In small towns like this..

..the woman who works in the liquor store will recognize you hitchiking and tell her husband to pull over, telling him "Oh I know those kids!"

..a chihuahua dressed in a pink dress keeps the post office lady company, and dances on command.

..everything is closed on Sundays and Mondays, and Tuesdays if they're able, and all signs that post a places hours say -ish

When the mountains are covered with snow,

it's time to head south. I've spent the past few months in a small town called Cawston, so named due to the local crow population (the murders!). I've been living and working on orchards, in garlic, tomato, and pepper fields, packing organic squash and carrots, watching the sun's rise from and fall behind the mountains grow ever quicker with each passing day. And now, I'm heading east!

Hopefully when my computer usage allotments are greater than 15 minute public library blocks, I will be able to recount some of the many, many stories that I've heard, been a part of, and found in the strangely beautiful and magical Similkameen Valley.

Ironically, 2 months after my first visit to Keremeos in which we worked on a farm called the Mariposa, I now find myself on another farm in Keremeos of the same name. There are a lot of farms in this area, true, but it's still strange that in this tiny place there are two with the same name and that I happened to have worked on both of them.

But besides their name and the fact that they both have employed me, they couldn't be any more different. The first was large, with fruit orchards both in Keremeos and in Cawston, and the owner was callous and cold, a typical businessman/farmer, always in a rush. The second, where I am now, is a small organic farm mostly dedicated to squash with a few other ground crops thrown in and the farmer is very friendly and warm to us, and if the squash don't get picked today, well they'll only be riper tomorrow, right?

A WWOOFer and a couple other workers share the land with us and I can honestly say that it's the most beautiful place I've ever worked in. A river runs right next to the old 5th wheel camper that Lucero, a 19 yr old Mexican girl, and I share. A few ancient pines give us shade and it's so quiet that even when every one is working at the same time, the loudest sounds are the flocks of red-winged blackbirds and the buzz of bees tending to all of the flowers. The pace of work is much slower, so I'm not making as much money as in the demanding fruit picking orchards, but right now I wouldn't trade it for anything.


On our side of the mountain we can even see the moon at night, who would want to give that up?


So far I've gotten know, whether by picking or packing or both, spaghetti squash, orangetti squash, red kurris and funny-looking turks, pie pumpkins, and tomatoes. I've gladly come to the realization that I am much more of a ground crop gal than a fruit picker; for whatever reason I work better the closer to the earth I am.

looking back and forward and up and down

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.

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?

Cherry season has ended! And so has my time in Creston. The last couple of weeks were filled with a little working, a little partying, some inter-orchard volleyball tournaments (we made the finals!), and going to the river, watching sunsets, playing cribbage, etc.

Now, Keremeos again!

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.

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!