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Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.
~ Proverbs 8:9-10 NIV
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Has God ever touched your heart, encouraged you to take a leap of faith and do something big? What if it meant completely giving up your job, starting a new job in a different field, and relocating your family to a completely different state?
Jason Brown did just that. He was a starting NFL center making millions of dollars, praised by millions of people. But God touched his heart, and Jason decided to walk away from the NFL to become a farmer, a career he knew next to nothing about. How did this man switch fields from Astroturf to Carolina dirt? This is the story of Jason Brown and the founding of First Fruits Farm.
ROOTS
Jason’s grandfather Jasper Brown was a farmer in Yanceyville, North Carolina. For generations, his ancestors farmed North Carolina’s rich loam. During the ’60s, when schools were desegregating across the US, Jasper enrolled his children in a former all-white school in hopes of providing a better education for his children. This angered the local white community, and they reacted by harassing the Brown family: a noose was hung in a tree outside their farm, dynamite exploded their fields, and two cars full of white men tried to run Jasper off the road and kill him. This was too much for the family to take: Jasper, his wife, and four children fled to Washington, DC.
Jasper’s son Lunsford grew up in DC, over a hundred miles away from his North Carolina farming roots. But he held onto them how he could: he married a girl from North Carolina and became a landscaping architect. However, Lunsford and his wife were worried about raising a family in violence-ridden DC, so his wife and the children left Washington, DC to be closer to her family in Henderson. Lunsford remained in DC at his job, so his children grew up not spending a lot of time with their father. His son Jason was born in Henderson, North Carolina, on May 5th, 1983.
Growing up, Jason and his older brother Lunsford II (known by the family as “Ducie”) spent summers in DC helping with their father’s landscaping business. Jason said, “Over those summers, I learned how to make things beautiful. I learned how to landscape and garden on a small scale.”
When he was thirteen, Jason figured out the priorities he valued most in his life: faith, family, and education. These three things were the roots that gave him strength and stability. Faith, family, education.
In middle school, Jason was a chubby kid who enjoyed books more than working out. But in high school, he discovered he had a knack for lifting weights, and he excelled on the football field. Brown graduated high school in 2001, top ten in his class. That fall, he was accepted on a football scholarship to the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Jason did well at UNC: he was ranked several times as the top center in the nation and set several school records in weightlifting.
During this time, Jason’s older brother Ducie married and enrolled in the US Army. Jason was skeptical about his brother’s decision and questioned the risk involved. Ducie responded, “Before you can help somebody else, you first have to help yourself.” He told Jason that he wanted to dedicate his life to service.
UPROOTED
It was in Chapel Hill where Jason met Tay. Tay was paying her way through college at Duke University, and she was committed to her goal of becoming a dentist and making a better life for herself. She was born into a single parent home, and life growing up for her was challenging. Jason admired her faith, hard work ethic, and quiet determination. The day after their first date, Jason called his parents and said, “I’ve found the one. God sent me the woman I’m going to marry.”
Jason and Tay got married on July 25th, 2003. Less than two months after one of the happiest days of his life, Jason was hit with horrible news: his brother Ducie was dead.
On September 20th, a mortar round exploded in the tent where Ducie and members from his unit were located in an Iraqi prison outside of Baghdad. His body absorbed the blast, saving the lives of his fellow soldiers. After the funeral, Ducie’s widow Sherrie gave him one of his brother’s shrapnel-shredded dog tags. Jason wore Ducie’s dog tag for every game for the remainder of his college career. It symbolized to Jason his brother’s sacrifice and commitment to living a life of faith and purpose.
After Jason finished his four years of college at UNC, he was drafted by the Baltimore Ravens to play as center in the 2005 NFL draft. At the same time, Tay was accepted into dental school at UNC. Unfortunately, this meant that they would be living apart during this time. Jason and Tay’s first child JW was born when Jason was away for a football game. This was hard on Jason—he was reminded of his father’s absence growing up, yet he was doing the same thing with his son.
In 2009, Jason was recruited by the St. Louis Rams in a multimillion-dollar deal. By this time, Tay was finished with dental school, so they no longer had to live apart. The couple bought a twelve-thousand-square-foot mansion in St. Louis and stuffed it full of the trappings of success, right down to two stocked bars, one with a fifteen hundred dollar bottle of cognac. Even though Jason valued faith, family, and education, his life had been uprooted by his scramble for more money; living the high life of glitz and glamor; and yearning for more, more, more.
This is not what God had planned for Jason’s life. On his twenty-seventh birthday, Jason was given a vision. When he looked in the mirror that morning, he saw his brother Ducie’s reflection, and these words were laid on his heart: What are you doing with your life that’s so great?
Jason felt convicted, but he didn’t change his life right away. Even though he was at the pinnacle of worldly success, his family life was crumbling around him. Tay had consulted a lawyer about filing for divorce. When Jason asked his oldest son one day if Jesus was real or just a story, JW told his dad, “Jesus isn’t real. Jesus is make-believe.” His son’s answer troubled him.
Faith. Family. Education. Adult Jason wondered what had happened to that thirteen-year-old boy whose heart had chased after God. How had he become so uprooted? He decided to dig in and reconnect with those core values. No sooner had he recommitted his life to God, he heard His voice: Pour It All Down the Drain. Jason listened to God’s voice. He dumped all the alcohol in his house down the drain, including that expensive bottle of cognac. He was put on Earth for a greater purpose and began to discern what that was. Jason prayed, fasted, and read the Bible. He recorded his prayers and listened to them repeatedly. He trained as hard on the spiritual field as he did on the football field. He sought a faith that wasn’t weak but gridiron strong.
Jason started to listen to God’s call in his life, and the story of Joseph in the Bible resonated with him. Even though Joseph’s jealous brothers tried to kill him, he practiced forgiveness and generosity by providing food for these brothers and the rest of his family during a famine. In his book Centered: Trading Your Plans for a Life That Matters, Jason quotes Genesis 45:5, where Joseph says to his brothers, “Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.”
At first, Jason thought God wanted to feed his family, so he went to the local Sam’s Club and stocked his pantry. But he soon realized that that wasn’t what God wanted from him: God wanted Jason Brown to be a farmer.
AstroTurf to Carolina Dirt
In 2012, the Rams cut Jason Brown. He was offered contracts by the San Francisco ’49ers, the Baltimore Ravens, and the Carolina Panthers. Jason declined all three offers. Tay was confused and didn’t understand why her husband had rejected all those high-paying offers, especially the one in San Francisco, close to where her mom lived. At first, Jason was worried about sharing God’s vision for his life with Tay; after all, the world saw him as Jason Brown, one of the NFL’s top-recruited athletes, not Farmer Brown! When Jason shared his new calling with Tay, she first thought he was crazy. But then she felt the Spirit move in her heart—she had noticed a positive change in her husband. This wasn’t just crazy talk; Jason was finally aligning his life with God’s vision for him. Tay agreed to stand by her husband, even though neither of them knew what the future had in store for them.
Jason felt that God was calling him to return to his homeland of North Carolina, so Jason and Tay sold their mansion in St. Louis and began the search for a farm. After looking for several months, in late 2012, they bought a twelve-hundred-acre farm in the heart of NC’s research triangle and named it “First Fruits Farm.” Firstfruits is used several times in the King James Version, including in Proverbs 3:9-10, which reads, “Honour the Lord with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase. So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.”
Jason and Tay agreed that they would donate the first part of their harvest to those in need; that was the mission of First Fruits Farm. But there was a catch: Jason and Tay weren’t farmers! Why did God call them to do this? And how would this all work out? Jason did what he knew how: he took the same discipline he had brought to the football field and the spiritual field and brought it to the dirt field. In football, players repeatedly watch videos to learn from their mistakes and spot patterns in their opponent’s plays. So Jason turned to YouTube and began watching farming videos.
After doing hundreds of hours of research, he devised a plan: he didn’t want to grow cash crops like tobacco, corn, or cotton—instead, he landed on the humble sweet potato. It is a nutritional powerhouse; these vibrant orange veggies are rich in fiber, vitamins, and minerals. In addition, with a long shelf life, it doesn’t spoil as quickly as some other crops, which is great for storage in food pantries. And these copper-skinned root tubers love North Carolina’s rich soil: over 60% of America’s sweet potatoes are grown in the state.
With money saved up from his career in professional football and his newfound knowledge of how to be a farmer, Jason was ready to get started. Unfortunately, his financial advisor mismanaged his money—his fortune, worth millions, was gone. Jason cried out to God for help, which came in the form of folks reaching out to a neighbor in need.
Branches of Support
Despite the financial setback, Jason and Tay were determined to continue onward. In 2014, they were ready to plant their first batch of sweet potatoes. They decided to start by planting a five-acre plot. Jason reached out to his neighbor Len Wester, asking for advice. But Len went a step further than giving his new neighbor advice: he got his friends David and Allen Rose to donate sweet potato transplants, and Len and his crew planted all five acres.
As the sweet potato vines burst through the soil and the tubers grew larger and larger, Jason and Tay were faced with a new problem: who was going to harvest them? First Fruits Farm was just them and their three children, all under seven years old. They were looking at thousands of pounds of taters to be harvested by only five people. Again, Jason prayed to God for help.
This time, help arrived as a phone call from a stranger.
The person on the other end of the line was Rebecca Page, the regional gleaning coordinator at the Society of St. Andrew. She had heard about what Jason and Tay were doing, and she was calling to offer to help with the harvest.
Rebecca told Jason that the mission of the Society of St. Andrew is to bring people together to harvest and share healthy food, reduce food waste, and build caring communities by offering nourishment to hungry neighbors. Since 1983, the Society has donated over 800 million pounds of food to America’s hungry. One of the main ways the Society gathers this food is through the Biblical practice of gleaning (Deuteronomy 24:19). Gleaning is when someone gathers the leftovers from the harvest. Today, the leftovers are crops left in the field because they aren’t “grocery-store- perfect” and have bumps and dents. The Society of St. Andrew’s Gleaning Network coordinates volunteers to salvage the crops left in the field and donate them to folks in need. According to the Society, “each year, 35,000 to 40,000 people glean with us to pick over 20 million pounds of fresh, nutritious food for their hungry neighbors.”
When Rebecca called Jason, she offered to have volunteers glean his five-acre field. But Jason didn’t want to give the poor and the hungry just the undesirables. Jason told Rebecca, “We’re not going to have any gleaning opportunities at First Fruits Farm. We’re going to have harvesting opportunities. You’re not just going to pick up the leftovers. You’re going to have the best. In fact, you’re going to have it all.”
Astonished at Jason’s generosity, Rebecca began coordinating volunteers for this jubilee of a harvest. When it came time to harvest the sweet potatoes on that small five-acre plot, six hundred volunteers pulled up over 120,000 pounds of sweet potatoes. What a bounty of a harvest! Volunteers with the Society of St. Andrew distributed this food across the region, feeding thousands of hungry families.
Today, First Fruits Farm is nearly a decade old and has donated over a million pounds of food to the hungry. Jason and Tay’s faith has been tested during this time; like many farmers, they deal with years of bad crops, faulty equipment, increased costs, and other trials. But during the good and bad times, God continues to watch over them. Jason, Tay, and their eight children abide by the values of faith, family, and education as they tend to the farm they’ve been blessed with. The goal of the Brown family is “to have a light that shines brightly, and we encourage others to do the same by joining in our mission to ‘Never stop giving! Never stop loving! Never stop growing!’ It’s that simple.” //
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First Fruits Farm welcomes volunteers throughout the year on Saturdays from 9 to 11 am and certain available weekdays. For more information on volunteering:
First Fruits Farm
Mailing Address:
421 S. Garnett Street, Henderson, NC 27536
Farm Address:
2805 E. River Road, Louisburg, NC 27549
Website:
www.wisdomforlife.org
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Nic Stoltzfus is the editorial manager at Plain Values magazine. He and his new bride Jen live in Reading, PA and enjoy gardening, canning, and cooking (especially food from other countries!). He is currently working on a novel about the immigrant Stoltzfus family.