Featured photo: Tomatoes ripening for harvest at GZI‘s Beulah Acres Agro Forest.
The first harvest is almost always a delight. It is the joy of the very first and the brand new. Not everything in life is perfect, but the results can be oh, so satisfying.
In this case, satisfyingly delicious!
Remember those transplants I posted about earlier? That was my family and me last summer. We moved from Colorado to Texas on Memorial Day weekend. To my gardeners out there, you know we were not ready for the difference in the growing climate here in Texas!
It was too late to start a spring garden. We had so much work to do to get any reasonable amount of crops growing. We also learned from the locals that it was unseasonably hot last summer: too hot for tomatoes and your traditional backyard garden vegetables.
This year, after adding a couple of raised beds to beat the Texas heat, it is a brand new story. We are having so much fun with these! The snow pea blossoms are visible on our header, and you may have already read about the sunflowers. These beds are currently filled with beautiful soil and thriving with plant life! But that’s for another post.
I’ll start with the radishes, first harvested early this spring. They are one of the first crops of the season for many gardeners.
Look at that double radish! I didn’t even know that was a thing,
Next up, strawberries! I’ve never grown these before. I bought these plants from the local nursery and planted them in hanging baskets. Possibly too soon, but we made it to the first fruits – literally! This first harvest didn’t make it to the kitchen counter to become a staged photo. But, I can tell you that these strawberries were delicious fresh off the vine.
There are more pics to come and I bet you think I might tie in a little something biblical about firstfruits. That’s what’s so great about things of the Kingdom of Heaven: there are multiple insights within the things we experience daily. I am so very grateful to be in a place where we have room for strawberries, radishes, and so many other first harvests. I am adding links to the first harvest posts below, as we go, and I also want you to see and be encouraged by some of the imperfect-looking first fruits that were just as delicious!
Potatoes
Tomatoes
Okra
Basil
Sweet Potatoes
All this yumminess does remind me of one of the Psalms of David. During a time of deep distress, King David stated, “Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who trusts in him!” (Psalm 34:8, NKJV) This is a good reminder to me that first harvests are not guaranteed, and I need to trust my heavenly daddy even when I believe the outcome is a no-brainer, just as much as I trust him when my world seems topsy-turvy. He always has it under control, no matter what I see, no matter what he asks me to do. The Lord is always good.
In parting, here’s a song based on that Psalm that I love, by the late Kim Clement and his team in 2015! I hope it feeds your soul with joy! 😊
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