Saturday afternoon on our way to take Danny fishing for his birthday, we stopped at a place where Jonathan is remodeling, where the owners said we could pick the crabapples. There were bushels of them--large, bright red crabapples!
It was as hot as a summer July, but we got busy and climbed ladders, picked crabapples and then shook branches till crabapples were raining down on our heads! I tried not to think about all the work we had ahead of us for preserving those things!
We must have gotten about three and a half bushels.Then we could forget about the future work for a few hours while we went for a little hike and the younger children fished at their favorite stream.
But the work cannot be forgotten forever! Crabapple jelly, here we come! Today we all got busy and now near the end of the day I am collapsing for a little while at my desk to write about it!
We did up 38 pints or halfpints or other small size jars of beautiful red jelly, and then put the pulp through our Victorio strainer and got about 14 quarts of beautiful pink crabapple sauce. All you have to do, if you think the sauce is too tart, is add a little sugar, and you have delightful apple sauce! I had no idea you could do that. There is very, very little waste.
Besides all that which we canned or froze, there were about three quarts of crabapple sauce that the girls want to turn into crabapple butter, just like apple butter.
Crabapples are much smaller than regular apples, and more tart.
It was a lot of work to do anything with them.
But I thought how the Lord made crabapples just like He made apples--both to be useful fruit and food for mankind.
What if some of us are smaller and less significant than others?
What if some of us are skinny and not very beautiful and without very many talents or gifts, and peppered with lots of botches and spots?
A hungry family enjoyed doing up a bunch of those spotty, crabby little red crabapples into delightful jelly and sauce,
and God turns the least of us into something useful in His kingdom.
Lord, maybe I am just one of Your crabapples, compared to some of Your wonderful apples.
But just use me the way You want.
Cut out the black spots; cook in hot water until soft; then add lots of sugar and place on Your shelf--
not to be admired, but to be used!
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