Noonday Notes, Issue 16
Getting into the Weeds
Issue No. 16
September 19th, 2025
This week I spent a lot of time pulling weeds at both Noonday Farm sites. Specifically, the carrot bed at the Grace garden. The tricky part about newly germinated carrots is they look almost exactly like grass. At first your eyes aren’t trained, and it’s easy to mistake one for the other. But once you really see a true carrot sprout, you can’t unsee it. Your eyes start to recognize it everywhere.
That’s how discernment works. Once you’ve encountered truth, or once you’ve recognized what isn’t true, you can’t ignore it anymore. Your vision changes. You begin to see with new eyes, and with practice, your ability to sort the good from the bad gets sharper and sharper.
Psalm 43:3 comes from that place of need. In hardship and distress, the psalmist pleads for God’s light and truth to break through the darkness and lead him into refuge:
“Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me;” (Psalm 43:3 ESV).
Truth illuminates the path—it helps us know what to keep, and what needs to be pulled out.
And then there’s the way weeding feels in different settings. In solitude, it’s steady, meditative. No phone, no distractions, just silence and my own thoughts. Monotonous, but also grounding. In community, though, it hits different. The work goes quicker, and there’s often conversation and laughter. It’s the same task, but the load is shared. This is the work we were made for, to work and keep the garden, not alone but together.
So much of this mission is relational—whether it’s working side by side, inviting others to grow their own food to contribute, or the way we’ll soon step into homes to deliver this food. The garden is teaching us not just discernment, but also connection. Getting into the weeds can involve both silence and solidarity, and both have value. They both prepare us for the deeper work of cultivating not just crops, but ourselves and our community.