Photo courtesy of Claudio Oliver

Claudio Oliver among the chickens at Casa da Videira.

February 28, 2012 | Editor’s note: In this excerpt from “Making Peace with the Land: God’s Call to Reconcile with Creation” (written with theologian Norman Wirzba), Fred Bahnson asks: “What if our homes and churches went from being primarily sites of consumption to places of production?”

A few years ago Brazilian pastor Claudio Oliver and a group of his friends were so attracted to the vision of God’s abundance they’d read about in Scripture that they decided to go for it. Several of them quit their jobs and began an experiment in kingdom-centered community in Curitiba, Brazil. They called it Casa da Videira, which means Home of the Vine, “a cooperative of families that have decided to create a vibrant, sustainable place in which to live a balanced, relationally-focused life, caring for God’s creation and inspiring the people around them.” What that looks like might best be called “abundant kingdom homesteading.”

They are involved in urban food production, both gardening and with animals. They make and sell soap from recycled vegetable oil. It has been financially difficult for them to completely leave the abundant mirage of the industrial food system, and some of them still work in traditional jobs. Making an income is a constant struggle. Yet it’s also clear that they have found much joy to share in this kingdom experiment.

“We understand that we can’t think about food without referring to the narrative of creation and linking it with a deep understanding of how we have been created to be the bearers of the Spirit and part of the community of life on this planet, not its owners,” Claudio said.

They try to make eating an act within the cycle of life, not simply an act of consumption. For the folks at Casa da Videira, that means turning their attention to the dejected and rejected -- the leftovers. As Christians living in the city, their main concern is how the relationship with food in the city reveals our neglect of creation. “Every day,” says Claudio, “tons of nutrients arrive, are delivered, cooked in the city, and more than 30 percent of it is wasted.”

So each day Claudio and his friends collect some of that food waste. In a two-mile radius from home they collect vegetable scraps from grocery stores, food scraps and leftovers from neighbors, lawn clippings, wood chips, and leaves from the curb, and coffee grounds from coffee shops: three to four tons of organic garbage a month -- the refuse of roughly 150 households. They then compost it all in a backyard measuring less than a tenth of an acre, turning it into beautiful soil.

They raise 15 different heirloom varieties of chickens, who “help us remember the variety of creation,” and who eat as they did “in grandma’s time” -- feasting on food scraps, greens, corn, and worms provided by the composting program. Feeding the chickens worms for protein means that they don’t have to feed them soybeans, which is one of Brazil’s most destructive monocrops. Sixty-eight percent of Brazil’s crops, including soybeans, are now genetically modified, so choosing not to use soy is a small act of resistance against the abundant mirage of the industrial food system. The wood chips are used for the chickens’ bedding, and the chickens provide them with a good number of eggs every day. The roosters get eaten when they start “singing.” Four goats provide milk and cheese when they are in kid season, and the 30 rabbits are a major source of the community’s meat. The goats’ and rabbits’ urine and manure become part of the compost mix. This whole nutrient cycle ends in their “lasagna” bed garden, where they produce around three tons of organic vegetables per year for themselves and their neighbors.

But food production is only part of community life at Casa da Videira. Every day three or four families have one meal together: two university teachers, two housewives, one doctor, children, and friends have “a happy meal (the real one)” every day, sometimes with 18 different vegetables.

In Portuguese, Claudio explains, there are two terms for food: comida and alimento. “I always say, alimento is what McDonald’s and nutritionism gives to you; comida is what your mum makes for you.” Alimento is the amount of daily nutrients you need to stay on your feet, “where you work like a chicken in an ‘egg factory’ in order to make money to buy more alimento.” Comida, though, is what we Americans would call “soul food.” Here’s how Claudio describes the complex goodness that happens around comida:

“It’s a family together, people talking, warm fresh veggies, sweet potatoes with brown sugar and cinnamon in the morning (for Southerners in your country), corn bread, laughing, crying, prayer, thanksgiving, culture, old histories, yesterday morning histories, little ones learning who we are through food, love, fights, reconciliation, dating, a baby’s first meal, planning next lunch or tomorrow’s dinner. This one hour of LIFE is about remembering who and whose we are, from where we come, memories to help us cross difficult times with hope … well … this is comida.”

At Casa da Videira their daily practice is based on the promise in John 10:10: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” Claudio refers to the Greek word zoe, which comes from zao (dzah'-o) and means I live or I am alive.