When I left Creston a couple weeks ago, I piled into a camper with 9 other pickers and headed for Nakusp, BC to the hot springs! During one of our many stops (for food or gas or beer or cigarettes or coffee, with so many people, someone always needed something), my eyes happened upon the newspaper stand. 'Ah,' I thought, and said to my friend standing near me, "Hey, Georges, remember that there's a whole world out there?" He gave my a funny look, as usual, and I picked up the only newspaper left on the stand, The Globe. "Uh, Georges, I think we missed something," I said, as I showed him the front page: a photo with a burning orange and red background and 3 Chinese soldiers in the foreground saluting a flag, with everything tilted at an eerie and disturbing angle, all above the headline: "China's Totalitarian Success." There was no other explanation to be found on the front page and I decided it wasn't worth flipping through to find one. Perhaps the world is best left "out there." Until I'm ready, at least.
The hot springs were beautiful. From the camper we walked a path through a mossy pine forest and then stumbled and slid and ran down a ravine towards the river. Alongside the river, some in small rocky enclosures and others with sandy bottoms, we found the hot springs awaiting us. I even found a bottle of white wine tucked into the roof of a small shelter. Nothing like drinking a bottle of BC wine in a warm natural bath under a sky so filled with stars there's no room for the moon. At night we couldn't see a thing but we ran through the forest, ducking under fallen trunks and breathing an air so fresh it made our lungs new again. We left with everything wet, there was no way to avoid it.
And now, back to work. Apples aren't the most motivating crop for me because I actually really enjoy the picking. I could spend all day delicately lifting each apple, snapping the stem, and placing it in my bag, or atop my ladder watching the valley fill the space between the mountains with green and purple and red. But that's no way to make money, which is what I need to do in order to get to Quebec in a few weeks and learn French, so I might try looking around and seeing what other work is available.
I tried plums for a few days and my arms still bear the wounds of those prickly trees who fight to keep their fruit and give long scratches and bruises to those who dare to pick it. Tomatoes were nicer to pick but instead of scratching my arms, they scratched my hands to burning pieces. Ow.
And, it could be anything from a plant, to the air, to pesticides, to just plain coincidence, but as soon as we got back to Keremeos my skin erupted into an itchy allergic reaction. Eh. I like the constant sunshine and clear skies at night, but I really could use a little more moisture in the air.
04 September 2008
02 September 2008
I'm staying at an orchard right now, but working in another because after Creston I have such a desire to share coffee with people before work and food afterwards. And bears!
A couple nights after Marie and I awoke to a bear running straight for us and we ended up sleeping in a Honda Civic, today at breakfast I just couldn't come up with the name for the animal plodding slowly past us, a mere 15 meters from our breakfast table. Sputtering in half English and half Spanish, people finally just followed my finger and watched a good-sized black bear amble away. Bears follow me, why?
A couple nights after Marie and I awoke to a bear running straight for us and we ended up sleeping in a Honda Civic, today at breakfast I just couldn't come up with the name for the animal plodding slowly past us, a mere 15 meters from our breakfast table. Sputtering in half English and half Spanish, people finally just followed my finger and watched a good-sized black bear amble away. Bears follow me, why?
28 August 2008
19 August 2008
cambios
In the morning the air is frigid and by mid-day sticky and hot. When we first arrived to Creston we would hear helicopters in the morning flying low to dry the night's rain off of the cherry trees. Last week we watched the helicopters in the afternoon flying high to spray water over the dangerously dry pines. Dry, hot, cold, wet. Last night it finally rained again.
14 August 2008
j'aime la cerise
For the past 2 weeks I've worked as a fruit picker, cherries to be exact, on a few different orchards in Creston, British Columbia. My days have gone more or less like this:
4:30 - 5am: Wake up to shouting and murmuring in French (we finally found out that the howling owlish sound actually means something: Where are you? in French). After grabbing picking clothes, stumble out of tent to waiting coffee. Grab harness, walk or jump in a car, depending on where we're picking.
5:30/6am - 8:30am ish: Pick pick pick! Crew boss runs around, shouts at us, hands us stickers, punches holes in a card for each 25lb box that we fill. Muscles warm up, some old aches stretch out and some new aches show up suddenly. Up and down and up and down the ladder, always making sure to set it right and not fall off. Pick pick pick!
8:30 ish: Coffee break! The first day they only shouted it in French. Alex and I are the only ones who don't speak French so when we were the only ones to not show up for the coffee break that day, they started shouting it in English (and sometimes Spanish) too. Lots of sugary things with the coffee: muffins, cookies, brownies, sometimes struedels or little quiches (one orchard owner that we worked for used to have a bakery, yummmm).
9ish - 11 or 12 or 1pm: Pick pick pick! Ivan, our crew boss, runs around and makes sure everyone is smiling and has water. The sugar slows me down a bit but the coffee helps. The sun starts to come out so we have to pick faster before the cherries turn soft and burst in our fingers and we have to stop. Swampers run around and pick up boxes dumping them into large wooden bins, 11 totes per bin, soon to be scooped up by a tractor.
Afternoon: Freedom! People leave the orchard filthy, tired, covered in pesticides and in a sort of stupor that doesn't allow you to do much until the sun starts to go down. An icy shower perhaps or a cold beer or a trip to the river. I can rarely eat after I work, after all the movement and sugar and coffee, my stomach is too tied up. So I usually drop down in the shade and wait for the heat to subside. The river is beautiful and deep down in a canyon so when you sit on the rocks or sand all you've got is cold river and big blue sky.
Night: Typically a little beer drinking but most people go to bed a little before or after the sun goes down because picking starts so early. Sometimes games. Living with Quebecois is like living in a circus, someone is always juggling or throwing fire or hula hooping, I'm surprised that I haven't seen someone ride through the camp on a unicycle yet and it wouldn't surprise me one bit if it happened.
I'm struggling to learn French but it's going slow. Today I learned some Quebecois swear words, they all have to do with the church, which the folks from France find absolutely hilarious. Words like chalice, tabernacle, the bread that you eat in church..all of these are swear words! They sound so grandmotherly, I like them a lot. Tabernack!
4:30 - 5am: Wake up to shouting and murmuring in French (we finally found out that the howling owlish sound actually means something: Where are you? in French). After grabbing picking clothes, stumble out of tent to waiting coffee. Grab harness, walk or jump in a car, depending on where we're picking.
5:30/6am - 8:30am ish: Pick pick pick! Crew boss runs around, shouts at us, hands us stickers, punches holes in a card for each 25lb box that we fill. Muscles warm up, some old aches stretch out and some new aches show up suddenly. Up and down and up and down the ladder, always making sure to set it right and not fall off. Pick pick pick!
8:30 ish: Coffee break! The first day they only shouted it in French. Alex and I are the only ones who don't speak French so when we were the only ones to not show up for the coffee break that day, they started shouting it in English (and sometimes Spanish) too. Lots of sugary things with the coffee: muffins, cookies, brownies, sometimes struedels or little quiches (one orchard owner that we worked for used to have a bakery, yummmm).
9ish - 11 or 12 or 1pm: Pick pick pick! Ivan, our crew boss, runs around and makes sure everyone is smiling and has water. The sugar slows me down a bit but the coffee helps. The sun starts to come out so we have to pick faster before the cherries turn soft and burst in our fingers and we have to stop. Swampers run around and pick up boxes dumping them into large wooden bins, 11 totes per bin, soon to be scooped up by a tractor.
Afternoon: Freedom! People leave the orchard filthy, tired, covered in pesticides and in a sort of stupor that doesn't allow you to do much until the sun starts to go down. An icy shower perhaps or a cold beer or a trip to the river. I can rarely eat after I work, after all the movement and sugar and coffee, my stomach is too tied up. So I usually drop down in the shade and wait for the heat to subside. The river is beautiful and deep down in a canyon so when you sit on the rocks or sand all you've got is cold river and big blue sky.
Night: Typically a little beer drinking but most people go to bed a little before or after the sun goes down because picking starts so early. Sometimes games. Living with Quebecois is like living in a circus, someone is always juggling or throwing fire or hula hooping, I'm surprised that I haven't seen someone ride through the camp on a unicycle yet and it wouldn't surprise me one bit if it happened.
I'm struggling to learn French but it's going slow. Today I learned some Quebecois swear words, they all have to do with the church, which the folks from France find absolutely hilarious. Words like chalice, tabernacle, the bread that you eat in church..all of these are swear words! They sound so grandmotherly, I like them a lot. Tabernack!
07 August 2008
pilgrims
The first person to pick us up as we hitchiked out of Keremeos was a born-again, self-proclaimed "radical Christian" in a green 1975 volvo. To make the 50 km ride to Osoyoos more fun, I told him how interesting and wonderful I thought Islam was and asked his opinion. What could have been a meaningful conversation about the challenges and benefits of differences in religions and just what those differences are instead turned into a tirade about terrorists and the unquestionable and utmost sanctity of Christianity by our driver, his steering wheel suddenly turned pulpit. Eh.
In Osoyoos, we were lucky and got picked up by a engineer in a new rental car and since he liked to speed, we got within 50 miles of our destination before it got dark. Just as it got dark and we were contemplating how many bears our smelly leftover tacos would attract if we slept on the side of the road, a Swiss restaurant owner picked us up and dropped us off in downtown Nelson.
Nelson is kind of like Ann Arbor, similar size and pretentiousness and number of organic co-ops and hemp clothing stores. We knew our money would be sucked right out of our pockets if we stayed to enjoy the food, live music, etc., so after a couple nights couchsurfing, we were again out on the highway with a sign reading: CRESTON.
A DJ from the Shambhala festival picked us up and let us off at the entrance to the festival, where he was going to set up a stage. Within 5 minutes a car stopped, headed right for Creston. We rolled into town just as the sun was setting and opted for a campground rather than lugging our stuff around from farm to farm. Things would be much easier without that electric stove.
In Osoyoos, we were lucky and got picked up by a engineer in a new rental car and since he liked to speed, we got within 50 miles of our destination before it got dark. Just as it got dark and we were contemplating how many bears our smelly leftover tacos would attract if we slept on the side of the road, a Swiss restaurant owner picked us up and dropped us off in downtown Nelson.
Nelson is kind of like Ann Arbor, similar size and pretentiousness and number of organic co-ops and hemp clothing stores. We knew our money would be sucked right out of our pockets if we stayed to enjoy the food, live music, etc., so after a couple nights couchsurfing, we were again out on the highway with a sign reading: CRESTON.
A DJ from the Shambhala festival picked us up and let us off at the entrance to the festival, where he was going to set up a stage. Within 5 minutes a car stopped, headed right for Creston. We rolled into town just as the sun was setting and opted for a campground rather than lugging our stuff around from farm to farm. Things would be much easier without that electric stove.
31 July 2008
K-K-K-K-Keremeos.....
We spent 2 weeks in the village of Keremeos, nestled in the valley at the feet of K mountain, alongside the Similkameen River. At the Mariposa orchard, we were given a little plot of land under an enormous willow tree to pitch our tent and even a place to plug in our electric stove ($5 garage sale find!) and the discman. Within a few days we met our neighbors, four solitary men who live in separate cabins in front of where we camped: Joe, a former convict, current "Peace" officer with a booming voice who works in the village of Osoyoos, about an hour from Keremeos, and deals primarily with people's complaints about their neighbors or their neighbor's dogs; Gee, a French Canadian with a 12 year old chihuahua named Titchi, who let us use his stove and bathroom and entertained us with stories about bears and selling Xmas trees in Queens, NYC; Wayne, who we didn't talk to much but saw often talking to himself and rushing around, he was rarely home; and Hart, who we never talked to but saw occasionally crouched down and smoking a cigarette next to his cabin. He's Joe's brother and, according to Joe, highly anti-social. Outside of our neighbors, our interactions with other people were almost completely with other pickers, all either Quebecois or Mexican. I've yet to meet another picker who speaks English as their mother language, but we all manage to communicate whatever our respective levels of French, Spanish or English are.
In Keremeos the laundromat, due to the fact that the owner lives an hour away and is never around, became the hangout place for the small community of pickers. On any given afternoon you could stop by and listen to a Quebecois playing the piano (yep a piano in the laundromat) or take a shower gratis, since no one ever showed up to charge anyone. People would usually move the chairs outside and buy cheap cans of beer around the corner and sit for a while. That's actually how we met the group of pickers we became friends with and got plenty of tips about Keremeos ("shampoo and soap are cheaper in the pharmacy," "this farm's owners are jerks," "Wednesday night is 25 cent 'wing night' at the pub," etc., etc).
We picked cherries almost every day for several days, struggling to get up at 5am, usually getting up at around 7am, and finally filling a few boxes, making a pittance, but gaining experience all the same. Experienced pickers can pick between 30 and 60 boxes a day. We were lucky if we made more than 7 each, but the fact that we're completely new to picking and only worked for a few hours each day actually meant that we weren't doing that bad. Around noon it gets too hot and the cherries turn soft, so picking can be dangerous to the cherries. I had no idea what a fragile fruit they were. You have to move them and drop them carefully as to not bruise them and make sure they are never left in the sun. If they get wet and then hot, they split and are no good. They have to be packed within hours of picking so that they stems don't dry out and fall off. Picking requires lots and lots of patience and care, to not rip leaves off with the cherries and to keep the stems on the cherries and, preferably, the cherries still in clumps. Once you get good, you can get fast, Gee told us. Ay, but by the time we starting getting good we got tired and sick. Allergic reactions and infections are common among pickers, both of which we got, but we were lucky at least that we didn't fall off a ladder (also pretty common and it happened to a couple pickers we met).
In our free time in Keremeos we went down to the river and watched eagles fish or stopped by the free store to see what we could find or tried to get the pizza place to give us free slices of pizza late at night. The local employment office let us use the internet for free so we usually stopped by there every few days. But, finally the work ended and we both felt the need to move on from Keremeos. Our farmer wasn't the nicest either and instead of inquiring about our health when we were sick, he told us we weren't cut out for farm work. Eh, whatever. So, with one last grand story by Gee, this one completely invented for the effect it gave, about him befriending the son of the president of a South American country and going to buy old Soviet missles in Europe, we took off with the advice: Anything can happen if you just believe. Thanks, Gee.
In Keremeos the laundromat, due to the fact that the owner lives an hour away and is never around, became the hangout place for the small community of pickers. On any given afternoon you could stop by and listen to a Quebecois playing the piano (yep a piano in the laundromat) or take a shower gratis, since no one ever showed up to charge anyone. People would usually move the chairs outside and buy cheap cans of beer around the corner and sit for a while. That's actually how we met the group of pickers we became friends with and got plenty of tips about Keremeos ("shampoo and soap are cheaper in the pharmacy," "this farm's owners are jerks," "Wednesday night is 25 cent 'wing night' at the pub," etc., etc).
We picked cherries almost every day for several days, struggling to get up at 5am, usually getting up at around 7am, and finally filling a few boxes, making a pittance, but gaining experience all the same. Experienced pickers can pick between 30 and 60 boxes a day. We were lucky if we made more than 7 each, but the fact that we're completely new to picking and only worked for a few hours each day actually meant that we weren't doing that bad. Around noon it gets too hot and the cherries turn soft, so picking can be dangerous to the cherries. I had no idea what a fragile fruit they were. You have to move them and drop them carefully as to not bruise them and make sure they are never left in the sun. If they get wet and then hot, they split and are no good. They have to be packed within hours of picking so that they stems don't dry out and fall off. Picking requires lots and lots of patience and care, to not rip leaves off with the cherries and to keep the stems on the cherries and, preferably, the cherries still in clumps. Once you get good, you can get fast, Gee told us. Ay, but by the time we starting getting good we got tired and sick. Allergic reactions and infections are common among pickers, both of which we got, but we were lucky at least that we didn't fall off a ladder (also pretty common and it happened to a couple pickers we met).
In our free time in Keremeos we went down to the river and watched eagles fish or stopped by the free store to see what we could find or tried to get the pizza place to give us free slices of pizza late at night. The local employment office let us use the internet for free so we usually stopped by there every few days. But, finally the work ended and we both felt the need to move on from Keremeos. Our farmer wasn't the nicest either and instead of inquiring about our health when we were sick, he told us we weren't cut out for farm work. Eh, whatever. So, with one last grand story by Gee, this one completely invented for the effect it gave, about him befriending the son of the president of a South American country and going to buy old Soviet missles in Europe, we took off with the advice: Anything can happen if you just believe. Thanks, Gee.
27 July 2008
Ah well, somehow I got roped into the exciting rumor that everyone can go to Canada, pick fruit and camp and earn a glorious living. Easy, fun, lucrative. This rumor is running like wildfire among young kids in Mexico and we got caught up in it and here we are.
We arrived in Calgary on the 1st of July and were thoroughly interrogated by immigration to the point where we had to go to a special waiting room while the officers called to verify our Canadian friends' contacts. They asked a lot of questions, even absurd ones (like why Alex's mom would give him money to travel), and checked our bags one more time until they were disappointed to find that they just couldn't find a good reason to send us back to Mexico, thanks to God. Whew.
Thanks to Couchsurfing, a nice Polish lady and her daughter were waiting to pick us up at the airport and take us to their huge home in the Calgary suburbs. Like everyone else in Calgary, Dad works in the oil industry, hence all the luxury. They welcomed us with a backyard bbq (even though they don't celebrate Canada Day, just happened to be the day we arrived) and we stayed for a few days in their house, enjoying the luxury but not the long bus/train commute into the city. So, for our last couple days in Calgary we stayed in another CSer's place who was right downtown, next to the river.
Getting out of the city was nice. We "hitched" a ride off of Craigslist to Kelowna, where another Couchsurfer opened his home to us, despite the fact that he already had 4 other folks crashing with him. Kelowna is much smaller than Calgary but still too big of a city to move around by foot, so a couple days later we moved on to the village of Keremeos. The first night we camped in the city park and the next morning, with some luck and a tip from a Quebecois, we starting working at the Mariposa farm. First some weeding, then some cherry picking. The air is hot and dry in the Similkameen Valley, so the work that we weren't accustomed to was a bit more difficult still. Our fingers turned black and ached and when we tried to sleep we couldn't close our eyes without seeing cherries and stems and leaves and branches. Ay, the life of a migrant fruit picker. I'll never be able to think of cherries like I used to.
We arrived in Calgary on the 1st of July and were thoroughly interrogated by immigration to the point where we had to go to a special waiting room while the officers called to verify our Canadian friends' contacts. They asked a lot of questions, even absurd ones (like why Alex's mom would give him money to travel), and checked our bags one more time until they were disappointed to find that they just couldn't find a good reason to send us back to Mexico, thanks to God. Whew.
Thanks to Couchsurfing, a nice Polish lady and her daughter were waiting to pick us up at the airport and take us to their huge home in the Calgary suburbs. Like everyone else in Calgary, Dad works in the oil industry, hence all the luxury. They welcomed us with a backyard bbq (even though they don't celebrate Canada Day, just happened to be the day we arrived) and we stayed for a few days in their house, enjoying the luxury but not the long bus/train commute into the city. So, for our last couple days in Calgary we stayed in another CSer's place who was right downtown, next to the river.
Getting out of the city was nice. We "hitched" a ride off of Craigslist to Kelowna, where another Couchsurfer opened his home to us, despite the fact that he already had 4 other folks crashing with him. Kelowna is much smaller than Calgary but still too big of a city to move around by foot, so a couple days later we moved on to the village of Keremeos. The first night we camped in the city park and the next morning, with some luck and a tip from a Quebecois, we starting working at the Mariposa farm. First some weeding, then some cherry picking. The air is hot and dry in the Similkameen Valley, so the work that we weren't accustomed to was a bit more difficult still. Our fingers turned black and ached and when we tried to sleep we couldn't close our eyes without seeing cherries and stems and leaves and branches. Ay, the life of a migrant fruit picker. I'll never be able to think of cherries like I used to.
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