Category: food (Page 7 of 34)

After taking a land sabbath last year, and doing lots of land prep, it was time to get back to planting and by God’s graces growing a garden!

And here is where things are as of a few days ago. When I’m watering each plant, I think how each one is a little miracle from God! A little seed, in the ground, a little tender bud, the plant growing, and then being fruitful if God wills.

Can I make these plants grow and make a bean? No. It’s God that gives the increase.

And it’s the same spiritually:

1 Cor 3:6-7 – “6 I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. 7 So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.“

Both in the garden, and in the garden of our hearts, truly miracles of grace from the Lord!

But now, back to the garden on our homestead…

Here it is overall:

And sweet potato plants:

Green bean plants:

Zucchini plants and zucchini:

The first haul!

And okra plants:

And a few years ago, we were given a Goji berry plant, and it has hung in there:

With some berries!

One of the valves on our cistern spigot drips slightly, and all Winter we had it dripping on this Goji plant. We heard they send off root shoots, and boy, did it shoot them off! The main plant is on the left, and all the rest of the offshoots. It’s starting to spread out nicely!

Here is a volunteer sweet potato plant from, I assume, plantings of a couple of years ago!

And here is one of two black berry plants that were given to us I believe the same time the Goji was. One hasn’t come back, but this one has “died” back a few times, but is still going:

Finally, this is our compost pile. That square is probably a couple of feet longer than the length of a shovel:

After “processing” our over-aggressive roosters here, we put the remains in the compost pile, but something has discovered that free lunch and digs them out, and you can see left-overs strewn about:

We are very thankful to the Lord for granting us the opportunity and provisions to plant a garden this year! And we pray for and are grateful to Him for any increase He might grant, in our garden, in our hearts, and in the hearts of our families, friends, those we know, and even those we don’t. We pray the Lord grant a great increase in His kingdom, and may He guide and use us in what small ways He might in the planting and watering of people’s hearts to that end!

— David

Being 14 years here this year, we took a sabbath year off for the gardens, and took the opportunity to do a complete re-covering of mulch on top of the garden beds, having started this process of “forest bed” mulching, which is laying down the mulch so that it composts over time and helps keep in moisture, back in 2012.

One thing the Lord has graciously granted is that prickly lettuce, which is a wild lettuce, grow here.

And wow, did it grow here this year! All that jungle basically is prickly lettuce! But, I needed it weed-wacked, so I worked to that end:

And here’s a quick video of that during that time:

And here it is after the fact:

Then, it was time to cover it all:

And then onto garden 2, which was overgrown the same way as garden 1. Once mowed, thankfully, I was able to cover it in only 4 trips:

Finally, God has graciously granted a few volunteer sweet potato plants! We look forward, Lord willing, to maybe a few bonus side dishes! 😀

We thank the Lord for the resources to accomplish all of this, and we pray He applies the mulch and all of the micro-biology that He provides in His creation!

— David