Roots + Wings with Rory Feek

Last night, Indiana and I spent the evening in the garden weeding, watering the many rows of vegetables, and checking on how the seeds we’ve sowed this spring are doing. The broccoli and cabbage that were abundant a month ago are almost gone, and Brussels sprouts will be soon. Most of the other warmer-weather crops are just coming in. In the last week, we’ve been harvesting zucchini and squash, we’ll be picking okra and cucumbers soon, and hopefully tomatoes and corn a short time after that.

Each spring, we till the ground in the same spot where my wife Joey always had her garden, and I continue to sow seeds and grow vegetables there­—even though I’ll never be as good at it as she was. That little patch of land here on our farm was and will always be ‘her garden.’ 

As the sun was setting and Indy held her little hoe and I used mine, I couldn’t help but look all around and think about how in another way, this whole farm is a garden. I thought of all the seeds that God has sown here in the last twenty-something years and the incredible fruit that has come from them.

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I thought of all the seeds that God has sown here in the last twenty-something years and the incredible fruit that has come from them.

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When we first bought our farm in the summer of 1999, the old farmhouse was in bad shape, and most of the land around it was overgrown, all in desperate need of some love and attention. The farmer who had lived here for the sixty-plus years before us was in his mid-70s and ready to hand over the skeleton key to the front door and the responsibility of the place to someone younger. Someone with more years and ambition in front of him than behind. 

Honestly, it would’ve made more sense for me to buy a smaller place in town or a little subdivision. Instead, way back in ’99, God planted the idea in my mind that I should find an old farmhouse and put down roots there for myself and my children. And that idea—that thought—that seed—somehow took root. A few months later, my teenage daughters and I were scraping and painting and trying to turn this old house into a home. The work was hard, and I was soon overwhelmed, worried that I had made a mistake. But over the next couple of years, God would put people into my life to speak into me when I thought of giving up, reminding me that if I stick it out, this will be a wonderful place to grow old and one day pass on to the next generation…

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Rory Feek is a world-class storyteller, songwriter, filmmaker, and New York Times best-selling author. As a musical artist, Rory is one-half of the Grammy-award-winning duo, Joey+Rory. He and his wife, Joey, toured the world and sold nearly a million records, before her untimely passing in March 2016.