Why I Wore My Pajamas to Work

Since the second week of June, I've breathed, eaten, and dreamed dust, cherries, and Spanish (respectively).

I've had neither the time nor the energy to do anything other than work. The schedule this week was a lot more relaxed: 5:00am-5:00pm... who would've thunk an 84 hour work week could be considered semi-vacation?

When I drag my dusty body to bed at night and mumble my prayers, I'm distracted by the panicky feeling: "What am I going to wear tomorrow?" Laundry, you see, has been on the back burner for almost a month. I've exhausted all jeans, slacks, skirts, tees, blouses, and blazers I own.

Yesterday I finally broke down.

Did laundry? No.

I broke into the garbage bag in the back of my closet... you know the one... the one I hoard in hopes that some day I'll fit into them again. My old "skinnier clothes."

I stretched that too-small t-shirt over my knees every time I thought no one was looking, but all day long I had to hold my stomach in and breathe shallow breaths. I was so cranky and asphyxiated by mid-afternoon that I resolved on the spot, "I will do laundry tonight!"

Yesterday was July 4th! After the outrage of having to work all day when everyone else I knew was grilling bratwursts, doing laundry was the last thing on my mind... until this morning at 4am when the alarm went off. "What am I going to wear?!?"

For a few moments I thought, "maybe they're not so dirty," and almost sniffed the smoldering laundry pile. "No," I caught myself in time, "this is no mere laundry, this is the garb of harvest -- sweaty, dusty, grimy, smelly."

So it was either wear another two-sizes-too-small-tee and if-that-button-pops-off-it's-gonna-be-a-dangerous-weapon-jeans, or go in my pajamas.

"They kind of look like slacks," I reasoned, "except they're loose, pink, and have a drawstring."


I got away with it in the wee hours of the workday (when it was too early and too dark to care), but as the day progressed, people started looking at me like a bum.

Load #5 is currently on the final spin cycle. Wake me when it's time to switch loads.

Calm Before the Storm

Birds warbling. Crickets singing. Breeze sweeping. River rolling. Children laughing.

In 42 hours we'll start harvesting cherries, God willing.

Thank you so much for praying. We have miraculously avoided rain damage, and without having to hire a helicopter!

The current crisis is a lack of employees. Our picker crew, so far, is half of what it was last year, and 1/4 of what it was the year before that. Apparently it's a region-wide problem. The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few -- truly. Pray to the Lord to send more workers!

The Great Irony

Our bread and butter is, mostly, from cherries.

The most stressful week of our year is from cherries.

The preoccupying diversion for the majority of the year is, you guessed it, cherries.

I just went to the freezer to load my smoothie with cherries and... horror of horrors, not a single one!!

The Bing trees in the orchard were just harvested clean.

HOW COULD WE FORGET TO PICK CHERRIES FOR OURSELVES?? This is going to be a long cheerless cherry-less year.

At least my zucchini plants are prolific.

Harvest Numbers

In the last 36 hours:

Hours of work: 28
Hours of sleep: 5
Hours neither working nor sleeping: 3
Showers: 0
Times I lost my temper: 1
Really good laughs: 2
Times I forgot my own name: 3
Layers of dust on me: at least 9

All in all it's been really good so far. Please say a little prayer for us, as we continue cherry harvest.

I'm going to take a nap. Wake me when it's over.

In 16 Hours

In 16 hours (4am, PST), Cherry Harvest 2011 will have officially begun.

Please say a little prayer for us, and I'll see you on the other side!

Oh yes, and I hope to use my camera at some point again this year.

Pre Cherry Harvest Checklist

Print bin labels
Make employee ID cards
File and enter employee applications into Harvest Database
Weed-eat around the scales
Clean out weigh shacks
Flag the orchard (for which trees to skip)
Make menu plan and go shopping for harvest meals
Tweak Harvest computer program
Clean out water jugs
Schedule employee training and safety meeting
Go to Confession

There are 47 other items on the family's collective to-do list, but this is a fair sampling.

God willing and the rain don't come, we'll start picking sometime this week.

Payday Successes

It's payday on the farm for all the pickers. I kind of like handing out checks... it makes me feel like Santa.


1. Lost 7 pounds! Yes, it's the same 7 pounds I keep losing, but hey... at least it's down and not up.

2. When my car was in the shop, I actually walked to a store. Me. I walked somewhere. As in: on foot. Mm hm. 'Cause I can do that. Yay me.

3. I got an application for a local Catholic high school... teaching Religion. I haven't sent it in yet, but... I need something to report next Thursday, right?

Check out others' small successes at Faith & Family Live.

Highlights of a Harvest Day

My sister, who has been up here visiting for the month, recently declared the Facebook app "Farmville" a "sham."

When she first got here she was, while lounging on the couch, harvesting crops, planting new ones, and clicking away to agricultural prosperity. After working her first cherry harvest, she decided the virtual reality was laughable and hasn't the heart, any longer, to press a button to "harvest."

Here are just a few highlights of the cherry harvesting process (without going into any great detail, nor the rest of the annual toil of spraying, pruning, mowing, pulling brush, watering, replanting, payroll, etc.).

Before harvest begins, the orchard must be prepared for the pickers' arrivals.

Flags are put out numbering every row of the orchard.

Ladders are spread throughout the first picking areas.

Portalets and water coolers are carefully placed.

Empty fruit bins are strategically scattered throughout the orchard.

 Lots of extra equipment is rented.

For weeks beforehand men and women line up to be hired for picking.

Finally the first day of harvest dawns... 4:30am-ish.

After each picker clocks in and is given an orchard ID card, they are assigned to a row of trees by a crew boss.

Then they begin picking, careful not to pull the fruit off the stem (milking), or pull bark with the stems (spurring). It's a lot harder than you'd think.

But these guys are good, and many return year after year to pick for us.

 

It takes a lot of work to fill a bin!

After their bins are full, they are given a receipt for the bin by a checker.

Filled and checked bins are forked by little tractors out of the orchard onto a main road.

When four full bins are lined up, they are picked up by a blueline driver.

Sometimes it gets a little crowded on the main roads.

The blueliner brings them down to a weigh shack.

The weigh shack pulls the ticket out of the bin (to be given to the data entry gal -- a whole 'nother process!), weighs the fruit, and sends it down the motorized chain to get water.

Here's the fruit going from the motorized chain (from blueline through shack scale) to the rollers for water.

The fruit is then watered to cool it down (hot fruit gets mushy fast) and prepare it for shipping.

Sorry... water is fun to photograph.

From the waterer it is picked up by a fork lift, usually stacked five bins high, and is loaded onto a refrigerated semi truck.

From there it goes to a packing shed where it will be sorted (culled), graded, packaged and shipped to grocery stores.

Some, of course, are oblivious to the buzz of activity all around.

Life Would've Been So Different

Tasty Tuesday will return next week.

Here's a teaser photo for a full post later this week.

I'm so glad I didn't marry a rutabaga farmer!

Back from the Dead

Right Now:  8:45pm. I'm still full from the lunch I made/had with my husband and sister (homemade hoagies, sauteed mushrooms and green peppers, Italian sausages and whole seed mustard). I also just woke up from an obscenely long nap.

This Past Weekend: is kind of a blur. I hadn't taken an obscenely long nap before today!

On Saturday I made a chocolate cream pie and a sweet potato pie for Sunday's "Harvest Party." Sunday, after Mass, was spent writing a "harvest song," compiling a slideshow and making employee awards. The party itself was great; a cookout with volleyball, a fiddler, and great company (best employees ever this year!).

Some Plans for the Week: We scored some free wicker chairs (with a sign "free") off the side of the road. I want to give them a fresh coat of paint and either buy or make some deep cushions for them. I also want to (finally) try my hand at making bagels, and start job hunting in earnest.

If I Can Find Time for Myself, I Want To: Exercise. Even if I can't find time, I should make it. I've been too sedentary too long.

Special Prayer Intentions: In thanksgiving for a friend from college who was ordained a priest this weekend, and for all of my old seminarian friends. In sincere thanksgiving for an unexpectedly successful cherry harvest -- we'll live to farm another year. And in gratitude for my husband; the most amazing man alive.

Something That Makes Me Smile: The many stages of an exquisite sunrise over the river during a cherry harvest morning. Getting up at 3:30am does, occasionally, have its advantages.

Monday Morning Musings are hosted by Patch o' Dirt Farm.

Sleep? What's That?

It started Sunday.

3:15am alarm clocks. Subconscious slapping of the snooze button. 3:30 alarm. Subconscious slap. 3:45 alarm, dart out of bed, unshowered, unbreakfasted, "HOW COULD I SLEEP IN!? We've got to GO!"

Welcome to cherry harvest.

(Posting hiatus until it's over... end of this week? Remind me to bring my camera to the orchard.)

Monday Morning Musings Vol. V

Right now... it's almost noon. I'm mulling over whether I should fight for my job at the parish or resign quietly.

This past weekend... was interesting. On Saturday I was called and informed that my husband was in the emergency room from a "farming accident." How's that to make your knees go weak and your heart completely stop? As it turned out, he'd caught his little finger on the baler and nicked the end of the bone, requiring stitches and a splint. By the time I got to the hospital (mind you, they waited 45 minutes to call me!) he had already been discharged. I knew it was a "minor injury," but we both joked later that our hopes of a distraught-adoring-wife-racing-into-the-hospital-and-ignoring-the-nurse's-cries-that-no-visitors-are-allowed-so-she-could-race-to-his-side-and-wipe-his-brow scene were dashed by the quick turnover time.

My poor darling. He's such an example to me. An injury like that would've sidelined me for a month; I've got such a low pain tolerance and high sympathy garnering needs. He hasn't muttered so much as an "ouch" and besides requesting BBQ and homemade ice cream, he hasn't hammed this up at all! It's expected that he will have a full recovery.

On Sunday we went to the park at the river, got snowballs, and um... OH YEAH, THE EAGLE HAS LANDED!  Our baby chicks have arrived!

Some plans for this week:  Keep the chicks alive. Cherry harvest (starts tomorrow or Wednesday) and all the prep-work that entails.

If I can find some time for myself, I want to... there won't be any time for myself this week.

Special prayer intentions: For a smooth cherry harvest (and in thanksgiving for the miraculous cessation of rain). For the meeting on Wednesday at the church. For my husband's finger, and for my friend in the Holy Land to continue there in safety.

Something that makes me smile: Howard, the baby dark brown chick (below) with the fuzzy head.

This post is graciously hosted by Patch O' Dirt Farm.

Why I've Been Gone

19 Hour Days for the last week... working with these: (will try to get better pictures up later...)



Now starts the paperwork for payroll (for 300 pickers and 40 crew members), and then hay harvest!