June 15, 2017

Hello Dear Friends!

This week you will have the last of the Bing cherries (the sweet-est yet) and the first of the Santa Rosa plums (they will still be a bit tart and need to sweeten by standing at room temperature for a day or two). Farm to table produce allows you to experi-ence the taste of the ripening process — from early to later pro-duce: just one of the benefits and costs of being a shareholder in a farm to table enterprise. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do! Please feel free to give us feedback so we can learn as we go. We will plan to begin dropping off your baskets be-tween 1 and 6 pm on Thursday. Wait for us to text you when to pick up at the 603 W. F. location. Feel free to text or call either of us Cindi : 607-1887 or Keith : 607-1896

Just About Ripe

• Green Beans

• Apricots

• Cherry Tomatoes

Call for Recipes

Did you do something with your basket ingredient that you would like to share with others? I would love to include your recipes in our weekly update! Just email me your recipe.

Hand Crafted Lavender Hydrosol with Essential Oil

Please return your spray dispensers and I will refill them with some combination of my latest experi-ments: Rose Petals, Lemongrass and Honeysuckle.

If you just started with the garden and did not re-ceive a hand crafted air freshener, let me know you would like to try one when I receive more dispensers.

Insights Gleaned from the Kitchen and Garden

Rest to Rise

I was recently talking to a friend about how I experience the presence of God when I am baking bread. Knowing my challenges with physical pain, she asked if it increased my pain level. In reflecting on her question, I realized that part of what makes it possi-ble for me to bake bread (or engage in any activity these days) without increasing pain is the fact that I am able to rest (take a 20 minute power nap) during the process. There is a great deal of “allowing the dough to rest and rise”.

That reminds me of a great book by Eugene Peterson called “Under the Unpredictable Plant” in which he explores vocational holiness in light of the book of Jonah. At one point in the book he looks at the importance of the Second Day (Jonah in the belly of the whale and Jesus in the grave). That was the Saturday, the Sabbath between the work of the cross and the work of the resurrection. Who even thinks much about the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday? Apparently Gene Peterson. Any-way, back to the bread baking metaphor. So it occurred to me that the “dough” of Je-sus, his body being the bread of life and all, was resting in the grave after having been being severely beaten and bruised, just as dough is thrown around in the kneading pro-cess!! The “leaven” of sin was defeated and now on Saturday Christ truly rested, sabbathed (is that a word?) and waited for the final “rise”! The promise of His recon-ciliation with God and His own new body is the guarantee of the resurrection of all who believe! Okay, I know I am pushing the metaphor, but these things just tickle me silly.

Being a recovering work/ministry-a-holic, that is not easy for me!! God has had to teach me (my health condition now insists upon it!) how to Sabbath and Rest. Never mind that it is one of the Ten Commandments. Apparently, I didn’t think it applied to me when I was doing “the Lord’s work.” It just seemed like such a waste of valuable time that I could be investing in people! However, I began to learn that resting IS the Lord’s work and so is playing!! I really believe that the original “work” in the garden was “play” until sin entered the picture and corrupted what God had in mind for Adam and Eve in tending and cultivating the garden. Only two of the ten commandments is in the positive of what we shall do rather than what we shall not do. Keeping the Sab-bath is one of them.

Incredibly important things are happening to bread dough while I wait for it to rise, plenty of wonderful things are happening to garden soil while it is lying fallow, and amazingly, phenomenal things are happening to our souls as we rest and enjoy intimacy with the Almighty, and Eternally Significant things were happening to Jesus as He rested to rise.

“If because of the sabbath, you turn your foot from doing your own pleasure on My holy day, and call the sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and honor it, desisting from your own ways, from seeking your own pleasure, and speaking your own word, Then you will take delight in the Lord, And I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; And I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”