A Bountiful Harvest

 By Mary

I've always been a bit of a black thumb...I never really tried my hand at growing much when I was younger, and my first attempts as an adult were pretty pitiful (my husband will never let me live down my efforts with hydrangeas)

Somewhere along the line, I've become something of a farm girl wanna-be, and even though I know I completely idealize certain jobs like canning and bread-baking—which, of course, would always be done in perfect peace in a mess-free kitchen with sunlight streaming through the windows--the desire tends to wax rather than wane (can't I just get a cute little mini Jersey cow and some chickens in an adorable coop?)

 Unfortunately, my tendency to kill plants has always been a bit of a downer on any homesteading-esque dreams, but last year I got brave and actually planted things. Admittedly, the bravery mostly came because we were living with my mom and everything seems so much more doable if your mom is doing it with you, but at any rate, we did it. An evening of research, an afternoon building a raised bed with my brother, a trip to the garden center, a morning of nervously and prayerfully planting, and we had an actual garden! That grew! And produced fruit!

I may have been pitifully excited, but it made for a complete change in my perspective. Instead of assuming anything I touched would eventually die off, I was hopeful. Maybe I could actually be a gardener! But I had to get more informed. So this past year I've been reading books and articles, learning about soils and companion plants, planting, pruning, harvesting, composting, and fertilizing. I gathered ideas for how to foodscape and blend the productive with the ornamental. I  kept an eye on the sunlight in our new yard over the winter and tried to plan accordingly. We made a retaining wall raised bed and asked our landscaper to put in apple trees and serviceberries. My procrastination even paid off this time so that my plants were safe inside their little pots in my house when our late May snow hit. I made some soil improvements and, again, prayerfully planted. 

We'll see what happens this year, but I'm excited. And I find with this newfound interest, different parts of the Bible are impressing me in different ways. One of my favorite examples is from John 15:1-2-“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit He takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit." 

These verses were on my mind often, pruning last season's tomatoes. When we first planted, we didn't know much about the pruning process and were just happy seeing it grow full and tall and healthy. But eventually we learned about suckers, the little branch-offs from the main branches. They looked just as nice and healthy as the rest and they even made the plant look more impressive, but they were sapping energy that should have been going towards the flowers to bear fruit. With the suckers, there would still be fruit. They weren't necessarily harmful. But pruning the suckers concentrated the plant's energy along the productive branches to bear much fruit, a more bountiful harvest than would have otherwise occurred.

This thought of pruning is both a challenge and a comfort to me. A challenge to consider, am I investing in things in my life that are detracting from what will bear fruit? On a daily basis, am I guided more by the Spirit or by my to-do list? Am I open to pruning off vacuuming for the day to make room for a more fruitful conversation? And a comfort to consider that, however much I esteemed a thing, however attached I may have been, if God is pruning it away, a more bountiful harvest is ahead.