor's wife then.

In Brazil that was non-existent, that I knew.

So I was very, very impressed and I told my husband about it and we started to look, you know when you decided to buy a car and suddenly you see the car around and a car that you never noticed before.

So I start noticing more children that were just home and I saw they were different.

They were not rebellious, they were more obedient, they were more happy.

And I said, how about if we do that when we had our children?

And my husband was, of course, we want the best.

We want to do that, that the best we will just.

And I remember when my first son was born, I thought, he's a page in blank, and I'm going to be able to write everything right.

And then my second son was born, I said, another page, this 1 already made some mistakes, but this 1 I will make all right.

And everything will be fine, they will be happy and perfect, and of course in heaven.

So I was like, and I was praying, studying my Bible, searching this bit of prophecy.

And then I noticed that everything was not going as I planned.

I have good intentions, but suddenly, many times I lose my patience.

And I was like, oh no, this was not supposed to be like this.

I remember I was in Brazil visiting my mom.

And my three-year-old son said, I told him, let's get in the car, we're going to visit Uncle.

He was doing something, I don't remember.

It was a long story, but I remember holding his arms so hard, and when I let him go, I saw my nails are always short and I saw I saw my nails On his arms and that broke my heart and I thought what am I doing?

Like I'm in loose and I probably I raised my voice and he went to the car crying and was like, you know, probably that never happened with you, but I felt like, oh, I'm the worst mother in the world.

And that day I prayed, Lord, it's better no mother than a terrible mother.

So if I am here to ruin the life of the 2 little ones, please, I can die.

I'm not killing myself, but you can, you gave me life, you can take my life because I want the best for them.

If the best for them is without me, I want that.

And I expected to an accident or not awake the next day, but I awoke and I said, oh Lord, So you are giving me a chance.

And I remember praying and Lord gave me this quote.

This quote made an impression in my life.

As you take hold of the work of helping your children to serve God, the most provoking trials will come.

But do not lose your hold, cling to Jesus, he says, let him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with me, and he shall make peace with me, Isaiah 27 verse 5.

Difficult will arise, you will meet with obstacles, but look constantly to Jesus.

When an emergency arises, ask, Lord, what shall I do now?

If you refuse to fret or scold, listen to this, if you refuse to fret or scold, listen to this, if you refuse to fret or scold, the Lord will show you the way.

He will help you to use the talent of speech in so Christ-like a way that peace and love will reign in the home.

And I said, Oh Lord, so there is a way if I refuse.

I had to surrender daily, surrender hourly, minutely, I don't know if we have this word, and secondly, I have to be surrendered to God, otherwise I will lose.

So I have several things that encourage me.

My husband was a huge encouragement because I was the 1 more with the children and he was like, he had to work and he will come home, so he was encouraging to me.

He said many times, this time will pass, believe me.

Daniel Nicholls

Institutional Farming: The Why

Yeah, so for those of you who don't know me, my name is Daniel Nichols.

I am the Agriculture Director at Holbrook Indian School.

I have had a very positive experience with institutional farming and I have several people that I know personally who have had very negative experiences with institutional farming.

Okay, so I don't have rose-colored glasses.

This is not secondhand information that I'm getting.

These other people, I have spoken with them directly about their experiences and the things that they struggled with in that context.

So that being said, from what I've seen from the conversations I've had with other people who have worked in an institutional setting is the biggest reason, if you get down to the very core of it, is that the farm and the institution could not answer this question.

Okay, and if they could, they maybe didn't communicate with each other about their answer to this question.

Now, so just curious, I know 2 of you are going to raise your hands, but have any of you worked on or are currently working on a farm at an institution that would be an academy, lifestyle center, any sort of ministry that has another function that also has a farm?

How many of us have worked for an institution, but we were in an administrative position and that institution had a farm?

Okay, I'm gonna be asking for your input, especially Okay All right So here we go.

By the way, I am going to save questions for the end, but I'm going to ask for your input and I'll repeat what you said for the recording.

What other reasons can we think of in one-sentence answers that institutions should have farms?

Is that to make money for the institution?

A Method, a place for students to learn skills and many things that they would not otherwise be able to learn in a classroom.

A place to build character and grow closer to God.

So he placed Adam and Eve in a garden as he thought it was a place he could teach them.

Could be a welfare way to help the poor so they can come in and learn and be empowered, kind of like what you did in your mission trip.

I'm sorry, as a way to help the poor in the community.

So we've already got a lot of the reasons and then we've actually mentioned a couple reasons that we're going to talk about in here as well.

So here you guys put hit on on most of these, okay?

So, financial considerations, educational, food for students and guests, outreach, it's the blueprint.

I knew that answer was going to be on here.

So let's start with that 1 and let's see what Sister White does say.

I hope you can all read it reasonably well.

Working the soil is 1 of the best kinds of employment, calling the muscles into action and resting the mind.

Studying agricultural lines should be the A, B, and C of the education given in our schools.

This is the very first work that should be entered upon.

Our schools should not depend upon imported produce for grain and vegetables and the fruit so essential to our health.

Our youth need an education in felling trees and tilling the soil as well as in literary lines.

Okay, and there was a little there's a lot more into that quote, but I'm trying to bring it down as as little as I can.

Okay, because we're gonna look at another quote here.

It is God's plan that agriculture should be connected with the work of our sanitariums and schools.

Our youth need the education to be gained from this line of work.

Okay, so we have the youth need the education gained from agricultural work.

Had there been agricultural and manufacturing establishments connected with our schools and had competent teachers been employed to educate the youth in different branches of study and labor, devoting a portion of each day to mental improvement and a portion to physical labor, there would now be a more elevated class of youth to come upon the stage of action to have influence in molding society.

Many of the youth who would graduate at such institutions would come forth with stability of character.

I know I read that fast, but I hope you could follow along because it's up there on the screen.

So physical labor and building of care, aids in building of character.

All right, exercise and open air should be prescribed as a life-giving necessity and for such exercise there is nothing better than the cultivation of the soil.

So I take this kind of thing with a grain of salt, by the way.

If I were in your position, I would want to write down all the references and then go read the entire chapter.

So I can tell you then the context of this particular quote she's talking about sanitariums and she says that we should be planting flower gardens not only at sanitariums for the healing and for the beautification of the campus and the premises, but for the students as well at schools, that schools should be beautiful and have flower gardens, okay?

How many of us market gardeners have that on our mind when we're talking about this subject, okay?

So we have to take everything into account.

If we're gonna come with the Sister White Says So reason, then we need to read everything Sister White says and realize that market gardens are only part of the picture.

Okay, she talks about beautifying our campus with flowers because of the reasons of giving the eyes something else to look at.

So I'm going to get you here in a second.

I do want to remember that I'm going to ask for input at certain times and then at the end if you have questions about the material itself I'll be happy to answer them Later on so it is prescribed to patients as an outdoor form of exercise.

So in itself, the beauty of nature leads the soul away from sin and worldly attractions and toward purity, peace, and God.

Institutional Farming: The How

Father in heaven, thank you again for the opportunity to meet and consider these things that are so vital.

And we thank you for your guidance with us, your presence with us through this conference, and I ask for further guidance.

I ask for wisdom that I don't have, and I ask for your presence that I may gain something from the wisdom that's collectively accumulated in this room and that we all might be able to be encouraged.

So we thank you that we can ask for these gifts in Jesus name.

So as mentioned, these are intended to stand alone.

So if you missed the first session on this, you're good.

Although it will give you a little extra context if you were to go back and listen to the recording.

So we're going to talk about institutional farming.

There's communication challenges that have led to a situation where institutional farming seems to have kind of left a sour taste in some mouths on both sides of the equation.

So as I had mentioned in the previous session, it's not something that's going to be fixed overnight.

I don't have any delusions that these 2 presentations at Ad Agra are going to fundamentally change the way that institutional farming is being viewed within Adventism.

But I do hope that it's going to start a conversation that will continue in other institutions and grow out from there.

There's, I will mention the same handout that we talked about that I would encourage you to take and download and print out and sit down with your administrative team if you work on a farm or if you work at an institution that has a farm.

But we're not going to go too much into the why because we need to talk about the how.

If you start worrying too much about how and you don't know why, You're not going to get very far.

It's like that in the Krishna experience.

Okay, we know that I should do such and such and such thing, right?

If we trace it back to the why, we can actually gain enough insight.

And by God's grace, we reach a point in our experience where we can recognize this all has to, like, all of the things God wants for us are actually for our benefit, right?

But then it's just like anything else too, where you can trace it back to motivation.

Am I charitably giving so that I can put it on my tax return?

Or am I charitably giving because I genuinely believe in the cause that I'm giving to.

Does that mean that I can't now put it on my tax return?

I'll let you answer that question for yourself.

I don't want to be the Holy Spirit for you, okay?

We have to have a clear understanding of the motivation for why we're going to do what we're going to do.

So, the why is going to determine the how.

If your farm has an educational focus and your farm does not have a profit and productivity focus, and productivity can include feeding the students, productivity can include providing food for the cafeteria.

Okay, it doesn't have to mean your farm is making a profit.

It could just mean that you're focusing on productivity to the point that you lose the educational focus.

Okay, so if your focus, if you know that your why is educational and your parameters for determining whether or not your farm is successful are focused on the educational side of things, then you know that your farm is successful when you are accomplishing those goals.

And how you're going to operate your farm is going to be determined by what those goals are With me so far Paid student workers versus an unpaid vocational program.

These are things to start considering now.

So we're going to look at the nuts and bolts All right If you have paid student workers, they cannot operate machinery.

There are a lot of limitations to what students are allowed to do if they're being paid.

There are much less limitations to what students are allowed to do if they are part of a vocational program and it's educational and they're not getting paid.

Okay, so you start running into limitations depending on what you're going to do.

That's The laws for that are going to be different within each state, within each organization.

If you're a conference run school, you need to run things through Adventist Risk Management.

If you're a self-supported school, you need to communicate with the organization that you're insured by.

If you're self-insured, you need to find a way that these things actually fit into your bylaws.

So you need to understand the context for your individual organization.

But whether or not you're gonna have paid student workers on the farm, you need to keep in mind the kinds of limitations you're gonna run up against.

If you're wanting to produce a certain amount, but you have unpaid laborers who you're trying to just teach about gardening, then those things don't necessarily always go together.

You might not get the production that you're hoping for, and you might be putting so much pressure on the students to accomplish the work that you're trying to educate them on that they're not going to enjoy gardening.

Yeah, they're not going to enjoy gardening.

And this is going to be the, oh, I have to go to gardening class again.

So vocational students can operate machinery in most cases.

I mean you want to stick a 16 year old on a tractor, they can't be a paid worker in most cases.

If education is the primary goal, interdepartmental opportunities can be sought out more easily.

If you are trying to produce veggies, it's a lot harder to get your science teacher to work with you or to take the lesson plan from your science teacher and incorporate that into what you're doing in the garden.

And you don't even have to get your science teacher to come out to the garden, though that would be great.

I've talked to schools that do that, and that's fantastic.

That might be a goal if you have an educational focus in your school, but you need to keep in mind that that time that you're spending with your science teacher, you're not cultivating.

Maybe there's somebody weeding your lettuce, but you're not as the gardening teacher.

So there needs to be less pressure on the productivity side if you're emphasizing the educational side.

So your why, you're starting with the why, that's going to determine where your focus is going to be and you get to focus on that without pressure of going the other way.

Okay, so the farm institution relationship.

How does the farm and the institution relate to each other?

How the farm fits into the institution's mission will determine how the farm fits into the institution itself.

Okay, and specifically what we're going to be referring to here is we're going to talk about the lease model, which has become slightly more popular in recent years.

And we're going to talk about the farm being an actual department of the organization, whether it's a lifestyle center or a school or anything else.

So, with the lease model, you've got a farm that's a separate organization.

It could be a for-profit business, could be a nonprofit.

And they lease land from the school and they operate independently, but they are connected.

And ideally, if you've got this type of situation, they are united in mission.

Okay, so the farm and the school support each other in their mission.

If it's a department, the farm is fully a part of the institution, okay?

The finances of the farm are part of the institution's budget, okay?

Series

True Education and Agriculture

Institutional Farming: The Why

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Home Gardening

Every Seed Sown is a Harvest

49m

Short Course: Beginning Market Farming

Beginning Market Farming- Part 1

44m

Session 3

Pick, Pack, and Wash: Challenges and Solutions

1h 2m

Business & Ministry

Hosting Interns

1h 5m

Starting a Market Garden

Can You Grow Lettuce, Kale, Thin-Skinned Cucumbers and Other Cooler Loving Veggies in the South during the Heat of the Summer?

52m

Home Gardening

4- Steps to Productive Soil

1h

True Education

Ask the Teacher

1h 6m

Specialty Crops

Healthy Profits: Growing Ginger and Turmeric

1h 2m

The Business of Farming

03 Business Basics

48m

Ag and Your Health

Best Herbal Remedies for Common Ailments Part 2

1h 1m

Plenary

Agriculture As Evangelism

1h 20m

Special Interests

Microgreens the Next Level

57m

Sound Doctrine