Journal - Plentiful Harvest

Well here it is August already! Where has the summer gone? I just thought I would pop in for a minute today and show everyone how our garden is doing so far. We’ve had quite the plentiful harvest. Here are a few items sitting on our kitchen windowsill, ripening in the sun. Those red things are, yep you guessed it, tomatoes! The big round ones are a variety called “Better Boy.” They look like plain old tomatoes to me, but they are very sweet and delicious. The odd shaped one to the far right is a Roma tomato. We have four plants each of those two types but the Better Boys are far outproducing the Romas right now. We also have one “Pear Drop” tomato plant. It grows small tomatoes, something like an elongated cherry tomato, and they are orange in color rather than red. That one plant has been producing lots of little Pear Drops all summer and Joni loves them. I forgot to get some of those in this picture. On Thursday night we had to go to Adam’s school for an orientation so we dropped off some tomatoes at Mom’s because I know she loves fresh tomatoes.

The small green things in the picture are jalapeno peppers. I’m not that crazy about hot peppers but I thought it might be fun to grow some. We have four jalapeno plants in the garden and they are producing like crazy. We picked about 15 of them last week and there are at least that many new ones coming in now. Since we don’t really eat them ourselves, and since I know my brother Brad likes hot peppers, we took a bunch to his house the day we took our new car over for him to check out. Since then, we noticed that one pepper still on our windowsill has turned red. We didn’t know jalapenos turned red. Does that mean it’s especially hot?

Anyway, that big green pepper in the middle is a variety called “Giant Marconi.” We also have four of these in the garden and while they took a while to get started, we finally have several growing now. This was the first one to start and the only one we have picked so far. This is also a nice example of the species because several of the ones that are still on the plants are growing in curls, almost a complete circle in some cases. Joni calls them “Elfin Peppers” because they remind her of the curly-toed shoes that elves wear. I can’t wait to try this thing; it sure looks good!

Today, Sunday, I had the day off of work so we went in to Mom’s to bag up some sweet corn. Mike and Bobbi had some ready in their patch. Mom went out after church and picked a few dozen ears, then we all got to work shucking, cleaning, boiling, cooling, cutting, and bagging it. It’s a messy job but it’s a good way to spend time together as a family, and we sure enjoy having fresh sweet corn all winter long. It also kind of brings back happy memories of growing up on the farm. Grandma and Grandpa would come out and we would all work on an entire pickup-load of corn, spending the entire day at it. Today, we started at around noon and finished up by 4:30 or so and came home with 18 bags of corn to stock our freezer with.

This is what life is all about, isn’t it? Hard work and fellowship, and everyone sharing in the harvest. God has certainly been good to us.

John 4:34-38 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. 36 Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” ESV