Farm Journal Update

June 3: I'm keeping a journal for my readers this year that is fiction-enhanced for their enjoyment.

Same: Today we headed out to gather up our square bales with stormclouds overhead. We had one more wagon load to pick up--56 bales--when the rain poured down. A haying in the Okanagan takes a minimum of three days, and up to seven, and you need the weather to be fair for all of it. We needed 30 more minutes to get ours in. But that's haying in the spring.

June 9: Called by an aggrieved reader who objected to the treatment I gave Superstore in last journal update, in suggesting I probably wouldn't get good fishing advice there like I did from Harry at the local IGA. Reader/caller became even unhappier upon finding out that aspects of this journal are fabricated. Attempted to explain that the made-up parts are usually meant to add humour to the real parts. Reader/caller called me dishonest. I pointed out that I start every column with a suggestion that aspects within might be untrue. Reader/caller called me dishonest. The rest of this date-entry contains only true things. 

I shop at Superstore regularly. I rarely encounter its employees, but they seem nice. Many have smiled at me. I appreciate Superstore's organic selection and its self-checkouts.

Outwardly gregarious, inwardly I suffer from social anxiety. I spent a conversation at a recent Chamber of Commerce event terrified that I might somehow suddenly and involuntarily spill my glass of wine all over my fellow attendee. It's why I like self-checkouts.

I think little Peachland is lucky to have a grocery store in town. And that, if we want it to be there those times we don't feel like humping it to Westbank, we have to make a special effort to shop there semi-regularly. 

Peachland IGA buys my salad greens, in small quantities, without a lot of bureaucracy. I think there's a snowball's chance in hell Superstore would do that. The latter doesn't offend me. I'm grateful for the former.

In 2006 I was paid a total of $10 for twenty-one hours of graveyard shift-work for the Superstore in Whitehorse. Both the store's management and the Teamsters Union were dishonest with me about the deductions I would face as a super-short-term, unionized worker, probably because they were desperate for labour. The economy was booming then. I was angry at Superstore for a while. Those graveyard shifts were a drag.

Okay. Back to the regular, deceptive journal. 

June 11: We are building a walk-in cooler here at the farm. This is a big deal. My business' growth has been challenged by the lack of cold storage here. It is a used cooler. It is ugly as all sin. It looks less like a place to cool veggies than a terrible, foreboding prison cell. When we hold our annual Halloween event for customers' kids this fall I'll likely use it to scare the bajeezes out of them. All of that is true, actually.

June 14: Explained to Ryan, our farm apprentice and a chef by training, that each of our veggie subscription customers is allowed one veggie they don't want to see in each week's delivery, and that some choose awesome veggies like beets and zucchini, which seems a shame to me. "They probably don't like them because their moms were bad cooks," he said. "Most people hate Brussels Sprouts because their moms ruined them every Thanksgiving." That's definitely not universally true, but I laughed, because I think it's probably true for some people. So, some people:  consider giving beets and zucchini another try. They want so badly to please you.