The Land That Calls Me Home: Connecting God's People to God's Land through God's Church
Hughey Reynolds is a United Methodist pastor in Alabama. He grew up on a family farm in Lineville where he still spends many days off and vacations farming.  His father was a bi-vocational preacher and his mother a rural preacher’s daughter.  He grew up in a time and place in which church and farm still worked together naturally to build strong rural communities.   In attempting to rebuild the farm his family had left in the 1970s, Hughey began to see the injustice of government policy and corporate pressure that drove farmers over the past seventy years to either get big or get out of farming. He realized he had been mesmerized by the industrial side of farming and blinded to this injustice. Hughey is now an advocate for restoring the viability of small farms for the sake of local food security, the human connection with the soil, and the health of the earth and its inhabitants. Hughey is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church.  Prior to his present appointment in Huntsville, Hughey served churches in Birmingham, Sylacauga, Florence, Valley, Wedowee, Chelsea, and Ashland, Alabama.  While in Birmingham, Hughey led Highlands Church to form the Southside Community Garden.  The project engaged church members and garden neighbors in all phases of gardening.  The church entered a partnership with neighboring Ramsay High School to build raised bed gardens for students to plant, tend, harvest, and study. In Huntsville, Hughey has volunteered at CASA (Care Assistance System for the Aging) Community Garden and enlisted church members to grow a raised bed garden at neighboring Hope Presbyterian Church to support CASA.  In 2012, he formed the Grow Your Own Food Network where experienced and novice gardeners met weekly to ask and answer questions about gardening.  Participants formed the core group that inspired seasonal Locally Grown Covered Dish Suppers and a Farmers Market at the church.  The Farmers Market at Latham opened on May 7, 2013.  In the first summer, the half-day-a week market generated over $150,000 for the farmers who sold their produce there. Hughey consults with pastors and churches on food-source awareness and in developing ministries that support area farmers and promote locally grown food. Hughey is married (1975) to the former Sandy Jones of Ashland, Alabama.  She is a Human Resource Manager for a Government Contractor in Huntsville.  They have two married sons and daughters-in-law and one grandchild, all of whom live in Alabama.