The Spontaneity of Inspiration

Good morning friends,

It’s me, your Mennonite farmer-writer Edwin. I’m back from a long hiatus. I know it was way too long. Some of you wrote to check up on me and express your disappointment that I was not writing much. I’m sorry.

Part of the reason for the pause, as you who are local know, was because during pretty much all of 2025 we were building a new store and food packing area here at The Family Cow farm. Simultaneously we were remodeling our USDA beef and pork butcher shop, Olde Tyme Meats, and also adding USDA pastured poultry butchering facilities there as well.

So, to say my attention bandwidth was stretched thin would not be an overstatement. It’s an OK way to live a year... life does have those overly busy periods. But it is not an OK way to live a life. I’m glad to be back to the more normal flow of life and to have time for these more important things.

But, to be totally fair, as I analyzed my writing pause, I'm also aware that some of my procrastination is from a self-imposed constraint which was a result of how I had the blog originally set up. I’d like to make a change to remove that constraint. Let me explain. 

You may recall, I had started writing in this space specifically to answer the plain-people-faith-and-lifestyle questions coming from The Family Cow customers. We welcome and appreciate questions and hope to always answer them respectfully. And if you read through the past posts you’ll see that I did answer a good many of those questions. And I still will answer more as we go along.

But here is a change I’d like to make. I know this will free me up and allow me to write more spontaneously and more directly from my heart. I’d like to simply share whatever it is that currently inspires and moves my heart and soul in matters of faith. 

It may be something out of my personal daily meditation with God’s Word. It may be an enlightening analogy or parable that came to me as I went about my work with the earth and farm. Or it may be some inspiration from a song on which I’ve been singing or meditating. It definitely at times will reflect current struggles of my own life and faith journey. I have those. These will often be in story form since storytelling comes naturally for me, but some of them may be more as worshipful personal meditations or even just sharing a way that Dawn and I have found helpful in explaining a difficult faith concept to our children and grandchildren.

So here is the unique part. Whatever part of my life and thoughts that I share will naturally give you an insider peek into our Mennonite, plain-people Christian faith. It will be by less deliberate intention of my own, but as I share my spontaneous inspiration, you’ll get your questions answered drip by drip. 

Maybe we could liken it to a full immersion learning method applied to the Mennonite faith. Drip by drip, day by day, story by story, analogy by analogy... slowly but surely you will absorb the answers to your plain people’s faith and lifestyle questions. In the end, your understanding and full spectrum grasp of our faith just might be more complete and comprehensive than by the asking and answering of direct questions. 

But of course, as always, if you have specific pressing questions, you are totally free to ask. I read every email you send and even respond personally to many of them. Your specific questions no doubt will also inspire me and I’ll mix a few of those answers into my posts for the benefit of the others as well.

What do you think of this more free form and spontaneous flow of inspiration plan? Maybe also I’ll start posting Thursday morning instead of Saturday to provide some mid week meditations.

Thank you for understanding. Thank you for being patient during the pause of this past year. Please let me know your thoughts on this slightly new twist on 'sharing plain people life and inspiration.'

Your Mennonite Christian farmer friend,

Edwin Shank

"Intensely striving to be... A follower of Jesus indeed... In whom there is no guile"