City Girl/Country Mouse

I had gotten home from a long, tough day at work. After realizing that my family was still picking berries out in the field, I decided that I'd change into my picking clothes and head out to help them. Here are the thoughts that went through my head before I got onto the machine...

Ugh. I'm so tired. What am I doing? I have to go to work tomorrow, too. We probably won't get back in until 9/9.30. I don't belong on a farm, I'm a city girl. I should be in the city...ohhhh, I could be at Cinchetti's - that's my fav place in Vancouver - or I could be shopping! I could be...doing anything else.

As I approach the back fields, I figure out which row they're working in. I see that the machine is on the way back to me...instead of going out to meet the machine in the middle of a row, I decide to sit on the dirt and wait until they got to my end.

Sniff. Something smells funny...something smells like, like, poop! Ew. The dog must've gone to the bathroom around here somewhere.

I look around to see if there's a pile of poop anywhere. I can't find it, I also make sure I'm not sitting in any...nope, not there either.

This smells disgusting. Here's another reason why I shouldn't be here. What am I doing? I'm tired. I smell poop. This is not good.

As the machine approaches the end of the row, a sudden feeling of panic rises from the pit of my stomach. My eyes dart from side to side.

They still haven't seen me yet. If I run over to that row, and run in about twenty meters or so, then lie low for a few minutes, they still won't see me. Hmmmm. This could really work. It's still not too late. Then, I could just make my way back home and forget I even came here! Should I do that?

I didn't do it. The machine made it to the end of the row. My mom saw me first as she was standing at the flats - she was wearing a huge grin on her face and waving to me. My dad saw me next...his eyes got wide, he smiled from ear to ear, stopped the machine, literally jumped off of the machine ran over to me, gave me a BIG hug and said "Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!" (Remember: Driving the machine is very boring) You'd think I'd saved their lives or something from the way they were acting. They didn't think I'd actually come out to the farm after work.

I walked towards the driver's seat where I would spend the next four hours. The panic feeling wasn't there anymore.

Hmmmm. I do know why I'm here. This is what life's about...the small pleasures. City girl must wait... Country Mouse lives on.

Sleep Sheep

Up until 2 weeks ago, I had been sleeping on a 3 inch thick mattress on the floor for about a month. I spilled some chemicals on my last bed (don't ask), and had to get rid of it pronto...but the new bed that I ordered was on back order and wasn't due to come in for a little while, hence that god awful mattress. Anyway, I bitched and complained about this sleeping situation at work all the time. I was tired, wasn't getting enough sleep, and just had to tell someone. I must've complained one too many times, because I arrived to my desk one morning to find a stuffed Sealy Serta Sheep (those sheep that come on the TV ads all the time) and a poem. It read like this:

This is your personal sleepy time sheep,

Whose name is Fred,

He'll take you softly off to sleep,

As you curl so quietly within your bed.

But alas, there is no bed

A mattress, a floor, but no bed to see

Not to worry, stay close and cuddle Fred,

Let his sleepy time magic set you free.

GOODNIGHT - SLEEP WELL

Hahaaaaa! I still have a laugh when I read this poem!! My co-worker S wrote this poem herself! She's quite the character and I so enjoy working with her - she joined our team about two months ago, and she's fitting in so well (by putting me in my place!).

London, UK July 7th

My thoughts are with all those affected by the attacks.

Hope there's a special place in Hell for those damn terrorists.

Slim Pickin'

I haven't posted in awhile. My family owns a berry farm (mostly raspberries & some blueberries) and July is our busiest month with the raspberries in full swing. I have taken "holidays" from my normal job to do this job. This morning, as we started up, I decided to take a bunch of pictures and do some sharing. We use a machine called a harvester (I like to call it a berry picking machine) to pick the raspberries. It takes us about 8/9 hours to pick our entire farm (we don't have a very big farm). Whenever I'm in the fields, I do the driving - when I'm not, my dad drives. Driving the machine is the most boring job there is. All you see are berry plants and neverending rows of berries all day long.

Ok, so I do have a bunch of pictures to share...but this "Add Image" icon just doesn't seem to be working for me. It takes me through all the steps, and then the screen just goes blank. It's late, and I'm way too tired to figure out another way to post these pictures. You'll just have to wait to see my pictures. Sorry. I'll get them up soon. If it's raining lots tomorrow, we might not be picking and then I'll have more time to try and work this out. I'm actually hoping for rain - that'll give me an actual day off. My brother and I made up our own rain dance and did the dance outside today...it looked ridiculous, but we had fun. Let's hope it works!

July 6th Update: I have the pictures for you below. We'll be picking in about an hour...the rain dance did not work :(

Slim Pickin' Part II

Here is the back view of the berry picking machine. (That's my brother sitting on top) The left part of the machine is where we stand/sit (depending on whether we're sitting at the conveyer belt or standing to fill up the flats) for the berries. The right side is the part that goes through the actually berry plants. The berry plant goes in the middle of those white tong-type things. Those white things (which actually looks like one of those round combs used for curling your hair) shake up and down & rotate and that shakes the berries off of the plants. If you look closely, right in the middle of those you'll see a wooden pole with a red ribbon on top. The machine is ready to go through that row of berries. The red ribbons on the poles are indicators to let the driver know which row to go into next - because it's a big machine, we can't just move from one row to the next (well, we can but then we just end up having to reverse and straighen out which takes too long), instead we skip a couple of rows. The red ribbons ensure we don't miss any rows.

Here's the front view of the machine! Again, on the left you see those white things...actually, you have a better view of them here. See how they look like a round comb? On the right you see the steering wheel, this is where I sit and continue to sit the whole time we're picking. At the bottom by the driver's seat, you see a garbage bag - inside that bag is a radio/cassette player that's hooked up to our machine. That radio is the only thing that keeps me sane and awake during the driving...oh and the pop I drink keeps me awake too.

Here are some dead berry plants. It's not a great season for raspberries this year...a lot of the plants just died throughout the farming community. We've taken the dead plants to labs to get tested, we've had ag experts in our farm taking a look at things...and no one can tell us (or any of the other farmers) why there were so many plants that died. We think it might be because of our unusually cold spring. It hurts to see a bunch of dead ones in a see of lush green plants.

The neverending rows...this is what I see for 9 hours a day, every single day. Now you see why I need pop to keep me awake? Each row takes me anywhere from 12 to 17 minutes to get through - depending on how fast I'm going. The speed depends on how wet it is outside, how full the berry plants are, how soon I want to finish this off, etc.

This is the conveyer belt on which the picked berries come through. You can see a corner of a leaf at the top (right side) of the belt - there's a fan in that area that sweeps away any leaves that get picked up by the machine. There are always two people sitting at the belt, cleaning up the berries before they fall into the flat. Cool, eh?

Filled up berry flats! These flat average about 17 lbs of berry each. My dad and I pick up two at a time to take them from the machine and onto the pickup. I'm always afraid I'm going to drop some and lose the berries...my dad has dropped some in the last few years, but we haven't dropped any yet this year!

Close up shot of our raspberries. It's quite an interesting process, don't you think? (in other words...I love comments!)