Storing Supplies for the Winter

Proverbs 6:6 Go to the ant, O sluggard, observe her ways and be wise,
7: which having no chief, officer or ruler,

8:prepares her food in the summer and gathers her provision in the harvest.



I am still enjoying reading on facebook the accounts of people finding joy in canning and freezing their produce and baked goods. Many are also making jams and jellies. I probably will not do it this year. I was amazed though, how many people my age or younger are getting involved in those activities. I kind of miss doing those things. Maybe next year, I will try some canning.

My mother and I used to spend all summer canning and freezing fruits and vegetables. She was one who would not waste anything. People would give her beets and she would can the beets, but she cut off the greens and we would freeze and eat them. They tasted like spinach. We would go for walks around town, and if she saw someone with an apple tree she would stop and ask if we could have the ones that were on the ground to make applesauce. She would share these gifts of food with her older friends during the winter. She would let them come over and pick out what they needed. She passed away in early December of 1994. That year we had the whole backroom filled to capacity with the work we had been doing all summer. We also bought a bigger freezer. We had gone to a place that sold us tons of meat Pork, beef, chickens and other meats at a special price. Some people gave us some venison to freeze. Mom got really sick in the beginning of November that winter, and she knew that she wasn't going to live much longer. She told me not to give away the food we had prepared but that I would need it to last through much of the next summer for myself. She used good wisdom just like the ants in Proverbs. The only jobs I had at the time were odd jobs that I was doing for the elderly. The food lasted until early September of the following year when I got a full-time job working at the Riverside hotel. The night before mom died she told me that she was going home for Christmas. When I got into the car to go home from visiting her, I thought about the last words she spoke to me,"I am going home!" She didn't say she was coming back to her earthly home, but she meant she was going to her heavenly home to spend eternity in heaven with Jesus." During the night her health continued to worsen. Most of my brothers and sisters were with her that day, but I was not able to be with her, later that evening she did enter that heavenly home that she was promised to receive on that day several years before when she accepted the free gift of salvation.
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