Cherry harvest in our orchard is tomorrow so we went down to snag a few of the ruby gems for our personal eating before the trees get picked clean and the fruit sent to the packing house.

Karenna had just woken up so I plopped her in the stroller and she just kind of sat there like a sleepy lump while we filled our bowls.

Avelyn has been eating fresh cherries by the pound and I keep waiting for the inevitable sprint to the bathroom. So far, so good. She can hold her fruit. Good thing she’s a farmer’s daughter.

After a chilly, rainy start to summer we are at the beginning of our first full-fledged heat wave and I am not entirely ready for it. We’ll just be at the beach, downing ice cubes and freezies and cranking the A/C while we try to stay cool.

In other news, Avelyn had her first professional haircut. I had done an uneven hack job with our kitchen shears a few months ago and the ends were in dire need of a trim. So on a whim I took her to the ghetto salon in our local mall and she looked so grown up sitting in the chair with the big, dark cape around her neck. She looks decidedly less like Mowgli from the Jungle Book now and her hair is much less tangley and easier to comb through now that she’s had a decent cut. I just wish I had brought my camera. Guess I’ll just have to store that memory in the ol’ grey matter instead.

I hope your summer is off to a lovely start, just like ours!

I planted a garden this year. Well, more of a garden than I had ever planted before, but still quite piddly and forlorn in comparison to what yours probably looks like.  It’s been a humbling experience and here’s what my harvest estimate includes: three carrots, one head of (very wilted) lettuce, four peas and a SCHWACK of potatoes. I watched a YouTube video on how to plant potatoes and it wasn’t messing around! We’re going to be eating a lot of frites this summer!  

A garden reminds me that I am lazy. That I am a procrastinator. That I take things for granted and then they die. How uplifting. Maybe that’s why I kind of hate gardening. I want to love it, since I’m married to a farmer who can manage to keeps thousands of apple trees alive and thriving while I glance at a houseplant and it shrivels and I am pretty sure I hear it scream before it dies. I think the biggest thing holding me back is my lack of knowledge about the simple things, like how deep to plant seeds, what should be planted next to what, etc. The other problem is that I am a little too lazy to try to figure it out. Hence, a three carrot harvest.  

But go, potatoes! 

What do you wish you were better at?

Hey!  Here’s a picture of Avelyn running laps around the deck last weekend:

She’s fun (and looks to be about five feet tall).  But wait, what’s that in the distance, behind her?  A whole schwack of freshy picked apples scattered all over the dirt?  Couldn’t be.  Could it?

Oh yes, it could.  Talk about ending on a sour note.  This was the last of the year’s apple harvest and Steve was loading up the bins on the trailer when they toppled over to their juicy demise.

No hope for salvage.  Poor Steve.

Ending on a sour note seems to be a common theme ’round these parts.  Like, say, every time I take Avelyn to the park.

Then she inevitably ends up in a collapsed heap, tantruming in the crunchy autumn leaves, because her life, obviously, is nothing but trials.

“So, did you still want me to take some pregnancy photos of you?” Angella chimed last night.

I momentarily thought of gauzy black-and-white photos of me, pensively clutching my belly:  images I would treasure for a lifetime.  But then I thought of the stretch marks and the cellulite and the four-foot circumference of each of my thighs, and replied,  “Nah, I’m good.”

We had a nice laugh about it, how the second pregnancy is just not filled with the same awe and wonder as the first.  I am still so eager to meet our new baby girl, see her scrunchy little face covered in cheesy gunk, swaddle her in a soft blanket, but the whole pregnancy situation has lost its glamour.  About six months ago, actually.

I know it might seem like I’ve been a lot more whiney this time around.  It might seem that way because it’s true.   I have been griping to Steve about my weight gain, my back pain, and my chronic urination all day and night, and he’s been a very compliant listener, knowing full well that if he tells me to be quiet and suck it up I will totally sit on him and crush his internal organs in the process.

Last night, just for “fun” I tried on some of my pre-pregnancy jeans.  This was a terrible mistake.  I was looking for a pick-me-up, something to reassure me that I was going to be back to my old self in no time.  (Call it a moment of pregnancy-induced insanity.)  Needless to say, the fitting was a nightmare.  I am a fool.  It’s going to take a good few months of Weight Watchin’ to get back into my old clothes.  Owell, now I know.

Sweat pants, here I come.

Whose idea was it to have a baby in September?  See, having a baby in September means being mammothly pregnant in August and I am SO OVER IT.  I am a hot, bloated mess and have officially entered the “don’t talk to me about how ‘healthy’ my baby is going to be since what I know you really mean is you think I am really fat and I don’t want to talk about it” stage.  I am grumpy.  About everything.

It’s smoldering outside these days and the heat has turned my blood to molasses.  It takes supernatural motivation to even think about moving.  Steve asks what we’re having for dinner and I bark, “Cherries!  They’re in the fridge!  Get ‘em yourself!”

Speaking of cherries, we’re in the middle of our final harvest of the season.  Steve was up before the sun today and has been working his sweaty little bum to the bone all day in an effort to get as much fruit off the trees today as possible since there’s a huge threat of rain tomorrow (rain is basically the worst thing for ripe cherries to experience - it makes them split open and renders them worthless).  And the crew that came to help this morning and had committed to working all weekend told us as they left today that they’re not coming back tomorrow.  Which is bad.  So we’re scurrying around, calling anyone who might be able-bodied and willing to pick tomorrow.  I usually head down with Avelyn and do some sorting of the cherries since I can’t really wear a picking bucket with this huge beach-ball of a baby in my belly, but Avelyn has about a three-hour limit in the hot sun, so we’re not a huge help.  Gah.  Farming is hard.  There are just so many challenges and variables:  the weather, the pests, the help.  I don’t know how Steve does it.

Ta-ta.  It’s time for dinner now:  veggie burgers and…cherries.

When I watched the disturbing documentary, Earthlings, a few months back, it was the first step in a journey I didn’t know I was about to take.  After learning about the gruesome realities of commercial farming practices, it seemed like the natural solution was to become a vegetarian or vegan, and thus stop the vicious circle of cruelty and abuse.  I didn’t make the firm decision to completely give up meat or animal products, but since watching the movie I have only eaten meat, on average, once a week.  (We have local beef in our deep freeze and that’s been the only meat I’ve prepared.  Often Steve will have one of the steaks while I have something bean or dairy-based for my protein source.)  And even then it was often hard to stomach.  Since becoming anemic with this pregnancy I had the occasional burger and chose not to wonder about how the cow that made it was treated in the process:  blissful ignorance for iron’s sake.  So, I was still not ready to declare myself a total vegetarian but was living as close to it as I ever had.

Yesterday night I finished reading Plenty, a book that chronicles the experience of the authors as they tried to eat locally, within a 100-mile distance from their home, for one year.  They investigate the toll that our global food trade has taken on farmers and the land and our planet.  It’s a very well written book and quite eye-opening and inspiring.  However, it made me realize that by solving one problem, another is often created.

Whereas I originally assumed that vegetarianism was the answer after watching Earthlings, I have realized that many of the protein options that vegetarians rely on come from the other side of the world.  There are no soybean farms in my neighbourhood, no chick pea fields down the street.   So, is it better to eat local meats or long-distance beans?  No matter which option I choose, it seems that someone pays the price.

It’s clear to me that I still want to be a little removed from my food source.  I would consider keeping some chickens in our orchard and I would have no problem throwing grain into their pens, retrieving their fresh eggs, and taking pride in the fact they they are well cared for and happy and free.  But could I be the one to lop off their heads, throw their quaking bodies in boiling water, pluck out their feathers and then slice into their guts to rip out their entrails?  I don’t think so.  The biggest thing I have ever killed is a wasp, and even then my stomach churned when its yellow guts oozed onto the window I smooshed it against with my swatter.  Steve is convinced that I could grow accustomed to slaughtering chickens and that it would be good for me and our kids to see what it takes to get a drumstick on our plates.  I agree.  In theory.  Honestly, I would way rather eat falafel and tofu and beans for the rest of my life instead of ripping organs out of animals I have killed.  If I can’t do the deed, I should just eat a seed.  How’s that for a new veggie slogan?

So, here I am today.  Still wondering and searching and feeling more than a little overwhelmed by the state of the world.  There is just so much wrong with the systems we’ve created, but change feels so illusive.  And, quite frankly, there are some things about the terrible systems that I kind of enjoy, like the clothes I get for a great deal at the big box store, the taste of a ridiculously overpriced frappuccino from Starbucks, the convenience of frozen pizza.   How can I combat child labour and sweatshops and capitalism and laziness when I not-so-secretly savour some of their fruits?  Do I really have what it takes to live off the land?  Even though I HATE pulling weeds and don’t know the first thing about home preserves?  We’d probably all die of botulism poisoning if I tried to can some jam.

And, most importantly, what about Diet Coke?

I wish that we could create a sort of city-wide commune among our friends, in that we’d all have something we were responsible for creating and then we would share everything with everyone.  We would obviously grow the apples, someone else could kill the chickens, someone else could make organic cheese from happy cows who get patted on the back while they’re milked, someone else could keep a vegetable garden, someone else could make honey, and someone else could grow grain and grind it into flour.  Then we could all eat locally, and ethically, and feel connected (but not too connected…remember, someone else would kill the chickens) to our food.

Before you know it, my armpit hair is going to tuft out the bottom of my tank top and you’ll have to remind me why I used to wear a bra.

The thing I am happy about, in the midst of so much uncertainty about what my next step ought to be, is that I now care about things I used to be completely unaware of.  And that’s a good place to be, a good place to start.

In BlogHer’s stead, we have cherry harvest.

Tomorrow this sticky, snotty, scraggly-haired kid turns two years old.  Crazy. We will be having a very small birthday get-together featuring an ice cream cake with a picture of Avelyn’s idol, Arthur, drawn with sickly-sweet icing on top.  I’ll be sure to post photos of the birthday girl later this weekend.

I am a city slicker at heart.  I love shopping and sipping frappuccinos and strolling down a street wearing cute, yet uncomfortable, shoes.  But I got swept up off my feet almost seven years ago by a farmer and he has held me hostage on an apple orchard with a panoramic lake view ever since.  I love the property and the beauty of the land.  I just hate the work.  Manual labour makes me die a little inside.  And farming happens to involve a lot of manual labour.  I know Steve would love it if I strapped on some overalls and tossed Avelyn in a hiking backpack carrier so I could prune the apple trees all day.  But then I wouldn’t just die a little inside; I would die utterly and completely, and he knows it.  He has been gracious and understanding and has been supportive of my other jobs, knowing that I am much happier sitting behind an office desk, talking to people, designing desktop publications, and being a happy little administrative assistant.  And he also is supportive of my devotion to being a full-time mom now, even though he wishes that he were the one taking Avelyn to the park and the beach every day.

Basically, he’s a great man and a great farmer.  I wish I could be the hick of a wife he dreams of, but I wish that he liked to loiter in coffee shops and go to plays at the theater, so we’re both giving a little and taking a little.  Meaning, once every five years I pick and apple (and whine about it) and once every five years he takes me to a play (and whines about it).  It works, OK?

That being said, I sure do love to see Avelyn running through the rows of apples, happy to be a part of the farm.  She likes to help Steve in the orchard, she’ll gladly sit on the tractor for an hour, and she is happiest when she’s digging in the dirt of the land.

There’s hope for an heir, after all.

Any eyeglass experts out there?  (Whoorl?  Whoorl, are you reading this?)  I need new glasses.  To my dismay, my eyesight has taken a turn for the worse in recent years and I can no longer get away with only wearing my glasses when they happen to match my outfit.  For the past few weeks I have been on the lookout for a pair of glasses that I love enough to wear every day and as of yet I’ve come up empty handed.  I don’t really know what I want.  Sometimes I’ll try on a pair of bold(ish) plastic frames and think they look good.  Then other times I prefer the rimless look.  I dunno.

I have tried wearing contacts but I am just too much of a wuss to endure the itchiness and scratchiness and ouchiness of having flakes of plastic in my eyeballs all day long.

And laser eye surgery is a leetle out of the budget at this point.  I’d rather eat dinner, thankyouverymuch.

Here’s Avelyn modeling my present pair.  They are six years old and I still, rather surprisingly, kind of like them.  They’ve got that classic, vintagey look, and I dig it.

So.  Any recommendations?  If not, that’s cool.  You can make it up to me by dropping by and buying some of our apples.  We’ve got boxes aplenty in cold storage just waiting to be eaten!  We’ve got Fugi and Pink Lady varieties (have you tried Pink Lady?  It’s new.  And awesome) and we’re selling them for, get this:  a mere 50 cents per pound.  Why so cheap, you ask?  A little thing I like to call Birthday Hail.  Remember the pounding our poor crop took on the 20th of July?  Those poor apples look like teenage acne survivors, what with all the craters and divots and scars.  Poor little pommes.  The packing house won’t accept apples that are less than perfect so it’s up to us to find a place for them.  (They might be all dinged up but I assure you that they taste just as good as those blemish-free, waxed-up apples you see at the grocery store. )

They need a loving home filled with hungry mouths to eat them so they don’t feel completely rejected.