Q: Tell me about the Abundant Table project. 

Julie Morris: It’s a farm project that was started by a campus ministry. We want to engage young people in caring for the earth, making a meaningful contribution to the community, and listening to God in the midst of all of it. 

Q: What’s the connection between farm work and spirituality? 

JM: First of all, farming is about feeding people. We know from reading the Gospels, and we know that the center of our worship, that the center of so much of Jesus’ ministry, was about food. Farming is about food and church is about food.

The next step for the Church is to be about connection. About relationship. And even about reconciliation, which is the mission of the church. We started looking, in response to our reading of the Gospels in the small community on campus, at how important food was and how disconnected we are from the source of our food. We don’t know where it comes from. Even here in this rich agricultural community we import most of our food, our produce, especially, from other countries or from other places in this country or in this state.

Q: Katerina, when your friends from college or your friends from childhood say, “So what are you doing now?” what do you tell them?

Katerina Friesen: I tell them that I am working on a farm, living in an intentional community, learning about agriculture in the United States, and a little bit about the food systems from a different way of growing food. 

Q: What is an intentional community? 

KF: I think intentional community is something that’s a little bit counter-cultural these days. The intentional part really is just about choosing a different kind of lifestyle that isn’t all about independence and the kind of values that our society really elevates, but is about living in community, sharing work, sharing food, sharing a different way of life for a while. 

Q: What made you join? 

KF: I think that what brought me to this place was its focus on the transformation of itself, of myself, and of the surrounding community. It’s really a project about forming connections where there are disconnects. 

This community was really about thinking about where our food comes from, having a sense of gratitude for the hands that have worked to prepare it, and forming new relationships with the ground and with the people who are going to consume it.

Sharing food with other people—that is where this term intentional community comes from. It’s gathering around the table, breaking bread together. It draws people together.

Q: Of the five interns here, you’re the one who is sort of the specialist on the issue of farm workers. Tell me about what you’ve learned. 

KF: The people who are picking our produce in this nation are not able to afford the produce that they’re picking. 

We’re talking about health care reform in this nation, but I think that the conversation really needs to go deeper to talk about food systems and how our food systems need to be reconstructed and transformed in such a way that they’re providing life-giving food to people.

I think that everyone has a right to good, quality food and that’s one of the ultimate goals of our project, to provide food access for all people, regardless of their class or socioeconomic status. It’s a huge passion of mine. It gets me kind of worked up.

Q: Abundant Table is not just about growing food; it has a real faith component, a real spiritual component, to it. 

KF: I really wanted to live out in a Christian community how I believe that the Christian faith has a lot of important things to say in terms of social justice issues. 

I think that’s what a community really provides for people when they’re involved in activist kind of work. It’s something that sustains them. 

Q: What have you learned about compassion, what does that word mean to you, in light of this experience? 

KF: I started going to a church in Oxnard, to a Spanish service so that I could actually know and share communion with people who don’t have enough to eat on a day-to-day basis. And I think some of that desire has come out of this project. Gratitude for our abundance has made me long to be in community and share Christ’s supper with people who don’t have that kind of abundance, who are living out of scarcity. 

Q: You mentioned gratitude as a reason for being here. What has the Abundant Table Project taught you about gratitude? 

KF: What the land gives you is such a joy and a surprise. It’s like a miracle in a way. Part of the gratitude I think is for our own ability to work and to see the fruits of our labor right before us. Everything that comes out of here is a gift. We came here and we didn’t really didn’t know much about farming. It was obviously something beyond us: the good soil, the sun, all these things that come together and are really all gifts of God.