This is what my table looks like after getting out into my gardens and harvesting this morning. I wish everyone could have a table that looks like this: summer squash and romas, watermelon, acorn squash and cherry tomatoes, sage and thyme, lemon balm and lavender, green beans and yellow beans, radishes and cucumbers.
This doesn't include the potatoes, onions, arugula, bell peppers, jalapenos, Brussels sprouts (which are really suffering right now -- the prognosis is dismal), as well as all of the crops that will continue to produce and feed us and our friends into the fall.
The sugar snap peas are all gone (they were delicious) and this year we just left the strawberries to the birds.
This is also what my freezer looks like after harvesting in my own gardens and in others' over the past few months: apricots and cherries and plums, romas and cherry tomatoes, blackberries, boysenberries, and raspberries.
I will make soups and sauces, syrups and jams, smoothies and chutneys. I will hang my herbs in the garage in paper bags to let them dry out: sage, lavender, thyme, oregano, purple basil, regular basil, thai basil (my absolute FAVE!), rosemary, parsley, marjoram, peppermint, pineapple-peppermint, lemon balm, chives, garlic-infused chives, garlic, dill (which I have no idea what to do with), tarragon, stevia, and bee balm. So please don't ever buy another cooking spice or herb from the grocery store ever again until you check with me first.
We've already canned sauerkraut, red cabbage, and pickles.
All of this in spite of the fact that NONE of our fruit trees produced because of Snowmaggedon last winter. No apricots, no cherries (we picked those from well-established orchards this year), no peaches, and just ONE nectarine on the entire tree for the entire season. (The little pear tree we got in honor of our little Sofie is still just a baby.)
I have plans to use my sunroom this year to extend my gardening season. Did you know I can get five-gallon buckets at Walmart for $2.50? All I have to do is buy some of those, put soil in them, throw in some seeds that I've saved, and voila! We will still be eating fresh produce into the winter months.
Organic. No chemicals. All natural.
I'm inclined to believe that this is God's way, and this is how we should live our lives. Did God not set up a perfect system that generously gives us an abundance? Think about it. All this food sprang forth from a single seed. Tons more seeds are contained in what we grow and has the potential to generate more food for us exponentially! More than all of us combined could ever eat!
Are you thinking that you could never do this? Goodness sake, I'm from the desert, of all places. I'm no expert! The overall mode of operation in my back yard is to throw seeds in the ground and see what comes out. My tomatoes look like they're on CRACK right now! I've failed many, many times. My gardens have grown throughout the years -- it takes time. Start small. And share it with your friends and loved ones. Pretty soon, you'll be able to share with perfect strangers who cross your path. Eventually, you'll have so much that you could even make sure your enemies have enough to eat.
You'll be better for it.
Our Creator lavishes so much bounty upon us that it's downright wasteful. We could not possibly consume all of it ourselves. We MUST share it! I toy around with the thought that we could eradicate hunger and even war on this planet if we all simply started feeding each other.
During WWII, it was one's patriotic duty to grow a garden. Think about that. These little plots of land were called victory gardens or war gardens or food gardens for defense. If we made these back yard gardens a way of life, we could call them compassion gardens or benevolence gardens or generosity gardens. Why did we ever stop doing this?
These gardens could be international. Many countries have had their citizens grow them, and many gardens have been grown in public parks. Just imagine the abundant possibilities ...
Nothing on my table will make you unhealthy. None of it will make you overweight. None of it will give you a life-threatening disease. All of it is healthy for you. It is all good for you. The exertion it requires to be harvested is good for you. When we harvest together, we share the work. At the end of the day when our muscles are sore -- the good kind of sore -- we crawl into bed and the person we love takes the oil extracted from the herbs we grow and rubs away the pangs of our striving. The discomfort in our muscles wanes. We relax. Eyebrows start to wiggle and coy smiles appear.
And that, kids, is where babies come from.
Even if you don't get babies out of it, it's still a good time... and it's still a good system.
WHERE'S THE MEAT, you say?
I hear you. I love meat. We do get most of it from the grocery store (with whatever humankind has added to it.) But I'm eating less meat these days. Sean-Martin fills our freezer with a deer every year, and I'm happy to say that humankind has added nothing to it. I'm also trying to get him to fill our freezer with more fish, but it takes a lot of convincing to convince a catch-and-release guy.
I've been eating from this God-system so much that I'm to the point where I cannot eat certain food that humankind offers from the subsequent you-have-to-pay-us-money-to-eat system. And it's not even because I don't want to. A Big Mac and fries are not beneath me -- I assure you! But I just can't do it anymore. It makes me ill. Two minutes after I polish it off I think, Let the regret commence!
I think about elephants -- the largest land mammals on the planet. They're huge! But they don't eat meat. And the system God created seems to sustain them just fine.
Gardening and sharing with others has convinced me of the sufficiency of God -- and that God is for us and will sustain us. There is so much to go around that no one ought ever to be without -- in God's system, that is.
Too bad humankind created a new system -- one where we have stolen what God intended to be free and plentiful. This human system has made sure that our accessibility to food is very limited, and we cannot get it unless we pay for it. You know what came of that?
Hunger.
Starvation.
Deprivation.
Poverty.
And because we are so afraid, so fearful, so interminably terrified that there will not be enough, we fight over the earth's resources. People say all the time that more wars have been fought over religion than anything else.
What a shame.
Because God is not owned by religion (thank you, Gungor) and he never intended for us to fight and kill each other and ravage each other's land (not to mention our own) because we believe there might not be enough.
Or that we ourselves are not enough.
It is all so calamitously and deplorably unnecessary.
God is love. God's intentions for us are good and trustworthy, dependable and certain. God's system makes us healthy. It is sustainable and abundant. It is God's system I choose to live in. In this system, there is no human-made, political or societal reason to reject or to marginalize anyone. We can take the stranger into our home, into our country, and into our loving arms. It is a good way. If ever I can live and move and make my being in God's system instead of this human system, I make a conscious choice to do so. I am very much in process.
And that is why if you are in the Treasure Valley, if you see something you need or want on my table, come and get it. Message me and make sure I'm here. Bring something from your table or freezer to trade. Or just come and get something in exchange for a hug or some laughter -- because there is PLENTY!
Let us live in community. Let our religion be Love One Another. Let our hearts and our tables always be full.
Daisy Rain Martin is an author, speaker, advocate, and educator as well as a founding member of The Flying M-Inklings Writing Group. She lives with her husband, Sean-Martin, in the beautiful state of Idaho and teaches English and Literature during the school year to the best 7th graders the world over. Daisy spends her summers writing, speaking, researching, creating, gardening, and canning. Hope Givers: Hope is Here, is the sequel, of sorts, to her comedic, spiritual memoir, Juxtaposed: Finding Sanctuary on the Outside, which was her publisher's (Christopher Matthews) #1 top selling book in 2012. She has also written a free e-book for anyone who has or is currently being sexually abused called, If It’s Happened to You, which appears in its entirety in Hope Givers. Please follow her weekly blog, SATURDAISIES, which addresses a plethora of current issues including child advocacy, all things hilarious, and matters of the heart. She would love for you to join the Rainy Dais Community by friending her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
No comments:
Post a Comment