Bumper Crop

While I love, love, love new potatoes, nothing says "fresh from the garden" to me quite like green beans.   Last year, a monster of a hail storm destroyed most of my garden, including my two rows of green beans.  The plants attempted a comeback but the flowers had been knocked off... so no beans grew.  My family was dismayed... they had grown up eating green beans all winter long, that I had blanched and frozen from the summer's harvest.  So we went without.  I just can't convince myself to buy frozen grocery store beans.  They just don't cut it. 

You can only imagine how discouraged I was in mid-July this year, when I was once again hit with a major hail storm.  It didn't do quite the damage as the storm the year before.  But my garden was a MESS!  All I could do was pout for awhile, clean up the shredded debris and hope for the best.

Well Mother Nature sure didn't let me down.  In the short span of a couple weeks, my garden had recovered and, best of all, the green bean plants were loaded with delicate purple flowers!  It is absolutely amazing how resilient nature can be.  ​

The harvest as been bountiful! And delicious! We'll certainly have our fill this summer and will be eating green beans from the garden all winter long.  I've got my work cut out for me.  But the delight I take in feeding my family with healthy, farm fresh vegetables that I've raised, makes the hours spent picking and preparing the beans for the freezer so worth the effort.

When life's storms hit, it's tempting to just give up.  I know that I'll for sure keep this year's bumper crop with me whenever I'm feeling discouraged. It's such a good reminder that even a big set-back shouldn't stop us from keeping on!