The birch trees are beginning to turn from green to gold, summer inexorably passing into autumn, and everything seems to have an air of potentially being the last. Is this the last warm day before it gets cold for good? Is this the last summer squash harvest before the frost comes in and kills it? The answer to the second question is yes, the summer squash appears to have been completely killed off by a frost earlier this week (Sophie and Arnauld, who had to harvest summer squash three or four times a week in August, were pleased when Sue broke the news). But the warm weather (warm-ish, at least; this is Canada, after all) has returned for the time being. The rain has completely vanished. We've had a string of days that have started out cloudy and cold (but, thankfully, dry) only to slowly clear up, so that by lunchtime I almost regret my decision to put on long pants that morning.
It was sunny when we went to a nearby river last Saturday, after the farmers' market, to check out the salmon run, which is when salmon from the ocean swim upstream to their place of birth to lay their eggs. Colleen's parents and sister were visiting, and though we did not see any salmon (apparently, they don't come until October), we did learn an awful lot about the life cycle of the salmon. Apparently, they expend so much energy in the trip upstream that all they can do once they arrive is mate, lay their eggs, and die. Bad for the adult salmon, perhaps, but good for the bears.
Later that night, however, there was a very different kind of animal on the run. Everyone was downstairs playing Cranium, a party game, but I begged off to bed early -- too tired to socialize effectively. I came downstairs a while later to go to the bathroom, only to find the entire dining room empty except for Colleen's father, who informed me that the cows had escaped. Apparently, there were enough people around to herd the cows back into their pasture that I was not needed. I went back to bed.
The next morning, we moved the cows into a new, hopefully more secure pasture down by the packing shed. This was my first real interaction with the farm animals since I arrived here, and I was pleased to say that the cows didn't put up much resistance. The only way to move the cows from one pasture to the other was down the main road that runs by the farm, and it was my job to stop any approaching motor vehicles. Fortunately, the cows moved quickly enough in the general direction of their new pasture, so it wasn't necessary for me to stand in the path of any oncoming eighteen-wheelers.
Besides the fifteen or so cows, there is a large flock of extremely free-range chickens (they go pretty much anywhere they please), two goats, and eight or nine pigs. The goats and pigs usually stay in a fenced-in yard -- except, of course, when they don't. On Monday afternoon, the piglets escaped. And when we managed to get them back into their yard, they escaped again. Finally, Sue returned from a delivery and put the pigs into a smaller pen, from which, fortunately, they have not yet figured out how to escape.
I said that moving the cows from one pasture to another was my first interaction with the farm animals, but I should have said that it was my first interaction with the live farm animals. On my first night here, Sue and Colleen asked me if I was a vegetarian, and I, still in an airplane-induced fog, replied, "Sort of." What I meant to say was that I was a vegetarian at home, but now that I'm on the farm, I'm willing to eat meat that was raised on the farm. I don't think I quite managed to articulate that much, but they figured it out.
I read a book that Colleen leant me entitled The Way We Eat, about the ethics of our food choices. It essentially argues that a pure vegan diet is the most ethical choice, but I disagree. I think a world without mischevious escaping piglets -- that is, a vegan world -- would be a much poorer world to live in.
(Speaking of piglets... my camera finally arrived today! And I took some pictures, but Blogger won't let me upload them right now, and my time on the computer is about to run out. So it'll have to wait until Saturday.)
Every nice day, every squash harvest, could be the last before the cold weather sets in for good. But you never know, of course. So I'm doing my best to enjoy the relative warmth of late September in Canada while I still can.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Saturday, September 22, 2007
rainy days
Working my way slowly through the bean patch the other day, I hollered over to Arnold, "There's a lot of beans here." He replied, in exquisite French accent, "Where? In your stomach?"
Perhaps I was eating more than a few of the beans I pulled off of the bean plants that morning. But I always put more into the basket than I put into my mouth. Well, almost always. And I tried only to eat the ones that broke in half when I pulled them off. But the way I see it, it's a waste to sell the purple beans I was harvesting to the customers, since most of them will probably cook the beans, causing them to lose their purple pigments and turn a rather ordinary and humdrum shade of green. I don't know why this happens when purple beans are cooked (sorry, Amy), but I do know that in order to fully appreciate their uniqueness, a person should eat the purple beans raw. A person like me, for example.
And keeping my mouth full is a way to avoid looking up and down the long, long row, calculating how little I've done and how much more I have to do before reaching the end. I do my best to practice Zen Farming, repeating to myself koans such as "Farming is about the journey, not the destination." But it's hard not to be a little impatient sometimes.
It was easier when the weather was nice, I tell myself. The first two weeks I was here, we enjoyed almost uninterrupted sunshine and clear skies (what can I say? I bring joy wherever I go). But perhaps my meteorolgical welcome has begun to wear thin, since for the past few days the weather has taken a decided turn for the worse. A band of white-gray clouds have settled down low over the farm, nestling in close among the mountains, cutting off the view and making the whole world seem much smaller. And the rain, too -- cold, miserable rain. When I look out from my window in the morning, everything -- the dark gray light, the water dripping from the eaves -- everything suggests wet, wet and cold.
Though we try to work outside in the breaks between the sporadic rain showers, it almost doesn't matter if it's actually raining or not when you're out there digging potatoes or crawling on your knees harvesting beans, since the water on the ground will soak through your boots and pants anyway. And no matter how much warm clothing you put on, you can't keep the cold out, because the cold is inside you -- crept in through your wet socks, perhaps -- and can't be dislodged. And it is not the cold of autumn, bracing and envigorating, but a rather more discouraging, disheartening kind of cold. So I take shelter in my room, but there's only so much time I can spend up there considering I have to work, eat meals, socialize, and so on.
Anyway, I don't want to make it sound all bad, since despite the weather, I think I'm enjoying myself more than I was a week ago. Thursdays and Fridays are usually spent picking and preparing vegetables for the Saturday farmers' market, and that meant a lot of little plastic bags to fill with beans and carrots. 12 ounces for a bag of beans, a pound and a quarter for carrots. Sue says that bagging the vegetables makes it easier for the customers to buy them, and besides, the beans look nicer when all three of the colors -- green, purple, and yellow -- are mixed together. I don't know why I enjoy bagging vegetables so much. Perhaps because it's an activity that can be done without getting wet. Or maybe because it's easy and kind of mindless and not physically demanding, so it allows me to think about other things. Like what I want to cook for dinner, or what I want to write to the five or six people to whom I owe letters, or even what I'm going to post on the blog. So be thankful for all of the beans and carrots that need bagging.
Farming is an all-weather occupation, and sometimes I'm almost jealous of all of you people working regular jobs or going to school who have the luxury of staying inside on a cold rainy day. Almost jealous.
Perhaps I was eating more than a few of the beans I pulled off of the bean plants that morning. But I always put more into the basket than I put into my mouth. Well, almost always. And I tried only to eat the ones that broke in half when I pulled them off. But the way I see it, it's a waste to sell the purple beans I was harvesting to the customers, since most of them will probably cook the beans, causing them to lose their purple pigments and turn a rather ordinary and humdrum shade of green. I don't know why this happens when purple beans are cooked (sorry, Amy), but I do know that in order to fully appreciate their uniqueness, a person should eat the purple beans raw. A person like me, for example.
And keeping my mouth full is a way to avoid looking up and down the long, long row, calculating how little I've done and how much more I have to do before reaching the end. I do my best to practice Zen Farming, repeating to myself koans such as "Farming is about the journey, not the destination." But it's hard not to be a little impatient sometimes.
It was easier when the weather was nice, I tell myself. The first two weeks I was here, we enjoyed almost uninterrupted sunshine and clear skies (what can I say? I bring joy wherever I go). But perhaps my meteorolgical welcome has begun to wear thin, since for the past few days the weather has taken a decided turn for the worse. A band of white-gray clouds have settled down low over the farm, nestling in close among the mountains, cutting off the view and making the whole world seem much smaller. And the rain, too -- cold, miserable rain. When I look out from my window in the morning, everything -- the dark gray light, the water dripping from the eaves -- everything suggests wet, wet and cold.
Though we try to work outside in the breaks between the sporadic rain showers, it almost doesn't matter if it's actually raining or not when you're out there digging potatoes or crawling on your knees harvesting beans, since the water on the ground will soak through your boots and pants anyway. And no matter how much warm clothing you put on, you can't keep the cold out, because the cold is inside you -- crept in through your wet socks, perhaps -- and can't be dislodged. And it is not the cold of autumn, bracing and envigorating, but a rather more discouraging, disheartening kind of cold. So I take shelter in my room, but there's only so much time I can spend up there considering I have to work, eat meals, socialize, and so on.
Anyway, I don't want to make it sound all bad, since despite the weather, I think I'm enjoying myself more than I was a week ago. Thursdays and Fridays are usually spent picking and preparing vegetables for the Saturday farmers' market, and that meant a lot of little plastic bags to fill with beans and carrots. 12 ounces for a bag of beans, a pound and a quarter for carrots. Sue says that bagging the vegetables makes it easier for the customers to buy them, and besides, the beans look nicer when all three of the colors -- green, purple, and yellow -- are mixed together. I don't know why I enjoy bagging vegetables so much. Perhaps because it's an activity that can be done without getting wet. Or maybe because it's easy and kind of mindless and not physically demanding, so it allows me to think about other things. Like what I want to cook for dinner, or what I want to write to the five or six people to whom I owe letters, or even what I'm going to post on the blog. So be thankful for all of the beans and carrots that need bagging.
Farming is an all-weather occupation, and sometimes I'm almost jealous of all of you people working regular jobs or going to school who have the luxury of staying inside on a cold rainy day. Almost jealous.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
vegetable abuse
Most of the time, it is possible to go through the process of vegetable harvesting with a certain dignity, a "Who shall live and who shall die?" solemnity appropriate to the High Holy Days. In the fields, we assign each vegetable its ultimate fate. If it is well-formed and of a good size, then it will be brought into the packing shed to be cleaned and boxed up and sold either to the vegetable delivery services or through the farmers' market. If it is too small or not yet ripe, then we leave it to harvest on another day. If it is slightly misshapen but still edible, then perhaps we bring it into the house for our own consumption. For the truly deformed or rotten vegetables, though, we must be stern in our judgment and cast them aside on the ground, for they are fit to be nothing more than mouse food.
A heavy responsibility, harvesting vegetables. Yet sometimes, as on Monday afternoon, it turns a bit ridiculous.
After lunch we headed out to collect all of the winter squashes that were ready for harvesting. Harvesting winter squash, as I soon learned, is a team effort. Since the squash plants are grown so close together, and they tend to spread out all over the ground, it is not a good idea to walk in and out of the squash patch more often than necessary, since each step can potentially damage the plants. Instead, one person walks through the squash patch, and whenever they harvest a squash, they toss it to their partner outside of the patch, who collects the squashes into baskets and hauls them up onto the truck.
At first, we were working in two teams of two: me and Colleen on the inside, Arnold and Sophie on the outside. But then Arnold and Sophie had to go help Sue load up the trailer for a delivery, and Colleen asked me to step outside the patch to be her catcher.
Playing a game of squash catch is not so difficult when you're using an acorn squash, or even a red kuri squash, which is round and an orangish-red color and looks like a small pumpkin but is not. But I had to be a little more alert when a bona fide pumpkin was involved. They weren't quite as big as jack-o'-lanterns, but some were close.
As Colleen heaved the pumpkins at me (sometimes she used a shot-put motion, but usually she threw underhand), I was brought back to my not-so-successful days on Larchmont-Mamaroneck Little League. I hadn't worn my glasses, of course, so my depth perception was a bit off. Pumpkins are a fairly sturdy vegetable -- they can sit in storage, unchanged, for months at a time -- so I'm not really sure how necessary it was for me to catch the pumpkins before they hit the ground, but I guess it makes it easier to clean them. My number one concern, in any case, was not to allow these hurtling pumpkins to hit me anywhere in the body, least of all in my head. I had just been reading a book I got for my birthday -- or rather, a series of books, The Deptford Trilogy -- about a woman who goes insane after being hit in the head with a snowball, and I was pretty sure that a pumpkin could do more than make me lose my mind (perhaps take my head off altogether). So I made sure to stay attentive. And I let the bigger pumpkins fall to the ground.
No squash-related injuries, I'm pleased to report, except for some fleeting soreness in my hands, the necessary result of absorbing the impact of a ten-pound vegetable hurtling through the air.
A heavy responsibility, harvesting vegetables. Yet sometimes, as on Monday afternoon, it turns a bit ridiculous.
After lunch we headed out to collect all of the winter squashes that were ready for harvesting. Harvesting winter squash, as I soon learned, is a team effort. Since the squash plants are grown so close together, and they tend to spread out all over the ground, it is not a good idea to walk in and out of the squash patch more often than necessary, since each step can potentially damage the plants. Instead, one person walks through the squash patch, and whenever they harvest a squash, they toss it to their partner outside of the patch, who collects the squashes into baskets and hauls them up onto the truck.
At first, we were working in two teams of two: me and Colleen on the inside, Arnold and Sophie on the outside. But then Arnold and Sophie had to go help Sue load up the trailer for a delivery, and Colleen asked me to step outside the patch to be her catcher.
Playing a game of squash catch is not so difficult when you're using an acorn squash, or even a red kuri squash, which is round and an orangish-red color and looks like a small pumpkin but is not. But I had to be a little more alert when a bona fide pumpkin was involved. They weren't quite as big as jack-o'-lanterns, but some were close.
As Colleen heaved the pumpkins at me (sometimes she used a shot-put motion, but usually she threw underhand), I was brought back to my not-so-successful days on Larchmont-Mamaroneck Little League. I hadn't worn my glasses, of course, so my depth perception was a bit off. Pumpkins are a fairly sturdy vegetable -- they can sit in storage, unchanged, for months at a time -- so I'm not really sure how necessary it was for me to catch the pumpkins before they hit the ground, but I guess it makes it easier to clean them. My number one concern, in any case, was not to allow these hurtling pumpkins to hit me anywhere in the body, least of all in my head. I had just been reading a book I got for my birthday -- or rather, a series of books, The Deptford Trilogy -- about a woman who goes insane after being hit in the head with a snowball, and I was pretty sure that a pumpkin could do more than make me lose my mind (perhaps take my head off altogether). So I made sure to stay attentive. And I let the bigger pumpkins fall to the ground.
No squash-related injuries, I'm pleased to report, except for some fleeting soreness in my hands, the necessary result of absorbing the impact of a ten-pound vegetable hurtling through the air.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
carrots 'n onions
Back on the farm, we've been doing a lot of vegetable harvesting since I've been here. Summer squash (which always gives me a rash on account of the little prickly spines all over the leaves and stems), beans (in green, yellow, and purple varieties), beets (purple and golden), cucumbers (I finally found out what a cucumber plant looks like), corn (lots and lots of it), potatoes (blue and pink and russet and King Edward), and even the odd tomato (we pick them while they're still green so the mice don't get to them). But I would have to say my favorite vegetable to harvest is the carrot.
Pulling a carrot is so simple -- just grab the greens around the base and give a gentle yank, and the carrot will hopefully pop right out of the ground. If the greens break off, then you have to root around in the soil and gently wriggle the carrot from between its neighbors. But usually they just pop out.
Most of the time, when we're harvesting carrots, we have to gather them into bunches, secured with rubber bands. A "bunch" is a rather unscientific measurement, generally between six and nine carrots. How do you know how many carrots to put in a bunch? Well, you want the bunch to be a "good-sized bunch." But how do you know what size is a "good size"? I often get a bit anxious during carrot harvests because no matter how many times Sue or Colleen might show me, I'm never quite sure if the bunches I'm making are too big or too small.
This is my favorite vegetable? The one which makes me think I'm either shortchanging the customer or bankrupting the farm with each bunch I make?
Well, it's not as bad as it sounds. And sometimes, as on Thursday, I get to harvest carrots without regard to assembling them into properly-sized bunches. That's right. Sue told me to go out and harvest a whole lug of purple carrots ("lug" is the word for the big plastic crates we use). Just rip off the tops and throw them right in. No bunches necessary.
Well. I was a carrot-pulling machine that morning.
The purple carrots we have on the farm aren't really purple so much as an orangeish-reddish-purple, all of those colors in different places and all at once, too. It's really a beautiful carrot, and the color only amplifies the pleasure of carrot-harvesting. Apparently, the purple carrot is the original carrot from which all other carrots are derived. The familiar orange carrot is a mere derivation, a mere shadow of the True Carrot. Take that, Bugs Bunny.
The purple carrots (which, by the way, are only purple on the surface, and are orange on the inside) taste a lot like the orange ones, except with a little extra kick, a little bitterness. The first time I tasted a purple carrot, it was straight out of the ground, and I thought that the different taste might just be from the dirt (hey, what's the point of living on a farm if you don't eat the freshest vegetables possible?). But a few days later, while washing and bagging the purple carrots for sale, I ate a few while Sue wasn't looking, and confirmed that the taste is, indeed, inherent to the carrot, and not just from the soil.
Most of the work on the farm is tedious in some way, which is to say that it involves doing a simple task over and over again. The difference is whether it's a task you enjoy -- such as pulling carrots -- or a task you don't enjoy. And I even get tired of harvesting carrots from time to time, looking at my lug and wondering why it doesn't fill up faster. But once that task is over, there's always something else to do. So there's no point really in getting all worked up about "getting it over with," since it's never really over (at least not until the end of the day).
That being said, I really don't like cleaning onions.
Somehow, there always seem to be more onions. In the packing shed, in the cinderblock building, in the barn with half of its walls missing -- the dirty onions are everywhere. "Cleaning" an onion basically means trying to rub off the dirt and maybe peel off its outermost skin to make it look more presentable. But you can't peel too far, because if you expose the flesh of the onion, then the onion will go bad. Ah, the anxiety! And of course, you want to clean fairly quickly, since it takes a lot of onions to fill a basket and the air in the cinderblock shed is full of enough dust to make even a non-asthmatic wheeze.
Still, it is something that must be done. On the farm, as in life, you must take the bad along with the good -- the onions and the carrots both.
Pulling a carrot is so simple -- just grab the greens around the base and give a gentle yank, and the carrot will hopefully pop right out of the ground. If the greens break off, then you have to root around in the soil and gently wriggle the carrot from between its neighbors. But usually they just pop out.
Most of the time, when we're harvesting carrots, we have to gather them into bunches, secured with rubber bands. A "bunch" is a rather unscientific measurement, generally between six and nine carrots. How do you know how many carrots to put in a bunch? Well, you want the bunch to be a "good-sized bunch." But how do you know what size is a "good size"? I often get a bit anxious during carrot harvests because no matter how many times Sue or Colleen might show me, I'm never quite sure if the bunches I'm making are too big or too small.
This is my favorite vegetable? The one which makes me think I'm either shortchanging the customer or bankrupting the farm with each bunch I make?
Well, it's not as bad as it sounds. And sometimes, as on Thursday, I get to harvest carrots without regard to assembling them into properly-sized bunches. That's right. Sue told me to go out and harvest a whole lug of purple carrots ("lug" is the word for the big plastic crates we use). Just rip off the tops and throw them right in. No bunches necessary.
Well. I was a carrot-pulling machine that morning.
The purple carrots we have on the farm aren't really purple so much as an orangeish-reddish-purple, all of those colors in different places and all at once, too. It's really a beautiful carrot, and the color only amplifies the pleasure of carrot-harvesting. Apparently, the purple carrot is the original carrot from which all other carrots are derived. The familiar orange carrot is a mere derivation, a mere shadow of the True Carrot. Take that, Bugs Bunny.
The purple carrots (which, by the way, are only purple on the surface, and are orange on the inside) taste a lot like the orange ones, except with a little extra kick, a little bitterness. The first time I tasted a purple carrot, it was straight out of the ground, and I thought that the different taste might just be from the dirt (hey, what's the point of living on a farm if you don't eat the freshest vegetables possible?). But a few days later, while washing and bagging the purple carrots for sale, I ate a few while Sue wasn't looking, and confirmed that the taste is, indeed, inherent to the carrot, and not just from the soil.
Most of the work on the farm is tedious in some way, which is to say that it involves doing a simple task over and over again. The difference is whether it's a task you enjoy -- such as pulling carrots -- or a task you don't enjoy. And I even get tired of harvesting carrots from time to time, looking at my lug and wondering why it doesn't fill up faster. But once that task is over, there's always something else to do. So there's no point really in getting all worked up about "getting it over with," since it's never really over (at least not until the end of the day).
That being said, I really don't like cleaning onions.
Somehow, there always seem to be more onions. In the packing shed, in the cinderblock building, in the barn with half of its walls missing -- the dirty onions are everywhere. "Cleaning" an onion basically means trying to rub off the dirt and maybe peel off its outermost skin to make it look more presentable. But you can't peel too far, because if you expose the flesh of the onion, then the onion will go bad. Ah, the anxiety! And of course, you want to clean fairly quickly, since it takes a lot of onions to fill a basket and the air in the cinderblock shed is full of enough dust to make even a non-asthmatic wheeze.
Still, it is something that must be done. On the farm, as in life, you must take the bad along with the good -- the onions and the carrots both.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Margaret Falls
After six days of working on the farm, I got a day off yesterday. I thought it might be nice to go on a bike ride somewhere and get to know the area better. Colleen told me about a bike ride she took to a big waterfall earlier in the season. I thought, "Big waterfall, bike ride, sounds perfect!" She said it took only about an hour and a half or two hours each way, which seemed like just the right length. Perhaps I should have been a little more cautious when she said (on step five or six of the directions) that it was "just 12 kilometers" past the Trans-Canada Highway.
In any case, I set out at the leisurely hour of 11:30 on a bike borrowed from one of the girls who is here on a program called Canada World Youth, which brings together people from Canada and from another country (in this case, Uruguay) and has them spend three months together in each country. When I asked her if I needed to worry about locking up the bike when I left it, she told me that it was a "piece of crap" and it didn't really matter if it was stolen or not.
Apart from the bike's temperamental (to put it kindly) gear shift, and a few terrifying seconds pedaling over a bridge on the Trans-Canada Highway, hugging the six-inch shoulder, with cars and eighteen-wheelers barreling past, it was a rather pleasant ride down. The scenery in the mountains is gorgeous, and once I got past the highway, I rode right alongside the lake.
Margaret Falls is up a short trail along a canyon that feels like it's part of a different world. The first thing you notice when you start walking up is that the temperature drops about five degrees and the air is suffused with a fine mist. It was about 2:30 when I arrived at the canyon, the sun quite strong for a September afternoon, but it was like dusk once I got inside, the limestone walls and towering cedars blocking out all of the sunlight. The sound of falling water grew louder and louder as I ascended until finally I looked up and caught a glimpse of it. The falls were probably at least fifty feet high, the water cascading down out of a crack in the canyon walls.
I'd love to post a picture of it, and in fact I did snap a couple of pictures with the camera on my cellphone, but it's not letting me e-mail them to myself (probably just as well from the point of view of my parents, who likely don't want to pay for a couple of international picture messages). So the photos will have to wait until my real camera gets here.
I stayed by the falls for half an hour or so until I decided it was time to go back. The ride back up, I knew, would be a bit more difficult, the price I'd pay for all of those long breezy downhills on the way there. On the way back I stopped by a beach, took off my shoes, and waded into the water -- just so that I could say that I had "swam" in Shuswap Lake, because what's the point of spending six weeks on the shore of a huge lake if you can't say you ever swam in it? Then across the Bridge of Death once more, and then up Tappen Valley Road, then right on Tappen-Notch Hill Road, then another right onto Tappen Hill Road (you'd think they could be a little more creative with the street names around here), and then, finally, a left onto Notch Hill Road.
Pulling into the farm's driveway just a little before 7 was probably one of the happiest moments of my life. I almost expected everyone to rush out of the house, saying "Where were you? We called the cops. We thought you might be dead by the side of the road," but then I remembered that everyone else was out to dinner at one place or another.
Despite the occasional moment when I was sure I wasn't going to make it back alive, it was, all in all, a satisfying day. But I decided that today (another day off) I'd take it a bit easier. So, no big plans for today except to bike down to the library and go on the internet (check!), read a book, and write some letters.
By the way, I now completely understand those studies that say that prolonged bike-riding may reduce male fertility.
Tomorrow it's back "into the grind," as Sue put it. They only give you an hour on the computers down at the library, and my time is just about up, and though I'd love to tell you all about the various vegetable shenanigans up at the farm, I'm afraid that'll have to wait till Saturday. Look forward to it.
In any case, I set out at the leisurely hour of 11:30 on a bike borrowed from one of the girls who is here on a program called Canada World Youth, which brings together people from Canada and from another country (in this case, Uruguay) and has them spend three months together in each country. When I asked her if I needed to worry about locking up the bike when I left it, she told me that it was a "piece of crap" and it didn't really matter if it was stolen or not.
Apart from the bike's temperamental (to put it kindly) gear shift, and a few terrifying seconds pedaling over a bridge on the Trans-Canada Highway, hugging the six-inch shoulder, with cars and eighteen-wheelers barreling past, it was a rather pleasant ride down. The scenery in the mountains is gorgeous, and once I got past the highway, I rode right alongside the lake.
Margaret Falls is up a short trail along a canyon that feels like it's part of a different world. The first thing you notice when you start walking up is that the temperature drops about five degrees and the air is suffused with a fine mist. It was about 2:30 when I arrived at the canyon, the sun quite strong for a September afternoon, but it was like dusk once I got inside, the limestone walls and towering cedars blocking out all of the sunlight. The sound of falling water grew louder and louder as I ascended until finally I looked up and caught a glimpse of it. The falls were probably at least fifty feet high, the water cascading down out of a crack in the canyon walls.
I'd love to post a picture of it, and in fact I did snap a couple of pictures with the camera on my cellphone, but it's not letting me e-mail them to myself (probably just as well from the point of view of my parents, who likely don't want to pay for a couple of international picture messages). So the photos will have to wait until my real camera gets here.
I stayed by the falls for half an hour or so until I decided it was time to go back. The ride back up, I knew, would be a bit more difficult, the price I'd pay for all of those long breezy downhills on the way there. On the way back I stopped by a beach, took off my shoes, and waded into the water -- just so that I could say that I had "swam" in Shuswap Lake, because what's the point of spending six weeks on the shore of a huge lake if you can't say you ever swam in it? Then across the Bridge of Death once more, and then up Tappen Valley Road, then right on Tappen-Notch Hill Road, then another right onto Tappen Hill Road (you'd think they could be a little more creative with the street names around here), and then, finally, a left onto Notch Hill Road.
Pulling into the farm's driveway just a little before 7 was probably one of the happiest moments of my life. I almost expected everyone to rush out of the house, saying "Where were you? We called the cops. We thought you might be dead by the side of the road," but then I remembered that everyone else was out to dinner at one place or another.
Despite the occasional moment when I was sure I wasn't going to make it back alive, it was, all in all, a satisfying day. But I decided that today (another day off) I'd take it a bit easier. So, no big plans for today except to bike down to the library and go on the internet (check!), read a book, and write some letters.
By the way, I now completely understand those studies that say that prolonged bike-riding may reduce male fertility.
Tomorrow it's back "into the grind," as Sue put it. They only give you an hour on the computers down at the library, and my time is just about up, and though I'd love to tell you all about the various vegetable shenanigans up at the farm, I'm afraid that'll have to wait till Saturday. Look forward to it.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
hello from Sorrento, BC
So I have a reputation, apparently, for not doing a very good job of keeping in touch with people. I don't really know why people say that about me. Possibly because in the four years I went to sleepaway camp (for two months at a time), I wrote my parents a total of maybe two or three letters.
In any case, while this reputation is clearly unjustified, I figured I might make it easier on myself this time around and instead of keeping in touch with each person individually, I'd create for myself one of those new-fangled blogs to keep everyone up-to-date on my whereabouts and activities during my gap year. So here it is, the official source of information on everything that Ben is doing on his gap year. Enjoy. Bookmark it. Check it obsessively two or three times a day when you're bored and sitting at your computer and have nothing else to do.
I will warn you, though, that due to the fact I'm going to be in some remote, relatively un-Internet-ed places this year, the posts may be somewhat... sporadic. But I'll do my best to keep it up.
The name of the blog, "Off the Edge," is a reference to those maps you saw back in elementary school that showed the United States as if it were an island, floating in a void, as though Texas and Maine were peninsulas jutting out into the vacuum of space and the world ended abruptly at the forty-ninth parallel. Well, I can now report to you that there's a whole 'nother country to the north. In fact, there are many other countries out there, and I intend to see some of them. Hence, going off the edge of the map.
Now that that's out of the way...
Where am I, you ask? I am in British Columbia (for the geographically challenged, British Columbia is the province on the west coast of Canada), working as a WWOOFer on a small organic vegetable farm. Sorrento is a small town and fairly rural, as is most of BC once you get off the coast, and it is located near Shuswap Lake. Apparently this is a big tourist town in the warmer months, but since the months are getting colder, most of the tourists have gone home to their jobs and schools and whatever.
The farm is, as I said, a vegetable farm, owned by a woman named Sue, originally from the UK. In addition, there are three paid workers on the farm: Colleen, who grew up a few hours' drive from here, and Sophie and Arnold (I might not be spelling that right) from France. The farm is beautiful, set in a small valley beside these mountains which remind me a bit of Vermont, except they have more conifers and are more bumpy. I'd love to take some pictures and post them here, except I discovered that my brand-spankin'-new digital camera, which I got for my birthday, was broken the day before I left for Canada. My parents are going to ship it to me after it's repaired/replaced, so the photos are going to have to wait till then.
The only not-so-pretty part is the railroad tracks at the bottom of the farm, which happen to be part of the main train line that goes all the way across Canada. So there are trains going by at all hours. But it's not so bad and I think I'm getting used to it.
It's been a little bit of an adjustment, getting used to the routines on the farm. The work starts at 8:00 in the morning and goes until noon, during which time we are usually working in the fields, harvesting squash or weeding the carrots or pulling beets. Then there is a break for lunch, and we start up again at about 1:30 or so and work until 5-ish. In the afternoon, we are often working inside, washing and preparing vegetables for sale and packing them into boxes. Then dinner, and then I usually stay up a couple of hours writing or reading before collapsing into bed.
I'd write more, but I have to get back to the farmers' market now, where we're trying to unload all of the boxes of corn we picked yesterday. There's a lot. A lot of potatoes, too -- the blue ones are the best, in my opinion. It's kinda funny being on the other side of the table, and I'm really not very good at calculating prices or making change, but I'm getting (a little) better. Well, I'm not really getting any better. Let's just say that I'm discovering that mental math is not one of my strengths.
So leave me a comment if you get a chance. I hope everything is well with everyone, and I'll do my best to post again before the end of the week.
In any case, while this reputation is clearly unjustified, I figured I might make it easier on myself this time around and instead of keeping in touch with each person individually, I'd create for myself one of those new-fangled blogs to keep everyone up-to-date on my whereabouts and activities during my gap year. So here it is, the official source of information on everything that Ben is doing on his gap year. Enjoy. Bookmark it. Check it obsessively two or three times a day when you're bored and sitting at your computer and have nothing else to do.
I will warn you, though, that due to the fact I'm going to be in some remote, relatively un-Internet-ed places this year, the posts may be somewhat... sporadic. But I'll do my best to keep it up.
The name of the blog, "Off the Edge," is a reference to those maps you saw back in elementary school that showed the United States as if it were an island, floating in a void, as though Texas and Maine were peninsulas jutting out into the vacuum of space and the world ended abruptly at the forty-ninth parallel. Well, I can now report to you that there's a whole 'nother country to the north. In fact, there are many other countries out there, and I intend to see some of them. Hence, going off the edge of the map.
Now that that's out of the way...
Where am I, you ask? I am in British Columbia (for the geographically challenged, British Columbia is the province on the west coast of Canada), working as a WWOOFer on a small organic vegetable farm. Sorrento is a small town and fairly rural, as is most of BC once you get off the coast, and it is located near Shuswap Lake. Apparently this is a big tourist town in the warmer months, but since the months are getting colder, most of the tourists have gone home to their jobs and schools and whatever.
The farm is, as I said, a vegetable farm, owned by a woman named Sue, originally from the UK. In addition, there are three paid workers on the farm: Colleen, who grew up a few hours' drive from here, and Sophie and Arnold (I might not be spelling that right) from France. The farm is beautiful, set in a small valley beside these mountains which remind me a bit of Vermont, except they have more conifers and are more bumpy. I'd love to take some pictures and post them here, except I discovered that my brand-spankin'-new digital camera, which I got for my birthday, was broken the day before I left for Canada. My parents are going to ship it to me after it's repaired/replaced, so the photos are going to have to wait till then.
The only not-so-pretty part is the railroad tracks at the bottom of the farm, which happen to be part of the main train line that goes all the way across Canada. So there are trains going by at all hours. But it's not so bad and I think I'm getting used to it.
It's been a little bit of an adjustment, getting used to the routines on the farm. The work starts at 8:00 in the morning and goes until noon, during which time we are usually working in the fields, harvesting squash or weeding the carrots or pulling beets. Then there is a break for lunch, and we start up again at about 1:30 or so and work until 5-ish. In the afternoon, we are often working inside, washing and preparing vegetables for sale and packing them into boxes. Then dinner, and then I usually stay up a couple of hours writing or reading before collapsing into bed.
I'd write more, but I have to get back to the farmers' market now, where we're trying to unload all of the boxes of corn we picked yesterday. There's a lot. A lot of potatoes, too -- the blue ones are the best, in my opinion. It's kinda funny being on the other side of the table, and I'm really not very good at calculating prices or making change, but I'm getting (a little) better. Well, I'm not really getting any better. Let's just say that I'm discovering that mental math is not one of my strengths.
So leave me a comment if you get a chance. I hope everything is well with everyone, and I'll do my best to post again before the end of the week.
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