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BY CARRIE MADREN
UMCONNECTION CORRESPONDENT

Raising chickens wasn't on the horizon in 2005 when the Rev. Byron E. Brought learned of his new assignment as senior pastor at Friendship UMC in southern Anne Arundel County. But the pastor embraced his new rural lifestyle - wrangling roosters, feeding hens, gathering eggs, tilling farmland, growing heirloom pumpkins - and now finds the slower, friendlier pace of life suits him.

It wasn't an easy adjustment for Brought, his wife Kristen and two sons, who have always lived in suburban and urban settings before being appointed to the small, rural town of Friendship.

The transition, at first, he said, "was a huge shock."

"I had always considered myself from Montgomery County and pretty metro savvy," Brought said. "And then coming here, for the first several months we just kept thinking, ‘what are we going to do?' Our pace came to a screeching halt."

But the change has been a good one. "Folks are used to stopping and having conversation here," Brought said. "Generally speaking, in Montgomery County, folks are on the go all the time and there's really no time for conversation. Here, you have time for conversation, or you make time for conversation - that's really important." Frequently, neighbors stop by when they see him outside, and Brought said he loves that people make time to talk.

Brought, who had always tended a small garden plot in every home, also found himself surrounded by people well acquainted with farming. His small backyard garden has expanded each year and a couple of years ago, one of his congregants offered to let Brought farm on his land, about a mile away.

So last year, Brought grew about three football fields' worth of pumpkins - in addition to a second, larger garden with beans, squash, corn and tomatoes - and about five tobacco plants, grown to teach history and traditional Maryland farming to his sons.

The United Methodist pastor grew about 600 pumpkins in 2009, including varieties such as the wide, deep-grooved French heirloom pumpkin that inspired Cinderella's carriage, plus hundreds of traditional jack-o-lantern pumpkins, which he sold from the back of a hay wagon parked in front of his house and even showed pumpkins at the county fair.

In the end, half of the pumpkin sales went to Friendship UMC's United Methodist Women, so pumpkin growing became part ministry, too. This growing season, Brought will try to nurture a 1,000-plus-pounder to try for fair prizes and test his growing skills.

Chickens also became a part of life when, two years ago, Brought's oldest son wanted to raise chicks as a 4-H project.

At first, the pastor found the idea of keeping chickens ridiculous. But then he thought, "why not?" He converted an old shed into a coop, and fenced in a small plot for the 16 chickens - in about a half-dozen varieties that lay green, pink and brown eggs - to roam, with a separate fenced in area for three handsome roosters.

Now, eggs are sold to neighbors and Brought can be seen feeding the hens. His sons even dubbed the area Lucky Land Farms, after the family dog, Lucky.

Brought appreciates the itineracy system that sends pastors where they're needed in different ways now. He encourages those who find themselves surprised at being sent to a different location to become a part of the community and explore their new surroundings, learning to incorporate hobbies or passions wherever they land.

"It takes an adjustment," he said, "but find something that you love about that setting and embrace it."