In Time of Abundance

June 3, 2014

Beloved:

    Yikes!  What was I thinking buying eight quarts of strawberries at the farmer’s market the day before my #1 strawberry eater left for camp?  I’ll make another tart and still have six quarts to freeze for later. After vacation I’ll have time to jar up some jam.  

    We ate our first broccoli last night.  Tomatoes and cukes are on the vine.  Berry bushes and squash vines are flowering. Beans and gourds are still just tendrils.  It’s our first year with cabbage - they are big but I’ve no idea when they’re ready. We planted a whole patch of basil with the idea of freezing loads of pesto for winter.  

    I once owned the cookbook, “Too Many Tomatoes, Squash & Beans:  A Cookbook for when your garden explodes.”   Most everything I still do putting up food I learned from that book.  I’m pretty sure my squash casserole recipe came from it too.  I don’t know what happened to my copy.  I miss it but don’t really need it anymore.  I know it’s possible to eat directly from one’s own effort.   Eat not just directly but well and abundantly, and deliciously too.  It’s not just possible - it’s joyful.  It’s fun.  It’s healthy for spirit, mind and body.  In me it generates deep respect for the full-time farmers who grow food for their own livelihood and to feed others.  It reminds me food doesn’t have to be expensive but we do have to pay for it; with money or with energy.  Either way we are spending time and, for me anyway,  time in the dirt pays back in kind which is my preferred economy.  Some days I think I’d love subsistence farming, raising enough to feed myself, mine and a few others.  I only have to consider it seriously for a few minutes before common sense returns and I am once more a happy garden hobbyist.  

     If this spring’s weather holds, all our gardens are going to explode - give thanks!  And if you don’t garden no worries at all.  There’s still plenty to eat - another cause for giving thanks.  Be well this day! ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette