Abundantly Blessed

Not too long ago I read about the need to welcome abundance into your life. Abundance is so much more than just money, it includes family, friends, spirituality, joy and so much more. One thing we have always had an abundance of is produce. We have been so blessed to live in such a fertile area that our garden and trees yield sufficient fruits and vegetables for our needs.

In 2013 we saw our first full crop of grapes! This year we had another beautiful yield. I think grape juice is one of my favorite of the homemade juices, it is a boon to be blessed with such.

Last year our full sized apple tree yielded some beautiful apples. We also had a friend give us some from their tree. With so many apples we had a freezer pie making day and made apple pies to enjoy throughout the year. We are still enjoying those pies! This year our tree yielded MANY apples! We had them for the wedding AND we still will be doing an apple pie making day. I guess we'd better start eating pie more often! ☺

In 2013 we decided that with so many greenhouses so close, that we would purchase canning tomatoes for our needs. They are so cheap that you can't go wrong. We were able to fill the pantry shelves not with just bottled tomatoes (my spaghetti sauce base) but we also made salsa which we are still enjoying. This year, I grew just enough tomatoes to keep us supplied with fresh tomatoes during the summer months. It was perfect because with the wedding plans this year, there wasn't time to do more.

This year with Naomi selling corn, we patronized her business and purchased corn for canning. We sure enjoyed the ease of buying corn through her. There is nothing quite like fresh corn on the cob in the summer months. We truly had an abundance to enjoy.

Both this year and last year we had a lot of cucumbers, but this year I was able to use them. We had so many that we ate them all the time, gave them away to anyone that could use them, and of course, made relish.

Last year we had an abundance of crab apples. I hate to see anything go to waste so we picked and froze bags and bags of them. It seemed that the deep freeze was nearly full of nothing but apples! However, this year I was so busy planning the wedding, that I didn't harvest any apples from my tree, especially knowing that there wasn't room in the freezer for them anyway! As the wedding plans progressed, I determined that it would be best to make the apple juice base for the cider we planned to serve. I had just the right amount of apples in the deep freeze to complete the project. What a blessing!

As I look back over the past two years, it is easy to see that the above is just a drop in the bucket of the abundance we have enjoyed. Our yard has produced plums from which I made jelly in the winter months, we had a healthy crop of potatoes, peas, zucchini, and carrots this year in addition to the berries and fruits we grew. We have pumpkin - enough for everyone to make their own jack-o-lanterns (that's another story), lettuce, onions, and more. It is not always easy to maximize the abundance that we have been blessed with, and yes sometimes we don't take care of it quickly enough, but we have always had what we needed and to spare. I welcome abundance. I love filling the pantry shelves and preparing for the long, cold months of winter. 

Every bottle I fill, is filled with love. I LOVE to make jams, jellies, sauces, relishes, and preserves. As with our preserves, we seek to fill our home and family with an abundance of love. In my opinion, love is a tonic, that if we serve one another daily in generous portions, sweetened with kind acts of service, life then takes on a joyous glow and there is nothing that can suppress it. I love my family so much. My children, husband, parents and siblings are a great blessing in my life. Not only have I been blessed with an abundance of produce, but my my family has produced an abundance of love in my life, they have helped me seek out and partake of the overflowing abundance of the Savior's love and joy that He offers daily. We are so blessed to live in a time of such abundance. As we fill our hearts with love, we are then prepared to share it in the long cold days of forsakenness that everyone experiences from time to time. May the love we have preserved warm the hearts of the forsaken as we love more purely and completely.