RESTORING CREATION

We believe that creation reveals what is sacred.

Before Greg & Mary owned the farm, it had been owned by dairy farmers and business owners as well as used as a junkyard for old cars. But before anyone ever owned it, it provided a home to the indigenous people belonging to a number of tribes and nations including the Myaamia, Kaskaskia, Adena, and Hopewell. We believe geographic space becomes spiritual space by receiving the energy of what happens there. Visitors to the farm comment often about the peace they feel when they drive onto the property. We consider ourselves stewards of this healing energy, believing it to be a legacy of the first peoples who lived on this land. Unlike the cars, which were eventually removed, (except for a few stray fenders and car parts in the creek), the spiritual energy of the land remains. Unfortunately, when the first peoples left, and then the farmers, and when the land was used as a junkyard, the birds and much of the wildlife also left. One of the joys at Tikkun Farm has been the return of the bird population from bright yellow goldfinches to deep red cardinals, black cap chickadees, barn swallows and even a few falcons.

What’s harder to see, but essential to the health of everything on the farm, is the community living in the soil. Diverse soil ecosystems govern the productivity of our land. Without the billions of bacteria, millions of fungi and protozoa, and the thousands of other critters living under our feet, nothing above ground would thrive. This micro-community transfers nutrients through the soil into the food we grow. How we farm the land supports or destroys this community.

For thousands of years farmers around the world, unaware of this soil community, have employed farming practices that devastate soil ecosystems, leading to the use of fertilizers and pesticides that further erode soil health.

Tikkun Farm restores creation using a diverse set of farming practices to replenish and reactivate the soil. Over time soil, water, vegetation, and productivity continuously improve. We incorporate permaculture practices, limit tilling, plant cover crops, compost, and rotate crops to increase food production and re-grow the topsoil. Learn more about how we are living into this part of our mission.

What’s true for the land also serves as a metaphor for all the healing taking place at Tikkun Farm. So much of what heals us lives within us already. Understanding that there is a devastated community living unseen in the soil, learning to respect it, to farming it using reparative practices and waiting patiently for it to recover and then thrive, teach us how to love and care for ourselves as we also heal. Realizing creation does not waste anything but instead transforms even the “trash” into something life-giving reminds us that the messes, struggles, and suffering in our lives can be transformed into wisdom and luminous beauty. Caring for the land can be the doorway to allowing ourselves to be cared for by practitioners who understand how trauma devastates the many emotional, spiritual, and biological systems within us. Caring for the land can give us courage and hope that our own unseen wounds can heal, and we too can thrive, becoming persons who contribute bountiful beauty to the world.

Communities that share our vision:
Polyface Farms  |  Organic Consumers  |  NewFarm Rodale Institute.