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REIDSVILLE — Herman Platt is late getting into his white collar, but the ripened okra still needs pulling.

“When my son found this, (my wife) was like, 'Oh, no,’ ” the 55-year-old Greensboro pastor said about moving the family onto land that was once part of a dairy farm, and investing in a tractor and cows.

Cue the music for “Green Acres,” a decades-old comedy about city folk moving to the country — because Platt’s been seen driving through the fields with wooden planks sticking out of his BMW.

“My parishioners joke about the gentleman farmer,” he said.

After 28 years spent wearing a perfectly pressed military officer’s uniform and much of the next eight spent living on a manicured, Greensboro street, the pastor of Wells Memorial Church of God in Christ is growing zucchini, squash and tomatoes — and working to keep the deer out of his corn.

He gives much of his crop away to his congregation, often handing out bags of it to the elderly and disabled first, and then leaving the remainder at the back of the church for people to pick up on their way out.

“If it’s not there,” joked Diana Walker , his assistant, “We ask, 'No green beans this year? No corn? We haven’t seen any watermelons!’ ”

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As a boy, Platt spent summers on his grandfather’s farm in South Carolina, where he was fascinated with growing things . But he spent the rest of his year a city boy in Greensboro, graduating from Dudley High School before enlisting in the military.

Platt eventually was ordained a minister and a chaplain in the U.S. Navy, where he rose to be senior Navy chaplain at Arlington Cemetery before his retirement in 2001.

That same year, he returned to Greensboro and Wells Memorial, which he had attended as a child. This time, he sat in the pastor’s chair.

When he first came upon the Reidsville property about three years ago, he was largely unimpressed.

The brick house was nice, but it sat on only 3 acres of land, and that, he thought, surely wasn’t enough to get his hands dirty.

Not that he wanted a full-scale farm. But he knew he wanted to have room for rows and rows of crops and for a pasture full of farm animals .

He negotiated for 30 additional acres, but still it took divine intervention to see that this was the answer to his prayers and — what he hadn’t realized yet — that this was also a new dimension to his ministry.

“God said, 'Look, really take a look,’ ” Platt said, pointing to the cedar tree line and terrain that was already a natural outline for a pasture.

“All I needed to do was set up the gates and connect the wire to the trees,” Platt said about having a place for the cows he planned to buy. “I stopped complaining and got to work.”

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Life on a farm has taken some getting used to — as any of the Platts can attest.

Early on, pets Patches and Isis tore away toward a neighbor’s barn.

“They went in there and attacked those cows — who put a whipping on them,” Platt said. The dogs lost teeth in the ruckus. The cows, protecting their calves, were OK.

Platt had an easier time, learning his lessons as a regular at local farming supply stores or engaging other area farmers in conversations.

He also has perused the Internet — learning more about his latest discovery, a flock of nearly 50 wild turkeys he saw flying near his property, or getting help to keep the bugs away from his zucchini plants.

Platt is in his brown cowboy boots and out the door shortly after 6 each morning, feeding his cattle, pulling crops out of the field, and on a recent day, liming a strip of land soon to be planted with greens.

“I’ve learned a lot, and I’m still learning some things,” said Platt, who is often joined by his 7-year-old granddaughter, Asanti.

He’s also had comedic moments.

An older farmer once told him a quick and easy way to give a cow a shot is to slap their coats close to a muscle for a numbing effect and to stick ’em quick. But Platt found that didn’t always work.

“One time the cow took off and the needle was hanging in there,” said Platt, who had to coax her back with feed.

Platt later purchased a head gate that closes around the shoulder of a cow to keep it still for shots and exams.

Platt tries to be at the church by 10 a.m., unless he’s needed before then.

But it is often on his farm, where nature and man work together, that his Sunday morning sermons evolve.

For Platt, it is in watching a guinea refusing to move from atop her eggs even as the farm equipment’s blades barrel toward her, or in feeling a closeness to God in the early-morning silence.

It is even in the bags of goods he drops off at the church. Platt has linked these bags to the biblical story of the man who had a bountiful crop and filled one storehouse before building a second to store it all. The man died the same night.

“The scripture asks the question, 'Whose storehouse will it be?’” Platt said. “I grow it to give it away. I like to do this, and I know I can’t eat it all.”

He has also used his dealings with one of his cows, a heifer who liked to jump the fence. His farming friends told him to get rid of her.

“I was trying to hold out, and she kept jumping the fence,” he recalled telling the congregation. “I’m feeding her, I’m nurturing her, and she still won’t do right.

“Sometimes that’s how we deal with people in our lives. We want to hold on to them, and we want to nurture them, and we say they’ll change. Sometimes you just have to let them go.”

Platt is already thinking of his fall planting, and how he’ll fool the deer who keep nibbling at his corn.

His parishioners want him to get help with the farm work, he said.

“In the spring and summer, I’m intent on doing this, and they see me out here, and they say, 'You never take a vacation.’ I can’t go because the harvest is coming in. To me, it’s like your work is wasted. I didn’t just plant it to watch it grow. This is for me. I consider it my time.”

Contact Nancy McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nancy.mclaughlin@news-record.com