Transcending Agricultural Time

We live in unnatural times because of our unnatural time. We can eat foods produced on the other side of the globe. We can eat fruit out of season, partly because the fruit is in season somewhere and partly because of modern technologies of preservation.

We seem to have detached ourselves from the agricultural year, and we seem to enjoy our power to do so.

Should we enjoy it? Is it a healthy thing for us to transcend the cycles of agricultural time and the fixities of place?

I don’t hold a brief to defend contemporary farming practices overall, but I wonder if this detachment from agricultural time really is a curse. Leviticus 26:5 counts it a blessing when the periods of the agricultural year blur into one another, when there’s so much grain that threshing lasts until the grape harvest and so many grapes that gathering lasts until it’s time to sow again.

That there are strawberries in my freezer long after the strawberry season has passed – that is a gift of a generous God.