The Lord's Provision Part 1

This post will contain two parts and I will be posting them backward.  My husband runs a landscape business and does carpet cleaning so winter is not much of an income producing time for us.  Last winter my husband prepared and became licensed to sell health and life insurance so as his mowing and landscaping has slowed down it was time for open enrollment for Medicare enrollment.  We will see how that works out for us.  Anyway I have been gardening, food foraging, and deal shopping in preparation.  Our garden was productive and there is much to show for in that area, but I will share that in another post.  One of my concerns is that our family really enjoys fresh produce and there are so many enzymes needed for good health in those.  The canning and freezing I have done is not the same as fresh, but I am grateful for the things we have and we will enjoy eating them, but I asked the Lord about the fresh produce.  Since winter is not a great income producing time for us fresh produce is a luxury.  I hope before the ground gets too cold to make a cold frame to grow lettuce and kale.  This may or may not happen depending on time.  If not I will just have to make do. As I have prayed just sharing with the Lord my desire for fresh produce I discovered a coop that delivers in our area called Community Helpings Coop.  We just got back and after lunch I will be cutting up and making our produce so that it is easy for our boys to get out and just eat-- which they love to do most of the time.  I was impressed with our inexpensive bag of food.  I certainly would have paid more at the grocery store.  Here is our produce-- not enough for the entire month, but when combined with some of what I have put up we will meet our healthy requirements for fruits and vegetable.  Every order is a little different based on availability.  Here is a picture of what we got this time.

This week was our first frost so I took the rest of the tomatoes from the vine both green and red (I was barely getting anything from the vines anyway since they were almost done), harvested the remaining basil, parsley, and mint, and the rest of our zinnias and cosmo flowers.  We have also been collected persimmons and hickory nuts from the ground at a local park.  God's provision has been good.  The flowers were given as bouquets to Caleb's Wednesday night teachers at church, the herbs have all been dehydrated.  Here is a picture of our food that was recently taken from the ground.  Two pickings of persimmons are already frozen and there is a big yellow bag in the picture that will be made into pulp this afternoon and frozen.  We will likely have two more bags before we are done.  So here is the picture.

Then we had some surprise provision.  One of our neighbors bought turkey legs because they were on sale. Her husband did not like them or the turkey bacon she bought so we were given over 6 pounds of turkey legs and a package of turkey bacon along with a pound of carrots.  Then a friend of ours who raises chickens had extra eggs so we got 3 dozen eggs.  Then another neighbor brought extra food from a catered dinner at his workplace over to us.  He said they were going to throw it away so he thought a family with growing boys might find use for it.  The food was right up our alley.  It was beans and rice, baked beans, and cole slaw.  We have already eaten it for two meals and are going to have it a third time.  All these surprise provisions have come in the last four days.  God will take care of us.  He promises in his word.  

The Lord's Provision part 2 will share from earlier in the year.  The Lord has been good to us this year.