Urban Homesteading

Overnight those tomatoes shed a lot of water.  One bucket had about five inches of yellow-tinged water but the other had only about a quarter of that.  The first one had tomatoes that had been frozen and the other had tomatoes that we had freshly picked.  Freezing must break down the tissues so they shed water better.  Mental note — freeze tomatoes before hanging.

After dumping the tomatoes in my big stock pot, we brought it up to a boil.  My stock pot is thinner than it should be and food scorches easily.  To save myself stirring constantly, I put the pot in a water bath using my big canner.  It worked.  Stirring every 10-15 minutes was sufficient.  After the tomatoes cooked down, I pulled about half out and ran it through a food mill, getting rid of lots of seeds and some hard spots.

In the end, even with draining all that fluid, the sauce simmered for nine hours to reduce by half, giving us seven quarts of rich, beautiful sauce, just right for spaghetti or pizza.  But my conscience is nagged by running our electric stove so long.

We emptied out the big onion patch.  With four of us pulling, it went pretty fast.  The books say to dry them in the sun for a week or two before putting them in long term storage, so we dumped them out on the patio table.  It looks pretty impressive to me.  The book also says that the ones that still have green tops won't keep well, so we'll separate those out and use them first.

The days are shortening and shade has encroached on the patio from the big walnut trees in the south.  The change in the light takes me back to this time last year.  I wasn't nearly as busy, but I dreamed of this work.  We had spent the summer reclaiming the pasture and garden from the weeds and by this time we had worked up to bare dirt.  Although living in town, we were doing the work of homesteading.  One short year later, God is feeding us abundantly with a heavy garden, milk, and meat and educating us in things that were common knowledge a century ago.

Soreness and Surprise

It's cool and rainy today.  It wasn't supposed to be and I had a long list of things to get done outside.  I'm not that disappointed that I have to stay in.

We harvested that surprise broccoli that had been growing on the back side.  Off only six plants we almost filled the harvesting bucket.  After washing them, I looked in the book on how to freeze broccoli.  It recommended soaking them in salt water for 30 minutes to eliminate insects.  Sounds good, so I did that.  Then it was pretty standard.  First I cut them into the sized pieces I'll want when they come out of the freezer.

Then I blanched them.  This old blancher was in my grandmother's things after she died.  It's a pot in a pot.  The inner pot has holes like a colander and nests nicely into the outer pot.  After bringing the water to a boil, I threw it a bunch of broccoli and let them go for three minutes.  After draining, I dumped them into another strainer to drain and started the next batch.  Finally, I dumped the drained broccoli into bags.

It took less than half-an-hour from start to finish.  In the end, we got about a gallon and a half in the freezer.  That's a lot of broccoli when I didn't realize we had any.

That broccoli will taste sweeter because it was a surprise.  And it's a blessing because I'm sore and it gave me something to do today without straining any muscles.

My body has been slow in learning this new lifestyle.  Raising food involves a lot of lifting and physical work.  My body is middle aged and not especially athletic.  Sore muscles have become a regular part of my life.  Last Friday we scooped cow pies and then Saturday I helped my daughter's girl scout troop pick apples, lifting quite a few heavy boxes.  My back is still sore.  But the rain has given me a respite, another day to heal and recover.  I pray that each time I suffer this soreness, God is using it to grow strength in my body so next time won't be as bad.  That's all I can hope for at my age.

The Garden is a Mess

For the first time in a while, I stepped off the path, over to the tomatoes, and discovered a jungle mess that had been out of sight.  The furrows we worked on so hard last spring have worn down or are completely hidden by the overgrowth.  We were so good at weeding until it got hot.  Those little weeds have grown into huge spindly monsters.  I pulled the ones that came out easily, but then I just gave up.  I'll till them in later.

How much it is like my life.  Just a mess.  My brokenness overgrown and big.  Some sins easy to pull out, but others so entrenched that I just leave them alone.  Many gain strength simply from lack of attention.

As I walked through looking for tomatoes, I couldn't even tell where the rows were.  Those pitiful little tomato plants I put out last June have spilled out everywhere.  Some never got a cage around them and have sprawled out five or six feet.  Others got cages, but grew out more than up.  Others grew up and knocked their cage over.

Looking at that knocked over cage was like taking an honest look at my life.  My own need for control overgrowing and knocking over others with unrelenting pressure.  My self-centeredness searching for a place of importance, but with no support, flopping over in a heap on the ground.

Christina came to say hi while I was walking around.  I don't see her much any more.  I'm too lazy to go say "hi" just for fun, and with no milking to be done there isn't much reason to go out there.  I admit that fear is part of my problem.  She is a large animal and can be pushy.  I don't know how to respond to that, so I stay away.  But she hasn't forgotten me.  She gently walked over, sniffed me, and watched my excursion.  I get lazy and scared of God too.

Some weeds are going to seed.  I can hear my father-in-law, dead almost eight years now, saying, "better get those pulled."  But there are so many of them.  The ground is hard.  The roots are stubborn.  So I walk away, let them spread their seed, providing certainty that they will be back next year.

Weeds discourage me, the same as sin does.  I walk through these uninvited plants and feel overwhelmed.  I wonder if this is how God feels walking through my life, discouraged at the sins grown large from lack of attention and lack of will.

But as I walk I notice other things too.  The broccoli plant I hadn't gotten around to pulling had a new crop of blooms on the back side, down under the dominant topgrowth.  They are perfect flowerettes, dark and dense, better looking than anything we got last spring.  Could there be parts of me flowering on the back side, places where God has been quietly growing something better than I've ever seen?

The cantaloupe plant is dying back, and plump orange cantaloupes are standing up out of the declining vines.  They sweeten as the plant recedes.  I hear an echo of the cross, a dying body, that left such sweet fruit for all humanity.  Are there parts of my life that are like the dying vines, leaving sweet fruit behind?

I looked under a large squash canopy and found perfect fruits in their final preparation for winter.  I didn't even know they were there.  There were lots of them, round, beautiful, and hardening for a long cold wait until they warm and nourish our family.  I have ignored these plants just like I ignored the weeds, but they have produced.

The weeds have grown, but the garden has grown stronger.  The weeds may be big, but God didn't let that stop abundant growth.  In fact, as I look back over the garden, most of it looks as if the weeds didn't make any different at all.  It just looks neater to me without weeds. But God doesn't need the weeds to stay away to make amazing things happen.  My attention or lack of attention doesn't seem to make a big difference either because with God there is new life.  With God there is fruit.  With God there is a harvest.  My job is only to look for it.