P U BL ISHE R
WHO WE ARE... From 2007 to 2012 we, the Millers, adopted our first three children, a preschooler on the autism spectrum and two babies with Down syndrome. We published our first issue of Plain Values in 2012 to highlight biblical ministries, share the beauty of adoption, and to cultivate anchored community. In 2018 we welcomed our fourth child in a surprise adoption, this time a baby with Mosaic Down syndrome. We homeschool our family and enjoy working together to grow and raise food on our twelve acre homestead.
Marlin Miller SA L E S A DV ISO R - O HIO
Matt Yoder SA L E S A DV ISO R - M IC HIA N A + P ENNSY LVANI A
Aaron Stutzman E DITO R IA L M A N AG E R
Nic Stoltzfus Q UA L IT Y A SSU RA N C E / BO O K K EEP I NG
Sabrina Schlabach
WHAT WE BELIEVE... Our values are plain values, steeped in the rich traditions of yesterday. We enjoy the simple things in life. Gathering eggs from the coop, getting our hands in the dirt to grow food, and cooking meals from scratch. Sometimes we sit around a fire and share life. We strive to walk humbly to strengthen authentic relationships with our families and neighbors. And, yes, we have taken a fresh pie to a front porch and surprised a friend… we didn’t even text them before! We just stopped by, walked up the steps, and knocked on the door! Just the way our grandparents used to do on a Sunday evening. They called it living in community. We seek to serve our neighbors. Plain Values began with a prayer, hoping to play a small role in connecting a child with Down syndrome to his or her forever family. We have checked that box twenty times—and counting—and we will not stop until the orphanages are empty! We will rest in Heaven!
P RO DU C T IO N M A N AG E R
Isaac Hershberger M U LT I- M E DIA P RO DU C T IO N
Seth Yoder O F F IC E M A N AG E R /C U STO M ER S ERVI C E
Jan Schlabach A P R IL A D C LO SE
March 8, 2023 WR IT E R – CO N F E SSIO N S O F A ST EWAR D
Joel Salatin WR IT E R – RO OTS + WIN GS
Rory Feek WR IT E R – T HE G RA N DFAT HE R EFFEC T
HOW YOU CAN HELP... Join us as we pursue a more authentic life. By subscribing to Plain Values, a portion of each subscription goes directly to Room to Bloom, our non-profit that supports children with special needs.
Brian Dahlen WR IT E RS – T HE RO U N DTA BL E
Jerry D. Miller & Ivan Keim WR IT E R – HO M E ST E A D L IV IN G
Melissa K. Norris
JOIN US FOR PORCH TIME! Every third Friday from 1:00pm – 4:00pm
Stop by, enjoy a cup of coffee or tea, sit on the porch, and visit for a while. We'd love to get to know you! We're located in the heart of Winesburg, Ohio—just down the street from the church.
WR IT E RS – T HE HE A L IN G L A N D
Shawn & Beth Dougherty WR IT E R – T HE WIDOWS PAT H
Ferree Hardy WR IT E R – HO N E ST CO N V E RSAT I O NS
Wendy Cunningham WR IT E R – R E M A R K A BL E JOY
Sabrina Schlabach WR IT E R – SE RV IN G O U R N E IG H B O R
Nic Stoltzfus CO N T R IBU T IN G P HOTO G RA PH ERS Millpond Photography Landon Troyer Photography Ashley Rivers Photography
Plain Values is published monthly by Plain Target Marketing, LLC. Please contact us with any questions. A DDR E SS
P.O. Box 201, 2106 Main Street Winesburg, OH 44690 P HO N E
FA X
330-601-6106
330-601-4099
E M A IL
reachout@plainvalues.com WE BSIT E
www.plainvalues.com This publication and its contents are © 2023, Plain Target Marketing, LLC. Individual copyrighted items, trademarks, etc. contained within are the property of their respective copyright holders. No part of this publication may be reproduced or redistributed by any means without authorization from the publisher. Publisher is not responsible for advertisers’ offers, products, or services, and publication neither expresses nor implies an endorsement. PLAIN VALUES
MARCH 2023
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March 2023 // Issue 117
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CONFESSIONS OF A STEWARD Fake Meat
ROOTS + WINGS Changing Lives... One Bite at a Time
COLUMN BY: JOEL SALATIN
COLUMN BY: RORY FEEK
Joel steps into the cultural divide to tackle a highly debated topic in our world today—the development and consumption of synthetically grown meat.
Marcy and Joey opened "Marcy Jo's Mealhouse" in early 2007, and nothing about Marcy's life today remotely resembles what it did when they turned on the “open” sign for the first time.
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HOMESTEAD LIVING The Art of Sourdough
THE HEALING LAND The Slack-End of the Year
COLUMN BY: MELISSA K. NORRIS
COLUMN BY: SHAWN & BETH DOUGHERTY
Sourdough bread is unique, delicious, and boasts numerous health and digestive benefits. However, the process of making your own can be daunting—but fear not! Melissa is here to help.
Even under the cold damp hand of March, we sense that the end of winter is near—and with that end, a new beginning. Mud will give way to growing things; spring will follow winter.
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ON THE COVER Joel Salatin, herald of regenerative farming and co-owner of Polyface Farms, doing what he does best—making livestock happy. photo © Millpond Photography
Room to Bloom Report One Minute with Marlin Remarkable Joy: The Wurdeman Adoption Story Sight and Sound Theatre: A Story of Deliverance & Faith
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THE GRANDFATHER EFFECT Part One – Prologue
THE ROUNDTABLE Amish Insights on: Restoration
WORDS BY: BRIAN DAHLEN
COLUMN BY: JERRY D. MILLER & IVAN KEIM
The beginning of a multi-part series with Brian Dahlen, from Moody Radio. Join him on a journey to uncover the mystery of generational sin through a family disownment from his grandfather.
Jerry D. Miller and Ivan Keim are back and excited to share their thoughts on the question: "What does restoration look like in your community?"
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THE WIDOWS PATH Loss & Legacy
HONEST CONVERSATIONS WITH WENDY God Gaps
COLUMN BY: FERREE HARDY
COLUMN BY: WENDY CUNNINGHAM
Each loss we suffer leaves us with a legacy. Have you ever thought about that? So often, people focus only on the loss, but on the flip side of that loss is a legacy.
"I was certain He was going to move mountains. And He’d better because there were quite a few blocking our path forward. I lovingly deemed these obstacles 'God gaps.'”
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One Minute with Marlin WHEN WINTER COMES, Lisa and I move our morning porch time together indoors. We sit, drink coffee, and talk as we watch the eastern sky brighten. December 20, last year, the sunrise was incredible with a massive pillar of light rising towards the zenith. From our little hilltop, the view was wonderful, and we began snapping a few photos to capture the Lord’s artwork. It reminded us of the Exodus, and we talked of what the pillars of flame and cloud might have looked like and the reality of seeing with your own eyes the one and only I AM. Up close and personal! It would be impossible to forget. The day came and went, only to find the sunset much the same! It was absolutely amazing to see the same rare phenomena happen twice on the same day. We tend not to over-spiritualize life, but it does cause us to pause and wonder what it means. If we take God’s sovereignty at face value, then there aren’t really any co-inkydinks, and we are in a world where He allows and causes things to happen as He sees fit in His perfect will. What an incredible truth that brings incredible peace! I could think about it all day! As always, may you find joy in the simple things. //
MARLIN MILLER publisher, always looking for more friends
One last thing—last month we forgot to give credit to the wonderful Michael Hayes for capturing the cover photo of Rory and Indiana in front of Hardison Mill School. We so appreciate all the hard work that he, and Rory, put into it.
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Confessions of a Steward JOEL SALATIN
COLUMN BY:
Fake Meat THE CURRENT DARLING of the industrial food system is fake meat or lab meat. Proponents argue that this will save the planet from the ravages of domestic livestock, offer better nutrition, and eliminate the ethical and moral dilemma of killing things for human sustenance. I’ll deal with the first two quickly to put attention on the third one, which can be a stumbling block for people of faith. The “animals are destroying the environment” mantra has numerous flaws, but the biggest one is that 500 years ago, the world had more pounds of animals on it than it does today, including people. In other words, if you could put all terrestrial non-plant life on a scale, the weight centuries ago is more than it is today. In fact, in the U.S., the pounds of domestic livestock have not changed in more than a century. In 1900, a third of the weight was in draft power: mules, horses, and oxen. Even with industrial factory farming, the total pounds of animals has not exceeded what it was in 1900. I’m including wildlife here as well. Clearly animals are not the problem. I agree that the protocols to raise animals in confinement are not ecologically beneficial but blaming animals for farmers’ failure is neither honest nor fair. Animals can be—and have been—grown in ecologically beneficial
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photos by Millpond Photography
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ways for millennia. The deepest soils on the planet are all under grasslands, not forestlands. The second argument is about nutrition. Supposedly red meat increases the risk of cardiovascular problems and colon cancer. The only problem with this notion is that America’s per capita consumption of beef has been falling annually for the last thirty years, while these diseases have been increasing. Without getting into the scientific nitty-gritty, the red meat = disease theory simply doesn’t stand the test of even cursory perusal. But what about this moral and ethical dilemma? It’s touted by fake meat proponents in every flier, every news interview. It’s a big deal. As a livestock farmer, I’ve certainly been accused of being a murderer or being unable to love because I kill animals. This sentiment is not going away; in fact, it’s getting stronger by the day. As a Christian, I really don’t like to be called a murderer. A bit of historical context can help us appreciate the roots of this issue. The year 1837 was an interesting confluence of three things. First, a British scientist named Charles Darwin set sail on The Beagle. Father of evolution, Darwin’s observations led him to conclude the biblical
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"As a livestock farmer, I’ve certainly been accused of being a murderer or being unable to love because I kill animals. This sentiment is not going away..." creation narrative is a myth and that humans evolved from monkeys. He took God out of life. The same year, an Austrian chemist named Justus von Liebig, trying to solve the soil fertility problem, used vacuum tubes to isolate nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus (NPK), announcing to the world that all of life is simply a rearrangement of these three elements. Think about how that supplemented Darwin’s ideas that God wasn’t necessary. Life was simply an inanimate pile of protoplasmic structures. The third 1837 occurrence was Cyrus McCormick’s invention of the reaper in his blacksmith shop on the family farm in Raphine,
Virginia. This is now viewed as the official start of the Industrial Revolution because it made the scythe obsolete. McCormick’s reciprocating cutter bar is still the backbone of modern grain and forage harvesting equipment. With Darwin’s Godless existence, Liebig’s lifeless existence, and McCormick’s mechanical invention, the new enemy of biblical faith was not paganism, animism, or pantheism; it was no-theism and a mechanical view of life. Gradually, life became less about biology and more about mechanics, physics, and chemistry. Today’s effort to take life out of food is a natural extension of taking biology out of life. We should not be surprised that artificial food follows artificial fertilizer. Our nation has embraced artificial food for some time, from squirtable cheese to high fructose corn syrup. The foundational idea that you can have life without death is not only fairly new in human history but is also fundamentally an assault on truth. Something has to die in order for something else to live. Everything is eating and being eaten. Lie down naked in your flower bed for a week and see if that’s not true. Or in the pig pen. Nothing provides a more poignant object lesson of Jesus’s sacrificial gift of life than when an animal gives its life for human sustenance. The problem is that our western culture does not ascribe spiritual and attitudinal protocols to our domestic livestock. The average person does not see farmers asking how to make happy pigs or how to respect the pigness of pigs, in normal agriculture. What the average person sees are agricultural experts seeking only four objectives: how to grow pigs fatter, faster, bigger, and cheaper. They aren’t asking how to make pigs happy. They view pigs as mobile piles of inanimate protein to be manipulated however cleverly human imagination can conceive. For folks who do think it matters how we treat pigs, such
thinking is egocentric, selfish arrogance in its worst manifestation. Too many Christians make fun of these folks who care, rather than repenting of our own disrespect and mindless exploitation of the beings God entrusted to our management. It’s not just nuts and bolts in a bucket; these are beings, much lower than humans, to be sure, but beings that need our stewardship nonetheless. No less than bumblebees and earthworms. The other issue that clouds thinking today is the ubiquitous disconnection from life and death. For the average person, pets represent the only animals in their personal frame of reference. When the only animal you ever encounter has a name and sleeps in your bed, it fosters a jaundiced view of animals in general. Suddenly every cow is a dog. Every chicken is a cat. Every pig is a pet gerbil. I’ve actually debated with people who said since I had no problem killing a chicken, I’d probably have no problem coming to their house and killing their cat.
"Too many Christians make fun of these folks who care, rather than repenting of our own disrespect and mindless exploitation of the beings God entrusted to our management."
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a music career was in what you might call a lull, she was quick to say, "Why not?" A few months later, they served their first customer; a neighbor named Danny Smith, who liked the restaurant and the food so much that the next time he showed up, he had a brand-new A/C unit on his shoulder. He'd seen how hot the kitchen got and wanted to try to help them the same way they were trying to help the community. Danny had grown up in our area and missed the days when neighbors and friends had a place to gather and drink coffee, shoot the bull, or find out if someone was in need of something. In no time, the back table of the cafe became his and a bunch of other old codgers' morning hangout. It didn't take long for the Mealhouse to begin to change the life of our little community. I'd been living at our farm for seven years by then and knew hardly any of my neighbors, and the cafe gave Joey and me—and Marcy—the opportunity to meet our neighbors and for them, in turn, to meet others. Soon, just like my sister's life, our little corner of the world was a little different, better than it was before. It didn't take long for it to change Joey's life, too, in a big way. Before then, mostly working at horse-vet clinics, my wife had never worked for herself or even thought about it. And although opening the restaurant was exciting, it was also scary for her. She didn't know if she'd be any good at it or if anyone would like the
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recipes they made. I can still remember one afternoon that first spring when Joey got out of her truck and put her arms around me, almost in tears, and whispered, "People really seem to love what we're doing, what we're making..." She was so proud of what she and Marcy had created. It changed her. For the first time, she was able to see what she was capable of, what God could do, if you were brave enough to trust Him. In the coming decade, that would happen over and over again, and Joey and I would find ourselves in awe of what He's done. And then, in July 2012, when the first episode of The Joey+Rory Show aired, that little building began to change the lives of strangers from all walks of life in faraway places—or at least impact them enough to get in their cars, trucks, SUVs and RV's and make the drive here to Middle Tennessee to see the Mealhouse for themselves. At the end of each of the 52 cooking segments on the TV series, where Joey and Marcy shared one of their favorite recipes, they would end with, "…There you have it folks. Come see us at Marcy Jo's Mealhouse. Where we're changing lives… one bite at a time." This past January, the Mealhouse celebrated its 16year anniversary, and I'm amazed at how it continues to be a “bucket list” destination that folks travel to from all over to experience not only the cinnamon rolls and sticky buns but the dream itself and all that
has happened there and at our farm only a mile away. When people pull up to the restaurant for the first time or walk through the front door, they are often very emotional. That little place means so much to them. They've watched our story unfold through the years, and Marcy Jo's has been a big part of it. From their homes they've celebrated with us and cried with us. They watched Indiana being born and, a few years later, put on her own little apron and take orders just like her Mama. I'm proud of that little run-down building and what it's become. And I'm proud of my little sister Marcy for not only helping get that dream started with Joey but also continuing to keep the doors open and the wood
stove warm, even though she's had to do it all by herself the last seven years. Through sinking floors and soaring food costs, heat waves with no A/C, ice storms that busted all the pipes, a pandemic that closed most of the restaurants around us, and a hundred other challenges over the past 16 years, Marcy Jo's continues to do what they do best. To make home-cooked meals, love their customers, and believe that what they're serving—and what they're doing—can truly change lives… one bite at a time. //
rory
Marcy Jo's Mealhouse and Bakery 4205 US-431, Columbia, TN 38401 • (931)380–0968 Monday........................................... Closed Tuesday......................... 8:00am–2:00pm Wednesday...................8:00am–2:00pm Thursday.......................8:00am–2:00pm Friday..............................8:00am–2:00pm Saturday.........................7:00am–2:00pm Sunday...........................8:00am–2:00pm
Marcy Jo's Mealhouse today
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PART ONE
PROLOGUE
Special thanks to Brian Dahlen and Moody Radio for allowing us to share this series with our readers.
WORDS BY: BRIAN DAHLEN
How do you forgive a dead man? Particularly when he’s your grandfather? In this limited series, Moody Radio host Brian Dahlen takes a five-year journey surrounding family mystery, forgiveness, and faith in the face of generational sin.
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT... Ever heard of it? If you’re not familiar, it’s part of something called Chaos Theory. You see, most science operates in the realm of the predictable. Things like chemical reactions and gravity. But what do you do with unpredictable things? That’s where something like the Butterfly Effect comes in. In the 1960’s, MIT meteorologist Edward Lorenz was studying long range weather forecasting. Could it be possible to predict weather patterns weeks, or even months, in advance? Some of his colleagues thought with enough data, sure, it could be done. But Lorenz was skeptical. So he created computer weather models that contained twelve variables. You know—weather stuff like temperature and wind speed. And he discovered that small changes, at the beginning of his models, to just one of the twelve variables produced wildly
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