Spiritual connections: Coming in from the cold

Seeing the shadows on the snow in this picture, I can tell this winter photo was taken in the morning from the front porch of our farmhouse.

Before getting on the school bus each morning, my brothers and I had chores to do. We climbed up into the silo, pick-axe in hand, to break up corn silage frozen a foot thick to the cement staves. Then we pitched the silage down the chute and fed it to the 30 cows in their mangers while they were being milked.

After that, we carried 10-gallon milk cans from the barn into the small milk house you can see in the picture. We hoisted the cans into the milk tank for cooling, readying them for the milk truck, which arrived later in the morning. The truck collected milk from several farms, including ours, to take to the creamery, where it would be processed into butter, cheese and ice cream.

Then, of course, the tractor and manure spreader in the photo were also ready to finish up the morning’s dirty work! (Need I say more?)

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On a cold January morning, the white frost on the single-pane barn windows was three-quarters of an inch thick, as the only heat in that big building came from the 30 large-bodied Holstein cows. In the cold, you could see their steamy breath.

In the hog barn, the heat source came from the hogs themselves, except for the heat lamps suspended over the litters of newborn piglets. In the chicken house, the warmth came from the 600 laying hens. Only in the spring, when 600 baby chicks arrived from the hatchery in town, were heat lamps used in the brooder house to keep them warm until summer temperatures arrived.

If you are someone who says, “I grew up on a farm,” you and your family surely have memories like mine. You may also remember a country church with a steeple built tall enough to be seen from farm fields for miles around. To this day, that church may still have a shape and appearance not unlike that of a barn.

Spring Garden Lutheran Church

The country church where I grew up, in rural Cannon Falls, was founded by Swedish settlers in 1858. My ancestors, whose graves are in the cemetery surrounding the building, were among its first members. Like countless other country, small-town and even city churches, the shape of the chancel and nave resembles that of a barn.

In my library, I have a book that is a historic and photographic study comparing and contrasting barn architecture and church architecture. Both represent gathering and harvest and abundance! Both are warm places to come in from the cold. Both depend on the inhabitants to be the heat source, offering a warm welcome and inclusion to all who enter doors that will open wide for you!

So, come in from this cold January and share your warmth with all! 

Editor’s note: Eden Prairie Local News (EPLN) contributor Pastor Rod Anderson also serves on the EPLN Board of Directors. He was the senior pastor of St. Andrew Lutheran Church in Eden Prairie.

Interested in contributing a faith-based column to EPLN? Email editor@eplocalnews.org.