.She was a free-lance journalist for one of our leading metro newspapers, and she wanted to speak with me about the Horticulture program. I was called to the Warden’s conference room in the Administration Building, and that was not viewed by any of my colleagues as a good thing. A page overhead for an employee to report to the “Warden’s anything” usually meant bad news for the employee. I signed myself out of the school building and headed to the conference room reviewing in my mind the people met earlier in the day. Did I piss somebody off, and is that why I am being called to this meeting? I was relieved once I entered the conference room to see the Warden smiling. He introduced me to a journalist and began to tell me why she was here. It seems she lived in the area and had been raising horses on a farm not far from the prison. She did a story recently on an agency we had been donating produce to and she couldn’t believe the amounts she was told we were donating. She wanted to do a story on us, and she had a proposal. I looked skeptical at her when she mentioned “proposal.” The Warden seeing my reaction asked me to hear her out.
.I was relieved to know that’s why I was called up here , and not anything I imagined I might have said to piss somebody off. Diplomacy and states man ship were not qualities I could claim. If someone pissed me off they were immediately informed of that fact. I didn’t use tact. I didn’t mince words. I used language that got their attention, and that usually meant someone would not be happy. Especially if they seemed to over hear what I thought was a soliloquy. Anyway, I was glad to inform her that the Warden was responsible for the success of the Horticulture program. and because of his constant support we were able to grow the amount of produce we donated. I emphasized “constant” because his underlings were constantly finding fault with the program when he wasn’t at our facility and my boss was at the other prison school. I quit telling them both of his deputized assistants giving me a hard time. Especially, my last assignment. It wasn’t worth the aggravation. The journalist’s proposal was simple. She lived down the road and she was living at her families house. The family had raised horses. They had more than a dozen horses at a time but had failed to clean the barn for the past five years.
.They decided that horses were no longer going to be raised at their farm. ( I think the local health department had a hand in that decision) She was curious. Would we be interested in looking at the barn the horses stood and shit in for the past 5 years (my words not hers) and find a way to remove the 5 year old compacted horse manure? My mind went into over drive as I started calculating how many times horses shit a day, times 12 horses, times 365 days a year times 5!!!! I asked her for the size of the barn and if she new the size of the area they were kept in. She gave me the size of the barn and she informed me the horses were kept in half of it on one side. This was a gold mine of nutrients for our prison garden, and I thought I had a way of getting all of it. I informed her she could begin the interview. I believed I had a way of getting the manure. I needed to run the plan by our Warden and I would call her for a time to look at the barn. She was glad to know I was interested and began the interview. TO BE CONTINUED…
Isaiah 7: 14, & Mathew 1: 18-23
MJ-Way 