A Modest Proposal for the LCMS - To Be Emulated by WELS And the Little Sect on the Prairie. JBFA Is the Chief Article: Boycott the Emmaus Conference

Matt Harrison, LCMS President

Matt Harrison does not want to be in a synod that allows Matt Becker (Valparaiso U.) to go unpunished for having the same doctrine as Dave Behnke and a bunch of other Missouri clergy. However, he does not want to quit, so someone has to go.

I have a modest proposal for rectifying the issues in the Missouri Synod. Similar actions would benefit the mummified ecclesiastics in the ELS and WELS.

• Restore justification by faith as the Chief Article of the Christian Religion, on which the Church stands or falls, the Master and Prince, the judge of all articles.
• Repudiate Universal Objective Justification and give those charlatans, wolves, and peculators their walking papers.
• Treat all the entertainment, seeker service, CoWo, clown ministries as the justification by faith, liturgical worship leaders have been treated.
• Tell the truth about CFW Walther serving as Bishop Stephan's bulldog and pimp, until CFW organized a mob to steal all of the bishop's possessions, gold, books, and land - kidnapping the man at gunpoint.
• Demand a refund for all synodical funds siphoned off for tuition at Fuller Seminary, Trinity Divinity, Mars Hill, and the Drive Conferences.

UOJ Stormtroopers have been pacifying
areas of unrest for years, and yet the conflict grows.
Perhaps the synod slaves have opened their eyes to the fraud.

Aiming at the Cold Loving Crops - Carrots, Lettuce, Spinach, Garlic

Some pooh-pooh companion gardening,
but I believe it works, since opposites tend to team up.

Gurney's Seed Catalog sends me daily emails, as the other gardening suppliers. 

The daily message is - get ready for planting the cold tolerant seeds. Some tolerate a little frost. Others get better, when mature, after a frost. Carrots fit both categories. They grow for two years, so they can remain in the ground all winter and get sweeter from the cold (normally protected by straw bales on top). That sounds like a lot of extra work, so the old Adam or inner Maynard G. Krebs rebels.

Nevertheless, carrots are an ideal crop for the gardener, even the beginner. My favorite brand is - fresh from the garden. They are pretty good from the produce section of the stores, but they get old too fast in the icebox. Pulled from the soil and washed off, they are crunchy, sweet, and fun to eat. The aromatic greens add to the enjoyment. 

Rabbits like the greens, not the carrot, a fact destroyed by Bugs Bunny and his ever-present carrot.

Carrots are also fun because thinning means eating. Now many plants can be harvested and enjoyed when young - corn, berries, sunflowers, peas (sorta), pumpkins? But miniature carrots are fun to eat when thinning the row. If they come out relatively clean, eat them on the spot. If you are blessed with clay soil, wash them under the faucet for an hour, then take them inside and wash them again, then enjoy them. 

Spinach and peas can be planted at the same time, very early. I have heard of peas planted in late fall. I planted the spinach crop in late fall and expect to see it really growing in March, perhaps in February if we keep getting warm weather.

Frost experience is key to a gardener's understanding. The first to die from a frost are the egg plants and tomatoes, both nightshades. Pumpkins cease their efforts at world domination from the first heavy frost.

Those frost-killed items are plants we save for later efforts in the season..

The plants that  love cold and thrive in it are going to be relatively bug free if planted before the last frost. This year  I am pushing the frost limits as much as possible, since early planting will be greatly rewarded later. I can get several crops fruiting in succession and get more growth from long-term heavy feeders like pumpkins and gourds.

Expanding the Aqueduct - To the Backyard, Compost, and Row of Roses

Watering and mulching encouraged wild strawberries to
race along the base of the house. They fruited all summer long,
doubtless because birds harvested them regularly.

Some creature chewed off the ends of three soaker hoses, so I bought a new one at the hardware store, and added it to one on top of the  chain-link fence. The original one reached all the way to the back, and was handy for watering the gourds and beans last year. One bonus was sending the wild strawberries along the back of the house, since they had water and Jackson Mulch to help them get started. One plan is to develop as many wild berries as possible, to provide extra food for the birds.

We already had half the peas planted along the fence and a wide row of black oil sunflowers under the mulch in the back yard. The whole area is planted already with Butterfly Bushes, so I ran the new soaker hose along the ground.

Butterfly Bushes are loved by hummingbirds and butterflies.

My earliest lesson in gardening was - water the newly planted seeds. The soil and the mulch probably have enough moisture, but I wanted a good start to convert the snacking qualities of the new seed into something less desirable and more productive in the long run - sunflower plants. The question will be how well they survive the cold nights of February.

Our helper realizes how much good the Jackson Mulch has done. In the future corn patch, the ground gives way, as if it were newly turned over. But of course - it is. The soil creatures stayed relatively active all winter because they had a thick blanket of newspapers and mulch above them. That also provided food and moisture for them to work. No one walked on it, so soil was not compressed. When the time comes, we can drag a three-toothed hoe through the patch, create places for corn, and get the crop going.

We will not have to:

1. Dig through tough, dry soil.
2. Fertilize.
3. Rototill.
4. Weed.
5. Wait for osterized soil to finish decomposing its ground-up grass and creatures.
6. Let fungi build their endless filaments of food.

Water promotes growth and decomposition, and decomposition provides food. When more food is provided, many more creatures great and small grow in the same area. The food chain begins at the bottom, at the microscopic level, and builds from there.

Butterfly Weed is loved by Monarchs.