April Showers In May

For all of the talk about global warming, this year, so far, has been cold and rainy. However, the trees and flowers have been very beautiful and fragrant.

As the old-timers used to say, 'It's an ill wind that blows no good.' Or every cloud has a silver lining.

The year we began our truck farm, back in the early 1980s we had record amount of rain up until the last day of June.

It was so wet we couldn't get into the garden to do weeding at all. We had strawberries planted, and...

It was our first year of truck garden. That was our only excuse. We had gardened ever since the first year we were married, but that hadn't prepared us for a fifteen acre truck farm.

I laugh at this NOW, but back in the day it was just experience. We had at least one acre in strawberries.

After Old Fuzzy had ordered his tomato plants he was reading a 'trade magazine'. I don't remember how I realized something had tripped a trigger, but he is sitting in shock.

He says to me, "These folks in this article are harvesting a ton of tomatoes a day."

"That's a lot of tomatoes," I said.

"Yes," he says. "They have 7,364 tomato plants."

"That's a lot of tomato plants," I say.

"Yes, that's exactly how many plants we have."

Now we're both in shock. Some things are funnier years later than they are in the here and now.

As I said, we had so much rain, and with even five acres of garden...with even one acre of garden, not being able to weed is a bad thing.

From July first on we got no more rain. To get ahead of the weeds we took a lawn mower between the rows. That would have worked except our green peppers ended up with grass clippings impaling some of them.

(I like tomatoes)

And we sold tomatoes. In one of the driest Julys on record we sold one ton of tomatoes, hand picked and delivered right to farmer's markets, homes and local stores. And we lived to tell about it.

1 Timothy 6:17 "Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; 18) That they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate; 19) Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life."