I’ve always been amazed at the way God can take some seed, rain, and sunshine, then multiply it and turn it into food for many. We can help this process along by being good stewards of our gardens, but every year, I have food that is produced that I didn’t plant or take care of. We call these “volunteers” and they come from dropped, unharvested food or seeds that my children spit out on the ground while they were eating outside. We’ve had volunteer watermelon, tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins, cucumbers, cantaloupe, and strawberries, just to name a few.
No matter how many strawberries we grow, there never seems to be enough for my children. But one thing that we always have in abundant supply is grass. Grass and weeds continue to grow no matter how much mowing we do. And nothing I could add would let my children derive any nutrients from a grass smoothie (although they have eaten dandelion greens).
Fortunately, we have dairy goats. They are amazing machines when it comes to turning grass into something we use daily around here – fresh, raw goat milk. Not only do we turn this milk into soap, but we use it for cereal, cooking, pudding, fudge, drinking, egg nog, and cheesemaking.
I’m so thankful that God created ruminants (particularly goats) and enabled them to process grass and trees and turn it into energy they could use to make milk. If you need a homeschool lesson (or are just interested in how this works), I’ve got an article on the goat’s digestive system and their four stomach chambers. It’s one of the most efficient solar energy conversion systems I know.