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An Apple a Day….

Circle E Ellie in the sale ring!

We have been away from the farm a lot here lately and we are slowly trying to get back into a routine. We were in Starkville, MS recently for our friends-who-are-family’s big cattle sale. We took some time to be with them for a few days and attempt to help! We had a great time and yes, we sold some cattle; but we bought a few too, of course! We came away from the weekend with lots of leftovers, plenty of memories, a ton of laughs, and a few too many apples! Apples at a cattle sale? Yes! One thing that they do traditionally for this sale is to give away fresh-picked apples from West Virginia. Several different types are brought in and everyone goes away with apples. We just happened to have come home with a lot!

What do you do with more apples than you can eat? Well, I love to can and so naturally, I made plans to can apple pie filling! I had great plans in my mind until I stood at the sink to begin coring and peeling apples. What I had thought would be a big job turned into a monumental one! Fortunately, my daughter was home from college and had pity on her mother and helped me out. We cored, sliced, and peeled apples until we just couldn’t do anymore. (We had also eaten quite a few!) I got the pie filling ingredients cooking on the stove and added the apples to the mixture as she finished prepping. We had enough for several batches and it had the house smelling divine! After several turns in the canner, they all sealed and found themselves settled in the canning pantry. I was definitely a happy momma when we were done, except for my aching back and legs!

When I am canning, I always love thinking about God’s protection. I know that’s not what would come as a natural thought to anyone else!! When the jars are in the canner, they are experiencing extreme pressure and intense heat. The jars need the heat and pressure in order to seal the lid. The contents of the jar need the heat and pressure in order to kill bacteria and further cook the ingredients. The air comes out of the jars and the lid forms a seal that allows the jar to sit on the shelf and not need refrigeration. The contents of that jar are protected from the air, bacteria, and decay. Although canning recommendations tend to be a year or so, I know of one person who found jars that had been canned for 10+ years and opened them and found the contents to be just as if they were freshly preserved! ( Don’t freak out! They didn’t eat them!) The heat and pressure had done their job so well that the contents had withstood weather and the elements of time. Lots of times in life we find ourselves with the heat and/or pressure applied. It is uncomfortable and it usually isn’t any fun at all. But once the heat and pressure are applied the contents (that’s you and me) are preserved. Psalms 121 says, “The Lord is your keeper…The Lord will preserve you from all evil; He will preserve your soul. The Lord will preserve your going out and coming in from this time forth…” We come out of the canner preserved and kept for the future and for our appointed purpose. We are protected from all that rages around us. We still go through things, but we are protected and preserved through them.

I have often thought of canning and God’s protection, but this time I thought about something else. You know, all of those apples and the mixture of water, sugar, and spices go into those jars a combination of ingredients and come out something different. What went in is changed into a wonderful new formula. I love apples and who doesn’t love cinnamon and sugar; but cooked and cooled after the heat and pressure have been applied gives you something delightful. The thick pie filling can be used for all sorts of things that raw apples and the slurry of other ingredients could never accomplish. Friend, aren’t we happy that we aren’t what we once were? We have hope that once we come out of the pressure cooker of life that we will be changed into something totally different than what went in. Job 23:10, “But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.” I am reminding myself as I gaze at those beautiful jars of hard work and apples, that I too am going to come out of the canner not as the dust and rocks that went; but I am coming out as pure gold. Endure the heat and the pressures of life! We will find ourselves kept and preserved by the Master and changed into the delightful recipe He designed us to be.

Hiding them in the canning pantry so I don’t just eat them straight out of the jar!!

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Dead and Dried Up!

We had the opportunity to spend a long weekend with our friends in Nebraska recently. It’s always refreshing to have time away, for your mind to have moments to rest and your soul to be replenished by friends who welcome you like family. One afternoon, husband and I had a few minutes to drive around and just enjoy the area. Now, by drive around, I mean ride in sporty side-by-side that went really fast and no, I wasn’t driving! Do you know what I saw ? Corn, some cattle, corn, soybeans, and more corn. Corn was everywhere! Fields as far as the eye can see; all of them in various stages of harvest. (Fun Fact: The Cornhusker State is the 3rd largest corn-producing state in the US.) In some of the fields, the corn was still a little green and not quite ready to be picked. A good bit of the corn was dry enough, but the ground was extremely saturated from recent rains and that was preventing the farmers from bringing the heavy equipment in to pick the corn. In a few areas though, they have been able to get the machinery in the fields and they have been able to harvest a bit. (Another Fun Fact: Nebraska produces 1/4 of the nation’s popcorn! )

Funny thing is, when I think of corn fields, I don’t necessarily think of fields full of very dry corn stalks. I think of tall, green stalks waving in the wind and when the tassel is dry at the tip of the ear, the corn is ready to pick and eat. That usually means work for us to shuck the corn and prep it to be put in the freezer! Just think of all that delicious, buttered corn on the cob and creamed corn and fried corn, and….! (You can taste it now, can’t you?) But the thoughts of plump, juicy ears of corn were not matching the visuals in front of me. All I could see was what looked like dead and dry, wasted fields of corn. Now don’t get me wrong, I totally understand that not all corn is grown for human consumption. But I guess I just never really thought about the process. Why was the corn left here to dry out? It just seemed to me like corn should be picked at its peak and when it was “ready” instead of left in the field to dry out. But there is the point, isn’t it? That’s what I thought should happen. That’s what I thought the process should be.

I was looking at those fields and what I was seeing was wasted potential when really it hadn’t even begun to meet its full potential! I didn’t know the process. I didn’t know the plan. See that corn will be picked once it is DRY and sold for all kinds of intents and purposes. It will be sold and processed for animal feeds, ethanol fuel and possible even flours and corn syrup, not to mention, popcorn! This corn will only be considered wasted if it isn’t harvested and it is left in the field. Wow! what an eye opener! How many times have I looked at someone and thought about the wasted life? (Ok, don’t get all holier-than-thou on me! You’ve thought it too.) How many times have I failed to harvest what was in right in front of me and possibly prevented that life from reaching its full potential just because it didn’t appear the way I thought it would? How many times have I missed the opportunity because I was looking with my vision and not His eyes? Proverbs 19:21-22 says, ” Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. What is desired in a man is steadfast love..” I am convicted today that I have failed to harvest a single ear of corn, maybe even failed to pick an entire field. I am convinced that many times the field, or even the single ear of corn, has been right in front of me and instead of seeing a harvest, I have seen a waste because it wasn’t the picture of harvest that I had in my mind. “Jesus said, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, there are yet four months, then comes the harvest? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest.’ John 14:34-35.” May we all, today, see past the dryness. May we look past the dry stalks and look inside with His eyes and see the kernels, the seeds of life, waiting to be harvested and do our part to help them meet their full potential in Christ. And if today, you recognize that you are that dry corn and you need to be harvested, the combine is ready for picking! Jesus is waiting for us to be at the point of our need, where we are ripe for the harvest. Call on Him today and He will answer and pluck you from the dry field and set you on the path to production and reaching your full potential.

The Sinner’s Prayer (by Dr. Ray Pritchard)

Lord Jesus, for too long I’ve kept you out of my life. I know that I am a sinner and that I cannot save myself. No longer will I close the door when I hear you knocking. By faith I gratefully receive your gift of salvation. I am ready to trust you as my Lord and Savior. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for coming to earth. I believe you are the Son of God who died on the cross for my sins and rose from the dead on the third day. Thank you for bearing my sins and giving me the gift of eternal life. I believe your words are true. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus, and be my Savior. Amen.

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Gettin’ Out of the Hole

Don’t step in..you’ll sink!

People are always asking about the amount of work that goes into this place! Let me tell you, it’s a lot! And it never ends! Just when you get a few things checked off the list, something breaks or shows up unexpectedly and the list just continues to grow. This item on the list though, it is a thorn in the flesh! This little barn, we call the show barn, likes to hold water and the ground in the barn is awful. The animals in those particular pastures have to come in and out of the barn for shade. So every time they go in and lay down, they carry out mud with them when they leave! So over time, the ground level has dropped lower and lower. This week, while it’s so dry, husband decided to start trying to fill it back up. They had to use the tractor to load the dirt and then because of the way the barn is built, they could only dump the dirt right inside the doorway. They had to shovel the dirt from the front to the back, leveling it as they went. It was hot work, but when they were done, they had the one side filled back in and ready for the cows to come in and hopefully begin to pack it down. After some time, more will need to be added. Full disclosure: I watched, rode the tractor for company, took a few pictures, brought water bottles, and shoveled less that 10 shovel-fulls of dirt which I was told were a pitiful excuse for help!

Life gets us down in the same way sometimes. We go around every day, busy giving parts of ourselves away to those around us. Maybe you’re a mother taking care of children, the home, the husband and possibly working a job outside the home as well. You might be a father working to provide for your family and still manage to come home and help your wife and spend quality with your children. Maybe you are a self employed business owner, we know all about that, and the job never ends. Whatever you are doing every day, you are just like those cattle. Every time you leave the barn, you take a little dirt out with you and the ground gets lower. Everyday you speak to someone, encourage someone, share God’s love with someone, your ground gets a little lower. Don’t wait as long as we did to fill the dirt back in. We should be reading our Bibles and praying everyday in order to build ourselves back up. We go back to the dirt pile, the Word, and get another load to dump in the low places and fill it all back in. On occasion, God sends someone with His Word to encourage you, but sometimes we have to do that for ourselves. No one was coming to work on our ground inside that barn and it sure wasn’t going to fix itself! We had to do it! It’s just like David in 1 Samuel 30:6. David found himself really low and none of his friends or fellow soldiers came and spoke encouraging words. As a matter of fact, they thought the situation was all David’s fault and spoke out against him. But the Word says that “David encouraged himself in the Lord.” He didn’t use a self help book or some great, secular podcast. Those are all good tools but when your ground is low, we must do like David and go to the Word, spend time in prayer, and encourage and build ourselves up.

  • It’s getting there!
  • The ground is now back up to the bottom of the barn and level!

It’s so easy, at least it is for me, to give, give, give, all day long and at the end of the day fall into bed without having even touched my Bible. Shocking truth, I know! Maybe you get it right every day, but friends I sure don’t! Today I’m looking at this pile of dirt as a reminder of what is needed. I have some low places that need to be filled in. And when I fill those in, I have more to give to others. The work never ends. Just like that barn on the farm, we will have to pay attention and continue to haul dirt in and keep the ground high so that water runs off and the ground doesn’t get as low again. You and I are that barn, we have to continually “Build ourselves up in the most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,” Jude 20. Does your ground feel a little low today, or maybe a lot? Here’s a reminder to encourage yourself and build up your ground.

These are some of the guilty mud carriers! Aren’t these boys cute though?
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