As I reach the early autumn of my life, I appreciate this time even more than ever before. As my son, Tony, says, it’s the time when the “fruit of the root” shows up.
Harvest time is a time of abundance, while at the same time it’s a time of die off. The summer plants give out, and the vines dry up. The fruit, no matter what stage of development it is at, falls off and is left to either provide food or fertilize the earth for next year’s crop. In that way, autumn is a time of accounting.
And by that I mean that whatever happened during the spring and the summer shows up in the harvest. Was there a dry time and you decided not to water the garden? We see it during harvest with a lighter crop, or stunted fruit. Did you start too late? (Guilty!) You may find green tomatoes or stunted peppers still on the vine. (Guilty every year!) Did you plant too much? Not enough? Did you weed? Did you harvest on time to keep plants producing throughout the season? There are lots of ways to encourage or discourage growth, but it all shows at the end of the season.
Gardening is one of those things that is easy to learn, and tough to master. I tend to evaluate my gardening skills by the crop that I grow. There is always something new to learn or implement next year, and so having a gardening journal is a great tool. I’ll have to start one sometime! (Oh wait! I have a blog!)
But this year, God blessed our garden so that it produced the most beautifully abundant tomato crop EVER, and I’m not sure we had much to do with it, other than show up and do what we always do. We have three full-grown black walnut trees on one side of our small property, and finding clean soil for sensitive plants has always been a challenge.
But this year we may have had a small advantage in one garden: We had a failed greenhouse last year, and as part of that project, we dug four feet down and then had to replace the soil afterward. So all that soil was exposed to the oxygen and mixed with deeper, clay-filled soil before being put back into the ground. I am sure the soil composition has a little to do with it, but then, the deeper soil lacks the nutrients of the richer topsoil, too. But then there was the composted chicken manure . . .so it may be a little of a trade-off.
We also had some sentries protecting our produce this year, since we don’t use pesticides. Sargent LotsO’Green was on duty in the garden, and Professor Clumbedup was watching from up high.
Princess NoStingJustEggs helped control the pests,
(She is a beautiful parasitic wasp, that controls invasive borers. Yay!)
while Goldie just ran through the garden and knocked off developing tomatoes. But she meant well!
(OK, so it was red and ready to harvest, and Goldie is smarter than I’d like to admit. But STILL!)
Anyway, we prayed over our garden this year, and God blessed it, overwhelmingly. For twenty years I have tried to grow tomatoes in the ground, or in raised gardens, or in manure-enriched soil, or in bagged, fertilized potting soil, but the result has always been disappointing. Small, tight little tomatoes, no matter the variety, that had a soft spot on the bottom that consistently rotted if not eaten directly. I don’t think we’ve actually grown more than a dozen tomatoes per year in any of those years. But this year!!!
God blessed us. That’s all I can say. The greenhouse tomato garden did very well, but so did the one next to it, and the jalapeno pepper garden did well, and the crab apples we thought were a bust this year did well, and the grapes, the beans, and the elderberries. . .and the wild black raspberries!! Wow! I almost forgot about the abundance there!
In addition to that, some friends blessed us with their abundance, and my dad shared a lot of tomatoes and peppers. Friend Michelle shared extra garden abundance, and others helped with jars, sugar, garlic and onions. All of it came together and allowed us to can salsa, and applesauce, jelly and even pickles. But not in the same jar.
Most of the canning this year has been done by Tony–Beau and I were busy on art projects with deadlines, and helped cut apples and blanch tomatoes when we could. One of our projects this year was to help on the Camden Missionary Church booth at the Hillsdale County Fair. The theme this year was, appropriately enough, “Harvest the Memories,”
Here is our booth:
Here is Beau’s quick impression of Tony in the kitchen, canning without supervision:
It’s a good likeness, don’t you think?
So we must give all the glory to Jehovah Jireh, or the God Who Provides. He has blessed us so much, and we are only partway through the harvest season. Don’t leave any behind, pretty soon we can rest! We must tell others of His goodness and mercy, for we would be nothing without Him!
The Fullers Four 