The Wealth of June

I’ve learned about a certain kind of wealth that cannot be counted.

It arrives quietly.

Not in a bank account, nor in a brokerage statement, nor in the figures of a balance sheet. It arrives in the form of grass rising nearly faster than the eye can measure. It arrives in lambs that only yesterday seemed fragile and uncertain but now run across the hillsides with the confidence of creation itself. It arrives in long evenings when the sun lingers over the western ridge and the chores stretch pleasantly into the fading light.

June is the month when the farm begins to repay faith.

Not money, necessarily. Faith.

All winter we fed hay into hungry mouths. We repaired fences in cold winds. We worried over ewes, watched weather forecasts, and carried water through mud and ice and snow. Every act was an investment in a future that had not yet appeared.

Now that future stands before us.

The pastures are green and bursting. The sheep are thriving. The swallows have returned to the barn. Even the old maple trees seem to have found renewed vigor after another brutal Lake-Effect winter.

Walking these fields in June, I am reminded that farming is among the few remaining occupations where a man can still witness the direct conversion of sunlight into food.

The grass reaches upward toward the sun. The sheep harvest the grass. The family gathers around the table. Culture is built and transferred to new generations.

The chain is simple enough for a child to understand, and yet profound enough to occupy a lifetime with reflection.

Modern life works very hard to conceal such relationships. We purchase food from stores, energy from utilities, and entertainment from glowing screens. The origins of things become hidden from us. We become consumers of effects while forgetting their causes.

That process if the opposite here at the ranch.

Here, causes are difficult to ignore.

The pasture teaches patience because no amount of wishing can accelerate growth. The sheep teach humility because they care little for theories and much for whether the forage is actually good. The seasons teach acceptance because they arrive according to God's schedule rather than our own.

Perhaps this is why so many people feel restored after spending time on a farm. It is not merely the scenery. It is the reintroduction of reality.

The land is stubbornly real.

If a fence is broken, the sheep will find it.

If the soil is neglected, the pasture will reveal it.

If stewardship is practiced faithfully, the land will eventually reveal that as well.

The rewards are seldom immediate. They arrive slowly, often years after the original effort. A pasture improved this year may not fully express itself for several seasons. A tree planted today may shade grandchildren not yet born.

This delayed gratification is one of the farm's greatest gifts. It trains the soul to think beyond itself.

I have been reflecting on this while working on the old farmhouse.

The house was built in 1849. Generations have passed through its doors. Children were born there. Meals were shared there. Prayers were offered there. Men and women labored to preserve it long before I ever walked its halls. Alexander Hamilton’s wife would live another six years after this old farm house was built. It’s seen civil war, world wars, cold wars. It’s seen moon landings, nuclear disasters, the industrial revolution, the technological revolution, the free love movement, the advent of Artificial Intelligence, and it has so far touched three different centuries.

Now its care falls to us as stewards.

There are moments when the work feels overwhelming. Plumbing, windows, paint, drainage, heating systems—an endless list of tasks demanding attention and a budget thin as hornets nest paper.

Yet there is also a quiet privilege in being merely the current steward of something older than oneself.

The same could be said of the farm.

We speak often about ownership in this country, but ownership is perhaps too strong a word. The land was here before us. By God's grace it will remain after us. What we truly possess is a temporary responsibility.

A lease, more than a deed.

June makes this easier to remember because everything appears so alive.

The fields are not asking to be conquered. They are asking to be tended.

The sheep are not machines for producing lamb. They are living creatures entrusted to our care.

Even the food that arrives on our table carries a story.

A lamb chop is not merely protein. It is the culmination of sunshine, rainfall, healthy soil, perennial grasses, attentive shepherding, and ultimately the mysterious generosity of creation itself.

When viewed this way, gratitude becomes almost unavoidable.

This is one reason ancestral food matters to me.

Not because it is fashionable. Not because it fits neatly into a dietary tribe. But because it reconnects nourishment with reality.

A meal built from pasture-raised lamb, eggs gathered that morning, vegetables from the garden, and butter from our friends down the roadis more than nutrition. It is participation in a local ecology. It is membership in a place, in a people. It is presence.

And perhaps that is what so many people hunger for today, even more than food itself. Presence, Belonging.

Belonging.

To a family.

To a community.

To a landscape.

To a story larger than one's own ambitions.

June offers all of these in abundance.

The temptation, of course, is to rush ahead. To think already of autumn markets, winter hay, next year's breeding plans, future projects, future worries.

The farm requires such planning.

But it also invites a different discipline.

To stand still for a moment.

To watch the lambs grazing in evening light.

To listen to the wind moving through the pasture.

To recognize that not every blessing must be converted into a strategy.

Some blessings are simply meant to be received.

The grass is growing.

The flock is healthy.

The kiddos are playing outside until dusk.

The farmhouse is slowly coming back to life, one nail at a time.

For one June evening on a high hill above Lake Erie, that is wealth enough.