The Edwards family was interviewed by Catholic Rural Life for the Summer 2017 issue of Catholic Rural Life Magazine, “Eating is a Moral Act: Restoring Right Relationships with Food and Land”. Reproduced with permission.
In looking at the question of right relationships with food and the land, we came across many different stories and voices. Here, we highlight two faithful, Catholic farm families that we interviewed on the subject.
The Edwards Family
Lochiel Edwards, third generation farmer
CRL: In what ways have family farms changed in relation to the land?
Lochiel: We are grandchildren of the Great Depression.
That difficult time began, not with a stock market crash in 1929, but in the late teens and 1920’s on the Great Plains of North America. Our farmers were learning how to tend these relatively new lands, and mistakes were made. Unfamiliar weather and a shortage of resources and knowledge combined to create life-changing events for these farm families.
As in families everywhere and of every time, the effects of life events trickle down to infuse subsequent generations. Thus, my grandchildren are great, great grandchildren of the Depression. This will not define them to the extent it defined my father, and other events will come to eventually obscure the Dust Bowl long past.
CRL: How is farming related to spirituality?
Lochiel: In a way, farmers are afforded an easier path to spirituality. Their days begin and end as a narrative of Genesis, Chapter 1, and their lives, as the Book of Genesis. Working in harmony with the original creations of God defines their lives and the lives of their descendants. This connection to the earth is the constant we share, extending back to the first farmers many thousands of years ago.
CRL: What is the farmer’s relationship with food and the land?
Lochiel: Care for this earth is a common quality I find in farmers everywhere. Yes, mistakes are made and some are serious, but I have noticed that these are borne out of a shortage of either resources or knowledge—not greed or indifference. Their primary objective is to care for the land. The dust bowl days of nearly a hundred years ago proved that when the land suffers, farmers suffer. And, when farmers suffer, the land also suffers. The connection is that strong.
I find a second common quality, as well. Farmers have an almost irrational desire to feed others, and everyone! True, like Abraham, their first thought is to take care of the land and provide for their families. But ask a farmer what the far-reaching goal is, and he or she will reply, “to feed the world!” Borders and oceans draw no lines: all are included. Yes, there are exceptions—the few who mistreat creation for personal gain,
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