Ellen G. White: The Australian Years: 1891-1900 (vol. 4)

The Garden at Sunnyside

The vegetable garden at the Sunnyside home was now yielding its harvest, and Ellen White wrote to the Lindsays, who with Mrs. A. E. Wessels, Mrs. Lindsay's mother, had been such benefactors to the school enterprise: 4BIO 289.5

We have been living off our vegetables this year. Last year we had but few tomatoes, but this year we have enough for ourselves and a good supply for our neighbors also. So we testify that the school land will yield abundantly this coming year if the Lord's blessing shall attend our labors. We are now eating sweet corn that this land has produced, and we enjoy it much. 4BIO 290.1

I wish I could pass around to Mother Wessels and your family the products of our experiments in farming this first year in the bush. The Lord has prospered us indeed.... We are seeing the exact fulfillment of the light the Lord has given me, that if the land is worked thoroughly it will yield its treasures.—Letter 92, 1897. 4BIO 290.2

What they grew was supplemented somewhat by what they could glean from the countryside, such as wild blackberries. “This day,” she wrote to Willie on February 4, “Sara, Maggie, Minnie Hawkins, Edith, Ella May, and Mabel went ... to gather blackberries.... Our party brought back about twenty-five quarts.... All were glad that they went.”—Letter 186, 1897. 4BIO 290.3