The guest posts you read on the last Friday of every month are written by my mom. Without collaborating, we both chose the theme of the harvest for our posts this week! I know you’ll enjoy this month’s memory and scriptural truths from Lorraine Strohbehn.

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Bare feet in the still-warm dirt made the harvest a memorable time when we enjoyed gathering our potatoes. Dad went ahead of us with the shovel to dig up the hills of potatoes. He would often hold up an especially big one for Mother and me to “ooh” and “ahh” over. As a little girl, I thought that the time when we planted them seemed to be a long time ago, and now it was finally the harvest. We put the potatoes in large buckets, which we emptied into the wagon that Dad had ready for the trip to our basement.

When the digging and gathering were complete, Dad got the horses hooked up to the wagon and took the potatoes to the right spot behind our house. We sent them down a slanted opening in the rock wall that deposited them right into the bin where they were stored for our winter use. It was so exciting to see that bin get full and realize all the trips I would get to make during the winter to get potatoes. Of course, we fried most of them, often with onions, as hash browns; many were made into one of our favorite winter casseroles: ground beef, onion, and potato, with a little milk, salt, and pepper. I can still smell it baking in the oven of our wood stove.

Of course, there was much more preparation for our other produce. We brought in enough sand to cover the bottom of a gigantic crock. Then we stuck carrots down into the sand, poured in more sand, and filled the crock with beautiful golden yellow delights for the winter. We stored the onions in a small bin. Butchering day meant that Mother would fry some of the meat, place it into a small crock, and layer it with lard to preserve it.

The shelves were already filled with rows of canned tomatoes, beans, corn, peaches, pears, applesauce, and blackberries from the patch in our pasture. What a harvest!

Harvest is the result of labor. Labor is the result of caring. Caring makes us want to provide for those we love and shelter in our home. It is a demonstration of readiness for what is to come. Matthew 25:1–15 tells us about ten pure young women who went out with their lamps to meet the bridegroom; they were not certain of the time for his arrival. Five of them were wise, but five were foolish. The wise pure young women had extra oil for their lamps so that they would be ready. The foolish ones slumbered. When the call came that the bridegroom was approaching, the wise trimmed their wicks and were ready to meet him. The foolish had lamps with no oil in them. By the time they went to get oil, the door was closed. This illustration from God’s Word shows us that planting and watering must precede harvesting.

Be ready! To a little girl, the harvest seems like a long time away from the time of planting. As we get older, we realize how short the time has been and will be. Matthew 9:37–38: “…the harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth laborers into His harvest.” What are you and I doing about planting and watering so that we can go out and bring souls into the harvest for an eternity with our Lord?