Celebrate Your First Fruits

Gardening is hard stuff.

It’s not just the weeding. Or the ground prep. Or the manual labor. It’s also getting your seed placement and timing right. It’s understanding how soil temps will affect germination, and knowing just how long to harden off those beautiful transplants you’ve been worrying over for the past week.

It’s all of that. And so much more.

But like they say (whomever they may be)…the things that are most deeply satisfying never come to us easily.

Seeking to grow and raise your own food is a gutsy, courageous decision if you ask me. It’s so much easier just to go to the store. When you take on the responsibility of feeding yourself and your family with your own hands you immediately become vulnerable to the risk of failure. On purpose.

Because it’s hard. Nothing is certain and nothing is guaranteed to turn out the way you expect it to. That’s why so many people don’t do it.

But I promise you it’s worth it. The risk. The effort. The time investment. The frustration. The failures. Like the pain of childbirth quickly becomes insignificant once the newborn baby is placed into a mother’s arms, the hardship of raising your own food fall away when you are in the midst of harvest.

This is why it’s so crucial to take the time to celebrate your first fruits.

The first harvest, no matter how small, is the most important one. Because it’s proof that you’re making things work. It’s validation that you’re on the right path. It’s a little victory that minimizes the hard stuff and propels you to sink even deeper into the job at hand. Because now you’ve tasted the fruits of your labor, and by golly there’s more where that came from! Your passion is renewed.

Raising food is important work.

So celebrate your first fruits, man. Because you deserve it.