Hello, dear friends, I have moved this blog about our strawberry farm here.  Thanks! Sarah

10 Reasons Why We Love the Karen Refugees of Willmar!

We met the Karen people from Burma/Myanmar 3 years ago when they first came with Nancy Snyder of Grace Baptist Church in Willmar to glean pick. We started hiring them to work for us in 2015-- WOW!  Check out 10 ways they've blessed us:

1. They pick so much, so fast, that they are racing to grab boxes and hoping we don't stop them from picking more!

2.  They ask permission to pick what we call weeds, in order to make soup.  Um...YES! Take as many as you want!

3.  My American teen employees went from a daily picking average of 40 pounds to 80 pounds after watching and copying the Karen picking style! 

4. They encouraged me to try new and interesting foods from the Happy Family Grocery Store in Willmar.  Sticky rice and Pad Thai sauce were a hit, jalapeno-flavored seaweed chips were not!

5. Grace Baptist Church in Willmar, that they call home, is so bursting with new life that they built an addition this summer.  I attended a church service there this fall and loved the way the English and Karen languages are beautifully blended in both scripture reading and song.  

6. They prayed for our son when he was sick last winter.

7. They wear colorful red clothing that looks gorgeous in the strawberry patch! 

8. They came to our house to Christmas carol in their native language.  They love to sing praises to God!

9. The younger ones who know English cheerfully help me communicate with those who don't. 

10.  They will come and glean pick through areas of the field that we are ready to shut down for the season!

      Did you know that there are now over 300 Karen people in Willmar?  They are refugees from Burma/Myanmar, a country that has been ripped apart by 60 years of devastating civil war.  Many of the Karen people have been living in refugee camps in Thailand for up to 35 years.  About 50,000 Karen have been resettled in Canada, Australia, some European countries and the USA.       Minnesota has the largest Karen population in the USA, They come here by their personal request through the UN to get freedom from the meager life in the refugee camps and educate their children.  They repay the US government for flight travel here.  

        About 15%  of the Karen people are  Christian, with a Baptist affiliation, due to the way God blessed the efforts of Adoniram Judson, a Baptist missionary of nearly two centuries ago!    There are now six Baptist churches in the Twin Cities that hold church services in both Karen and English.  The Willmar church is unique in that the Karen and English speaking people have chosen to worship together.   

        Ron & Nancy Snyder have seen the hand of God move in their church over the past four years, as they went from a small congregation to a place bursting at the seams with people on fire for God.  Many people have come alongside them as they work to integrate the Karen people into life in Minnesota through English classes, Christmas gifts, business advice and support, and Biblical mentoring.  

       You can learn more about the Karen people here

or find out how you can participate in what is going at at Grace Baptist Church of Willmar, on N.Hwy 71/23 by Sunray Square. 

                                                       Phone: 320-231-0863

Address: 4307 18th Street NE
(Mail: PO Box 169)
Willmar, MN 56201pastor@gracebaptistwillmar.com

Brouwer Berries has been so blessed by the Karen refugees!  Merry Christmas to all, and thanks for taking the time to read this!

Not your typical corn and soybeans crop rotation!

We are surrounded by corn, bean and sugar beet fields, so we know the rhythm of the corn & beans crop rotation in the mid-west.  On our strawberry farm, we also rotate crops, but it looks nothing like our neighbors'!  We plant baby strawberry plants every spring.  It takes about an hour to do 1000 plants, if all of us work together.   This spring, we planted 33,000! 

 Two of us sit on the red planting machine, loading the little plants into the wheel, which carries the plant down to the ground and firmly places it into the soil.  Can you tell the girls don't mind missing a few days of school to plant? 

 A third person walks behind to make sure the plant is placed properly.  If the roots are sticking up, or if the crown is covered, the third person fixes it. The black circle hanging up behind the girls is a roll of irrigation tube.  As the baby plants go into the ground, the drip irrigation tube is placed into the ground beside them.  

The water barrels on the front of the tractor are delivering a gush of water down through the irrigation tubes to the plants.  There are nutrients and vitamins mixed with the water to give the plants a good, strong start -- kind of like Miracle-Gro for strawberries.  

Breaktime is the best part of planting! The kids get pretty much whatever they want in terms of junk food to help motivate them as the days get long.  They rocket back to the house in the golf cart to fetch ice cream bars, candy, hot dogs, or whatever else their heart's desire.  

Within a few weeks, the strawberry plants have hopefully established themselves and started sending out blossoms.  In order to encourage plant growth, all of these blossoms need to be clipped off.  The kids get to miss more school!  We need to do every plant once a week for about 3 weeks before the plant finally figures out that it is supposed to send out plant runners instead of blossoms.

The rest of the summer, we try to keep ahead of the weeds... we aim to weed about an hour a day, but we don't always hit that goal.  The kids get tired, and goofy, but they are good sports about it.  We play word games and compose songs to make the time pass.  We always end with a root beer float or ice cream bar.

In late October, the baby plants go into dormancy,   Dan covers them up with a nice blanket of straw to protect them from the coming winter, and the kids do a happy dance knowing that they can finally stop weeding.

The strawberries rest under the snow and straw, waiting, like the rest of us, for spring.  

In the spring, Dan uses our EcoWeeder to push the straw off the strawberry plants and into the path.  The straw will conserve water, inhibit weeds, and keep our customers and strawberries clean during harvest.  

The mature plants will grow up towards the sun, and send out beautiful white blossoms. 

The blossoms will develop into strawberries, and with sun and rain, they will ripen.

Finally, the strawberries are ready for harvest!

After strawberry season, we will keep the field weeded until late October, cover them with straw again, and then next year we'll get a second picking of strawberries off the same rows.  

After the second picking, we get rid of the strawberry plants.  Why?  Why would we do that after all that work?  Well, the weeds have usually gotten ahead of us, and the soil needs a break.  We have tried to keep fields a third, and even a fourth year, but the amount of berries we get off them does not even cover our weeding and watering costs.   So, we take out the plants and  and seed the field with cover crops such as hairy vetch, rye, and sorghum Sudan. The cover crop will put much-needed nutrients back into the soil. Cows graze the cover crop, adding their own form of nutrients:) 

The land will get two growing seasons in cover crop before we plant strawberries into it again.  Thus, each block of land is part of a five year rotation: Baby strawberries for year one, mature strawberries for years two and three, and cover crop for years four and five.  

 It is the rhythm of our farm, where we've decided to grow strawberries as naturally as possible, and in a way that our entire family can participate.  It is not your typical corn and soybean rotation! 

Spring at Brouwer Berries

Spring on the farm means new life!

 Back in March, we welcomed a baby Hereford.  He's a strong young calf.

 Since the pastures weren't green yet, we kept him in the barn with his momma for a few weeks, gaining strength and size that will help keep him from being a target for coyotes once he's in the field.

 Next, we bought two momma pygmy goats.  The previous owner told us he "thought they were pregnant."  Two days later, one of them had a kid!

 She's a darling little goat, and has a really cute little bleat.

 Our oldest son came home for a weekend and used his fire-fighting certification to do a prescribed burn in our wildlife area.  It was an exciting conflagration that slowed traffic for hours.

 Our chickens have been delighted with the warmer weather, and have been excitedly roaming around the yard.  It's been getting harder and harder to find their eggs!

 It's been fun to get to know our goats better!

 Little Ember, the new baby, has already doubled in size in two weeks, and is happily hopping around her pen.

Spring means time to prune the raspberries.

I think pruning is fun, because unlike weeding, it only has to be done once per year.

Soli Deo Gloria; PICU Peace

This is not a post about our strawberry farm.  This is a tribute to God for his care in December of 2015 when we ended up at Children's Hospital in Minneapolis for 3 weeks with our 4 year old son. There are many ways this tribute could be written.  It could be to our family and friends who stepped in and took care of the farm and the other children.  It could be to my parents and sisters who came from Ontario and Pennsylvania to support us in this hour of need.  It could be to the fantastic medical team and hospital staff that cared for our son, or to the Ronald McDonald House that provided for Dan and I.  

Please read this knowing that we are deeply, deeply grateful for all of those pieces of the puzzle, but the piece of the puzzle that I describe below is the one that causes us the most wonder: the connection between YOUR prayers and the events that unfolded in the PICU ward.   If you are one of the people who prayed for our son, this is your story as much as it is ours. 

    

Have you ever been on a Tilt-a-Whirl?  On a Tilt-a-Whirl, you are belted into a cage, you feel things coming at you too quickly for you to respond or process, and the world spins crazily around you, leaving you gasping for air, and flung from moment to moment.  December 7, Dan and I stepped onto a medical tilt-a-whirl.

We took our 4 year old son to the local ER because his breathing was deteriorating, but it was different from previous asthma attacks.  We thought it was less severe than prior episodes, and that we'd be home soon.  Instead, a chest X-ray revealed that his left lung was completely filled with fluid.  The pediatrician was summoned, but she told us there was no way she could handle it at this hospital.  Arrangements were begun to send us to a larger hospital, but the doctor at that hospital took the time to look at the X-rays and declared that he could not handle it either.

We were taken by ambulance to Children's Hospital in Minneapolis.  We went from the ER to the critical care unit, where the doctor there declared he couldn't handle it in that room, either.  We were moved to pediatric intensive care. (PICU)  All these transitions took about 15 hours, and our son went into respiratory failure.

The doc team filled the room and put him on a ventilator to keep him alive, inserted a tube through his ribs and into his left lung to drain the fluid, and sutured a line into his neck for medicines.  We were told, at about 8 pm on Monday, December 8 that after a few days of fluid drainage they'd remove the tubes and we could go home.

Back home, our small town was disturbed by a great deal of turmoil.  There had been a vehicle crash involving a missionary family on leave and our daughter (as a passenger) the day before.  A middle-aged man had had a stroke that morning.  A young lady in a neighboring town committed suicide, and our son was in critical condition.  Two ladies from church called a prayer meeting of the women of our town to intercede for the community, and specifically for the people involved.  I've had this prayer meeting described to me many times in the past two months, but it really defies description.  All the women I've spoken with agree that it went for over three hours by the clock, but that at the time they would have sworn it only lasted about ten minutes.  They were praying for those of us that were in critical condition, but many other prayers were answered, on the spot, for themselves.  One lady paced the room calling out "Breathe!  Breathe!" for nearly an hour, not knowing that our son had lost his breath and did indeed need the breath of God to sustain him at that exact time.  Another told me that a specific prayer of hers, from five years prior, was answered.  Another wrote that "it was amazing to see the Spirit leading the exact prayers that needed to be said."

In the PICU room, Dan and I sat, shivering and shaking, and wondering how to share what was going on.  I prayed long and hard over our first Facebook post, searching the Bible for words to share what we needed.  I posted, "Breathe life into our lungs, so we can shout your name!" Psalm 80 (The Message)  That theme of BREATHE was God ordained.  Who needs breath?  Our son, or the people of the town we came from?  Our son, or each of us, in need of the breath of God to fill our lives with His power?

Our shivering and shaking didn't get any easier as the docs came in around midnight, telling us that our son's lungs, prone to asthma attacks, did not like the two tubes and had seized up.  Starting at about 5 am the next day, a stream of doctors and specialists started coming in, each one telling us about lab work they were doing, and things they were working on to figure out what caused the intensity of his condition and how they'd try to fix it.  They plied us with dozens of questions about our family medical history, and every aspect of his health from pregnancy to present.  He's a 5th child!  I could barely remember his birth weight!

Things went from bad to worse the next two days.  The docs asked if we'd immunized our son.  Yes. They told us there were hardly any signs of antibodies in his blood.   They decided to give him a massive infusion of the part of the blood that fights infection.  This infusion was culled from the blood of ten thousand different donors.  Would we sign off on any liability for infected blood?  Yes.  It took four hours to infuse him.  They filled his lungs with medicines and changed his position every few hours so that gravity would slosh the medicine around.  Up.  Down.  Side.  Lift. Adjust tubes.

Then alarms were going off everywhere, and the room filled with nurses.  People were rushing around while we sat in that corner, shivering and shaking.  One of the nurses paused long enough to say to us, in a voice of forced calm, "Oh, we just found out there is an air leak somewhere -- how lucky that we noticed!  We'll get this taken care of, don't worry."  A hole had developed in his lung and was leaking air into his heart and kidney area.  The room filled with the sounds of a large bubbler, as more bloody pink fluid was drained from his chest and we could watch a bubbling chamber that showed the rate that air was leaking out of his lungs.


That night, Wednesday, the ladies of our town had another prayer meeting.  Our missionary friend was a bit concerned going in, "How can they do intercessory prayer when they haven't learned about intercession yet?"  But she was encouraged by the Monday night prayer meeting, where clearly, intercession was happening.  One lady wrote detailed notes on the lesson: "Intercession carries burden with your prayer until answers come.  It is hearing God's voice on what you need to intercede for.  It doesn't always end in a physical blessing, but may be a blessing of spiritual authority that you gain."

The ladies of the community had a burden for our son, for their friend who'd had the stroke, for the community grieving the suicide.  They didn't just pray and then go home, they carried this burden with them, and to God, in prayer.

Dan and I have been humbled, over and over again, by the prayer burden people carried for us.  God laid it on their hearts, and they groaned to God with us.  One lady told me that her prayer at home was so intense "something would go through me, like in labor or something, a type of birthing."  This was only the second time in her life she'd had that experience in prayer.  A long-distance friend wrote that, "my middle daughter, aged 7, has been especially consistent in praying for (your son).  She prays that he'd "be able to breathe better and that he would keep smiling for his mama."  A homeschooling friend of mine told me that her young son prayed with incredible intensity, night after night, that God would place a "shield" around our son.  One of my sisters wrote, "We are praying for him constantly.  Our (daughter) is such a sensitive soul that she was in tears over it two bedtimes." Dozens upon dozens of people have told me how much they prayed for our son.

What happens when an entire community rises up as intercessors?  Women and children, Christian school and home school.  Church and family.

There's a catch in that lesson about intercession though.  The lesson notes of that night read that "intercession often requires suffering as Jesus, our ultimate example of Intercession, demonstrated for us on the cross.  Intercession is not for the selfish.  We will never be asked to do anything that hasn't already been done by Jesus."

Jesus died on the cross.  His father, friends and family watched him suffer and die.  Our little son lay on the table near death.  When I google the medical terms in his hospital notes "morbidity" and "fatality" come up frequently.  Dan and I were wracked with agony until Saturday, when I laid it at the foot of the cross.  For fifteen hours I fasted and prayed, asking God what He wanted me to learn.  I have pages of notes and words of the Bible that took on life and meaning.  They leapt up into my heart and understanding shone.

I can testify that when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we need fear no evil, for He is with us.  As I sat there, staring at the body of our son on the table, with heaven opened up on the other side, I released him to God.  Whether our child went to heaven, or stayed with us here on earth, it would be OK.  And God reminded me that when Jesus died, it wasn't a meaningless death -- it was for a reason.  God promised that if our son died, good things would come of it.

Sunday night, the ladies of our town had a third prayer meeting, this time inviting their husbands. I have not heard as many stories about that meeting, but Sunday night was a turning point in our PICU room.  The hole in our son's lung healed.  His asthma symptoms started relaxing their strangle-hold, and Monday morning, the docs started talking about pulling out the chest tube, and maybe the vent.

The first time they tried removing the vent, our son would not start breathing on his own.  They eased up on the sedation meds and tried again a few days later, with Dan and I holding on to his arms and legs and speaking words of peace and calm into him so that he would not thrash and cause damage.  Thursday afternoon, it was successfully pulled out, along with gobs of mucus and black goop.  Not long after that, he opened his eyes briefly, and we were able to take turns holding him in our laps for a while as he shook and shivered with narcotic withdrawal.

I'll bring you back now to the analogy of the tilt-a-whirl.  Dan and I were not blind to the prayers that were happening.  We were being flung around by the medical terminology and the gravity of the situation, but the hand of God held us firmly in place through the prayers of His people.

We were in the hospital a third week, this time in the recovery ward working with physical therapists, weaning his body off the meds, and easing him onto solid food.  He appears to be back to normal now.  His throat has healed from the extreme trauma.  The narcotics have worked their way out of his system.  His muscles and lungs are back to strength and functioning.

However, I don't think that Dan and I will be the same again, and we don't really want to be the same again.  It was awful, but it was wonderful.  To see God answer prayer so clearly and powerfully, to have an entire community moved to intercessory prayer, and to be given peace no matter what happens here on earth is amazing.

Soli Deo Gloria! To God alone be the Glory!  

Are you curious about physical changes we've made since coming home?  In the mornings, he gets a bowl of oatmeal with half a cup of frozen raspberries.  I add a liquid multi-vitamin/nutrient blend, two fish oil capsules, fluoride, Manuka honey, ALJ herbal respiratory support, probiotics, and soy milk.  I sit him on my lap and read stories to him while scooping one mouthful into him per page.  

I'm working on techniques to clear dust out of the air.  It's an uphill battle!  The air purifier we installed claimed it would run on Turbo a few hours, and then settle down to levels one or two.  The machine has been running on Turbo for two weeks straight!  I've tried to leave it in our son's bedroom at night, but it gives him nightmares and has him running into our room hollering about monsters.  Other things we are working on are cleaning chores that you perhaps do, but haven't been part of my routine - vacuuming mattresses and furniture weekly for instance. 

He's on pretty high doses of steroids 2-4 times a day, which has him bouncing off the walls with energy.  We're working with pediatric pulmonologists and immunologists to figure out how best to support his respiratory and immune systems. 

Our septic system backed up the week after we returned from the hospital, so we've had to empty our basement and put in a new mound system.  Two dumpster loads, 8 boxes to household hazardous waste, and a few trips to the thrift store later, I feel like I'm getting a handle on the basement.  Crazily, a hive of bees that is wintering over in our spare chimney found a way into our basement during a thaw last week, and now the floor is littered with dead and dying bees.  

Ah well, life is always an adventure, and we're pretty grateful to be in this part of our story instead of the very scary chapter in December.  If you've taken the time to read this lengthy epistle all the way to the end, you are probably one of the people who prayed for us, which means you are one of the heroes or heroines of this story, and so THANK-YOU!  You hold a special place in our hearts and I hope that we will get a chance to bless you someday as you have blessed us.