tschram

Ellen Davis wrote about meeting the expectations of the land, she said, “… agrarians know the land, not as an inert object, but as a fellow creature that can justly expect something from us whose lives depend on it.” Important in more than my Hebrew class was the comparison between the Hebrew word for ground or earth (’adāmâ) and the Hebrew word for man (’ādām). Understanding the land from that part of country is important because as Davis puts it, “Both words are related to ’ādōm, ‘ruddy’; in the Levant, [eastern part of the Mediterranean area] brownish red is the skin tone of both the people and the earth.” In Genesis 2:15, the writer says that man is put into the garden to “till it and keep it.” Davis unpacks this by digging into the Hebrew language again saying the verb used could also mean “working for the garden soil, serving its needs.” This made a huge difference to me when I was reading; it reminded me that we have been created to serve the earth.

With the weather beginning to shift to a more autumn-like feel, and hints of leaves changing color more each day, local area residents may be looking for ways to experience all the season has to offer in the local area. One opportunity to celebrate the season exists just outside Montevideo, a couple of miles off Highway 212. Sam’s Pumpkin patch is owned by 17-year-old Montevideo High School student Sam Ripley and is open this year for its second season. Ripley, knowing that the local area doesn’t have a lot of nearby fall family activities available, started brainstorming ideas for the venture a few years ago. “I have actually had this kind of idea for the last three or four years, but I’ve never really gotten into it before now because I was young enough that I didn’t fully understand everything I needed to do to get started,” Ripley said in an interview last fall. Now in the second year of business, Ripley has learned a lot from last year’s success and has added even more opportunities for a family adventure to the property. New games this year include a gaga ball pit, a life-sized Foosball game, a gravity- wagon basketball game, a life-sized billiards game, disc golf, Spikeball, four square, and a life-sized game of Sorry. Ripley has also added a gem mining feature, with an underground tank that pumps water up through a man-made 22-foot-long river with a circulation pump that allows for kids purchasing mining kits from the gift shop to do their own gemstone mining.