Noonday Notes

Issue No. 40

March 27th, 2026

I’ve been thinking about boundaries this week. On the farm, boundaries are everywhere, even if we don’t call them that. Boundaries look like mulch pathways that tell us where one bed ends and another begins. They look like fences that keep animals in or out, or row cover to protect plants from pests and wind. Even the space we give each crop to grow is a boundary.

But like humans, not everything in the garden respects those lines. The slugs didn’t pause at the edge of the Swiss Chard and decide they’ve gone far enough. The aphids didn’t ask permission before settling in and taking what isn’t theirs in the brassicas. Left unchecked, pests will consume and spread and overwhelm.

So we intervene, not from anger, but from love. We limit access. We protect what’s growing. We guard. This week, the squash is flowering, and during the day, they need full access to pollination and spring love. But at night, I cover them because not everything that comes in the darkness is here to help.

Seems fitting to drop a Proverb here. “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Proverbs 4:23 NIV

I’ve had a long battle with boundaries. Not just people ones, but behavior ones too. I’m the kind of “open book”, that’s more like a “sometimes uncomfortably open spicy memoir”. (Fab Five you know this). Boundaries=Rizz (I can still say that), No Boundaries=Wreck it Ralph (again, not afraid to be old).

But after joining Team Jesus three years ago, boundaries are more like the farm. I am held in by the wood chips that tiny hands of image bearers put there and I can still be a wild vine within. I also received an upgrade. It’s as if I have Pitchcom with I AM calling the pitches. He knows the pitch count. When I throw a Breaking Ball, but the call was for a Sinker, he still forgives me. And He has really good plans and keeps his promises…if you’re new here baseball, faith, and farming go together.

Left unguarded, our hearts can follow every impulse, every voice, every desire for connection or approval, without stopping to ask whether it leads to life or to depletion. Not every person or situation that shows up in our lives is meant to have full access to us.

It’s constant discernment. What gets access, when, and why.

In the first garden, God created a place of abundance and trust, but when responsibility was broken, access changed. A boundary was set, again, not from anger, but from love. On the farm (and life) if you let everything in, you lose the harvest. If you shut everything out, nothing grows. The work is not building walls everywhere, it’s learning what to open, what to cover, and when.

Read the rest of the newsletter here.