Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 7660 Plough Quarterly • Summer 2015 man’s gain. I will never forget my father’s face when he was underpaid by the farm boss. He was unable to respond to the injustice because he knew the consequences for his family. Farms would hire him because he had all these chil- dren–thirteen males, including my brothers and boy cousins–and time after time I watched him struggle against poverty and my mother’s disappointment. I saw him turn away to avoid my mother’s eyes, and her anger. That life was not for me. I am a carbon copy of my father, but I tried to escape his fate by joining the army after high school, serving overseas in Germany. I loved the structure and the sense of order, and when I came home I enlisted in the National Guard. In 2001 I was called to serve the church in Conetoe, and I returned to build a future in a place that had long held many sorrows for me. Starting our own garden in Conetoe meant that the fruits of our labors would be our own. It was a chance to rewrite that old story into something new and hopeful, but I had to con- front old memories that were easier to forget. Now nearly a decade has passed since we started our garden, which feeds our community in body and soul. It began with two acres of land donated by members of the community, and now has grown to fifteen farm plots around the county. The largest is twenty-five acres, with four fields, two greenhouses, and about 150 beehives. The young people do the hard work, taught by their elders, who have their own stories of sharecropping and of the family gardens that used to mean the difference between hunger and a full belly. We have afterschool and summer camp programs that teach the children to plan, plant, and harvest the produce, which they then sell at farmers’ markets, on roadside stands, and to restaurants. We gather honey from our hives and sell it or share it with our low-income Rev. Richard Joyner is pastor of the Conetoe Chapel Missionary Baptist Church in North Carolina, where he also serves as a hospital chaplain and heads the Conetoe Family Life Center and Community Garden. He is a 2014 winner of The Purpose Prize, which honors social innovators over age sixty.