I love harvest. I enjoy picking lettuce, spinach, apples, beans, tomatoes… all the ripe produce that we’ve worked so hard to plant and cultivate. God blesses our efforts with lots of good fruit; we get the fun of picking, eating, and preserving it. It’s very rewarding to me. I especially enjoy picking beans because it’s so peaceful doing it early in the morning. Today Tori ran the inside operations (breakfast, k.p., laundry, girls’ hair, get Joshua dressed, etc.) because she’d much rather do that than pick beans; and I got to pick and ponder. As the kids woke up and came to help me, my ponder time diminished, but I still had quite a bit of time of silence before they all meandered out. Give me a beautiful cool morning and a bean patch and I think I’ve got it made; it only happens several times a year and I enjoy it every time. Picking beans this morning, I was noticing all the weeds that insist on growing even though we’ve been diligent in weeding and trying to keep them out. As I pick, I also weed; to me there’s something very satisfying in a clean row. Also this year there’s so much mold – big gross beans covered with mushy slimy white fuzz. I don’t know much about bean mold, but I assume it will spread if it’s left in the patch, so as I picked I also threw all the moldy beans away from the patch into the grass. Anyway, so I was weeding and picking, and picking and weeding, and occasionally throwing away moldy beans, and just kept thinking about how a weedy moldy bean patch is like our spiritual lives. Even though we are diligent to weed the bad out of our lives, satan insists on planting new weed seeds every day, hoping and trying to choke out and destroy the good fruit which God wants us to have. Even when the fruit is mature, at the end of its life and ready to be picked, it can still be destroyed by mold; mature Christians as well as new converts can still be overcome by satan if a.) they are not diligent to daily weed their lives of bad influences, tendencies, and habits; and b.) they get too close to a bad moldy bean; the mold can destroy them before they even realize what’s happening. We should share God’s love with the mold of the world, but in doing so we must be cautious that we don’t get so close and caught up in it that we are infected before we know it. So my bean patch ponderings just kind of reminded me that my relationship with my Lord Jesus Christ is like a bean patch; it must be diligently maintained or there will be little or damaged fruit.
End of ponderings.
On to the day, and a wild one it was. Levi and Jesse milked, and after Levi went to CIT, Jesse started picking apples. Jacob did chores and worked in the orchard as well; there were many apples to pick. Last week my guess was right – there were more left on the trees than we picked on Thursday, plus the bushels that had fallen over the weekend. I joined the apple crew when beans were picked, and even Ben and the little girls could pick lots just standing on the ground. They were loving it. Tori and Kate joined us when things were ship-shape in the house, and by noon (I think; kind of forget) we had everything pretty much picked. Jacob and Kate made lunch while the rest of us hauled apples, buckets, crates, and ladders up to the house; we ended up with 4 bushels for the cows and 13 bushels for sauce…which meant I was on the phone all day trying to find takers. By the end of the day we had only 2 bushels left so most of my phone calls were successful. I’m just thankful for cell phones so I could talk and pick at the same time! Dad came home and jumped on the four-wheeler to check out the grass hay that Uhlmans were cutting for us; he went back to work and Jesse took Grandpa to ride with Rob and guide him around the wet spots. After lunch we tackled the beans and had them all snipped and snapped in 32 minutes. For clarification, we SNIP the ends off and SNAP the beans in pieces. Every time, we have this debate over which is which and who likes to do what better. So fun!
Beans done, then a short swim (Jesse went with us and Levi picked him up there to milk), and home for a snack and walk with Karol. Then chores and blanching beans; in the midst of that, U. Don, U. Randy & A. Marj, and U. Dan & A. Shirley came to pick up apples, A. Marcia stopped to pick up something else, and Grandpa Steiner stopped to drop off something. And we had beans to blanche and supper to make and chores to do. My head was spinning, but we got ‘er done! Everybody stayed on task, and we had supper only a few minutes late, with 12 quarts of beans in the freezer and fresh for supper too. THEN Dad and I (and 4 kids) went to Morton to buy a used stove for my birthday present (kind of) which will replace the shocking one in the basement. We were on our way out of Morton when Dad got a phone call; Uhlmans brought us some straw which had to be unloaded next. Levi and Jesse were home by then, and after their supper they helped with that job then took the hay rack back to Uhlmans. THEN my men moved in my new old stove. Dad and I took a short walk to check out the hay (looks very good, and smells great) while everyone else had ice cream sandwiches outside. Bibletime and beds. We had some tired kids! (and parents)
Some pictures of the day.
::Good morning Sunshine::
::Zinnias just starting to bloom::
So far we’re thinking this black tarp experiment is a success. Minimal weeds, and vines are getting bigger every day.
Sweet corn is growing, but beetles are starting to eat off the silks so it might be a small harvest.
::Bountiful harvest::
::More bounty::
En route to Uncle Jerry’s…I love this picture (thanks, Kate).
::Precious helper::
::Blessings of the farm::
::Beauty beyond words::
Hopefully we’ll have some newborn calves one of these days.
::Fun in the barn::
::The best part::
That’s all, folks.
