I’m tired already. Because it takes about 40 raspberries to fill one cup, which means it takes about 130 raspberries to make one batch of raspberry jam. If you’ve never picked raspberries, that doesn’t mean much. But if you have, you know the first step is finding the berry, the second step is maneuvering your way to the berry, and the third step is actually picking the berry. No one cluster-picks raspberries. Or strawberries. Or blueberries. Or any berry. They’re harvested one berry at a time.

The same goes for the vegetables we preserve. Those 45 beans weigh about a pound. If you’ve ever bottled green beans from your garden, you know the first step is finding a green bean on a green vine beneath green leaves. As an annoyed child picking beans in my parents’ garden, I had an ongoing dispute with God in my head. It was one-sided; He was quiet. But that didn’t stop me from peevishly asking why He chose to make beans the same color as their leaves and vines. I asked if He was too lazy to change the color, couldn’t think of a better color, or was just being mean about it.

I never got an answer. I just got better at finding the beans. I eventually realized that once they’re picked you still have to snip the ends off each bean, then snip them into bite-sized pieces. Only then can you pack them into jars and begin the process of processing them.

The best example of how compounded effort adds up to something worthwhile is found in the labor of preserving a home-grown garden. It’s the law of Incremental Harvest. Nothing — not a single thing we preserve — is done in a single effort. Every piece of produce we harvest requires some multi-step process to get it to our plates, or into jars, or into the freezer.

So why is all this work so satisfying? Why do we do it when we can just buy a can off the shelf and spend our time doing anything but weeding, watering, debugging, and wondering if this year’s harvest will yield anything? We might say it’s because we know what’s going into our food. It’s economical to produce our food. It’s healthier than store bought.

All true. But there’s still something more, something about the process of harvesting, about the yielding of a stubborn earth to effort, and the sure knowledge that a seed gone into the ground, incrementally cultivated, harvested and preserved, will give back.

The core lesson of incremental effort yielding results shows up in other aspects of our lives, including places that have nothing to do with vegetables and everything to do with people. Those same concepts apply to incrementally preserving those whom we rear and love.

When we naively sign up for the parental role, we start with a baby–a little seedling that comes with a whole list of needs and not much initial yield. But over time, as we go through the steps to grow that little one, we start to see a harvest. We can’t really explain it. We just know that as we incrementally cultivate and preserve that child, we begin to experience measurable improvements in our own lives.

Even through the difficult times that are a natural part of raising a kid, we continue cultivating and preserving. Our efforts — and harvest — grow ever larger as our child does the same. We thought we knew what we were doing when we chose to do this. We eventually realize we had no idea, but our ignorance was the blind blessing that persuaded us to try.

Eventually our efforts yield a new one of us — an adult child. We actually replicate ourselves. It’s both astonishing and terrifying, especially when that fully grown child moves beyond our cultivating to establish his or her own roots. From a distance we claim small traces of our child’s growth, uncertain what our role, if any, may be.

And then — our child produces a child.

Our next season of cultivating and harvesting begins.