In case you don’t know, that’s from an old nursery rhyme I learned as a child: “To market, to market, to buy a fat pig, home again, home again, jiggety jig.” There are additional verses about buying other stuff including a fat hog, a plum bun, and a fat dog. Whoever wrote the little poem back in the late 16th century seemed focused on fat things and rightly so. It was published during the Little Ice Age (1300-1850), and crops in England had failed for several years in the 1590s, causing food shortages and price inflation. It was likely a dream to go to market and buy something that had been fattened so you could feed your family.
I don’t take full grocery store shelves for granted. Seeing how empty they could get during the Pandemic of 2020 taught me that lesson the hard way. We’re blessed to have ready access to food and other items needed to live comfortably. Watching the news at night reiterates just how blessed we are.
Twice a year, Hubby and I eat ourselves out of house and home. This comes right before we leave whatever dwelling we’re in and head north or south to the other dwelling. With this seasonal migration, nothing is left behind that will rot or expire before we get back. The refrigerator and freezer are mostly empty except for jugs of water to help conserve electricity. When we arrive at the other dwelling, there’s nothing to eat in the house, but we have plenty of cold water.
We arrived at our bare-shelves summer home early last week. Hubby and I both made the initial trip to the store to stock up. As it always happens, I made two more trips to get the things we forgot or didn’t think about on our initial trip. We are pretty much stocked again, and food is in the refrigerator and cabinets. The water is back on, the water heater is heating, and the heater/AC is working. That’s a sign we’ve arrived for the season. With a prayer of thanks for the safe journey and full shelves, we are set for summer.
Jesus said to them, “How many loaves do you have? And they said, “Seven and a few little fish.” So He commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground. And He took the seven loaves and the fish and gave thanks, broke them and gave them to His disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitude. So they all ate and were filled, and they took up seven large baskets full of the fragments that were left. Now those who ate were four thousand men, besides women and children.” Matthew 15:34-38