I visited my younger sister’s weekend farm on Ganghwa Island to harvest garlic and onions. The garlic cloves we had planted individually last fall had grown into six-clove garlic by the time of harvest. My sister and her husband were very pleased, saying that this year’s garlic and onion harvest was much better compared with last year. They shared that they had put in a lot of effort to achieve a good harvest this year, learning from the lessons of last year’s poor results.
The first thing they did was enrich the soil by making natural fertilizer. They mixed and fermented various ingredients such as coffee grounds, oilcake, EM (Effective Microorganisms), and rice husks, then spread the mixture over the fields. Thanks to their hard work, the crops grew strong and tasted excellent.
As I placed the harvested garlic into the basket, I thought to myself:
“If crops can bring such joy to the farmer after just a few months by yielding many times over, what kind of fruit have I offered to God during this time?”
In the Parable of the Sower that Jesus taught, seeds sown on good soil produce a crop yielding thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times what was sown. Just as fertile soil is essential for a good harvest, I too must cultivate the soil of my heart with the words of Father and Mother, making it into good soil that bears abundant fruit.