Farm Journal Update
May 25: I'm keeping a farm journal for my readers this year that my late, dear grandma Stella would have identified as being "full of BS". I really miss her.
May 26: My soil is deficient in boron, so I went down to IGA to buy some Borax, a mined salt that, in addition to killing ants and washing your clothes, will help my sunflowers, those boron hogs, grow tall and strong. Owner Harry was at the register and asked me if I was going fishing. "???" I said. He explained that fishermen use Borax as a binding agent for fish roe so that the latter will stay on their hooks as bait. I realize that a local Grocer like Harry has a hard time matching prices with the big boxes, but where else are you able to get ninja fishing advice along with your jujubes? Certainly not at Superstore.
May 27: I tossed and turned in bed last night, feeling guilty about the presumptions I made in yesterday's journal entry. So I phoned Galen Weston to ask him how to hook a decent-sized trout, but all he did was go on and on about his Decadent-brand ice cream sandwiches. In the end I had to hang up on him. I'm going to sleep like a baby tonight. But not that baby Carrick. I hear tell he doesn't sleep well at all. Welcome to the world buddy!
May 31: A lesson in extremes today. Down in Penticton to deliver the year's first weekly veggie bag to my subscribers, I visited one new customer and was whisked inside to be thanked and introduced to every member of the family, including Jet, who will be five in fourteen sleeps. He invited me to the party. Ego soaring, I proceeded to the next recipient, an eighty-five year old whose daughter had purchased her a veggie subscription for Christmas. Evidently it was a suprise. "What? I've got too many veggies already! I throw them out!" I've never had a customer accept their veggie bag so begrudgingly. I liked her, though. Farmers tend to get put on a pedestal. This lady will keep me humble. And I like a challenge.
June 1: I split my pants crotch-to-knee while lunging for a pop fly during a softball game today. This is journal-worthy only because of my lengthy pants-splitting story from a couple weeks back. My thighs are like Andy from The Shawshank Redemption, only less successful.
June 2: Farming is awesome because you can be in on a conference call for a board meeting of some non-profit you're involved with, and the topic is bylaw changes and you just want to stick your head in the oven, and then Joe calls you on the other line to tell you he needs help baling hay, and when it's hay-baling time and there's thunderheads on the horizon, you don't mess around man, and so you get back on the other line and say "I have to go. There's hay to be baled." And you race out the door, and you feel like Batman. And so you ask Joe to call you Batman, and he says "I'm not doing that. Pick up a rake." But it's still way more fun than that conference call. And you can still refer to Joe as Commissioner Gordon when he's out of earshot.