Fruition Orchards

Inside of the church house

Still on the orchard, but I thought I would let everyone know what's been happening at the farm over the week.

Last Sunday I did end up going to the Farmer's Market by myself. It was a later start and pretty slow, so a nice day overall. Because Sunday is a smaller market everyone is inside, and a lady with a hula hoop was dancing, so that kept me entertained for a while. Afterwards, Carmen came and helped me pack everything up and then we met up with Keith and the kids and went to Ruckers. It's sort of like a Cyber City place, with different games you pay tokens to play with and then you win tickets which you can use to buy cheap junk. But the kids love it! It was so bright and colourful in there though. Then we went for dinner at this place called Bonanza, which has a buffet of numerous things to eat and a sundae station.


Road out to the dump

Monday I spent the day taking care of the kids and then we made burgers for dinner. Tuesday we made sour cherry juice by boiling frozen cherries from the orchard, then straining them. I think they usually mix it with something else to cut the bitter/sourness but we had some with dinner and it was pretty tasty. Wednesday we took a trip to the dump just outside of Aberdeen (a small town that you can take some back gravel roads to get to from the farm) and cleaned up the house. When Keith got home with Parker - who is 3 - he was asleep in the car so Keith got out to do something for a few minutes and when he came back Parker had woken up and locked the door, with the keys in it. We had to bribe him with marshmallows and asking him if he wanted to jump on the trampoline, and finally he hit the unlock button. Good too because it was a warm day.

I was originally planning to head out to Manitoba Thursday but tonight there is a house concert here. This organization called The Neighbour's Dog puts on house concerts in different people's homes and since the house has a huge living space with a stage it's the perfect place for a show. The band playing is called Besnard Lakes and it seems like it will be a fun night. They are currently setting up chairs, instruments, etc. upstairs and I think they are even catering dinner for all the workers, musicians and everyone in the house. The show is a ticketed event and starts at 9pm. Here's a link to some of their music:
Youtube - Besnard Lakes

Thursday we cleaned up a bunch of the yard - sorting trays used for fruit in one of the garages and cleaning up garbage around the house. In the afternoon I looked after Parker and he kept asking for things, but I couldn't understand what he was saying. Good times! Calvin, Nathan and I went out on one of the shed's roofs and watched the sunset. You can see for so far because it's so flat, and it was gorgeous. The weather is definitely improving - no more huge mud puddle for a front yard.

Friday I spent all day at Keith and Carmen's bakery in Saskatoon. All the bread and sweets for the farmer's market all weekend get baked there, and most of its' done Friday so everything's fresh. I was mostly bagging and labeling everything, but it was interesting to see how things are done there and reminded me of when I worked at the bakery in Port Alberni.

The delivery driver, Lorne, invited Nathan and I to hang out after we finished work and we ended up going to a steak night (they nicely made me fish) fundraiser at a bar in town. It was a fundraiser for Canada World Youth and all the money raised from raffles and fifty-fifties throughout the night went to a girl going to Peru for two months. A girl who had recently returned from the same trip told us about her experiences building clay ovens for families and learning better leadership and communication skills. Sounds like a great program. After we went over to Lorne's friend's place and had a fire in the backyard. Shannon had just come back from the island and told me about this great little town/beach area near Duncan, so I have a mission when I get home to go visit this place and an amazing house. She was a really interesting lady - she renovated her entire house and has had some interesting jobs, including being an air quality tester in a uranium mine.

It was a late night, so kind of nice that I didn't have to wake up at 6am to go to the market today. But I did go to the dump 3 times, (it's only open Wednesdays and Saturdays) one of which was by myself and I was a bit of a mess when I got back to the house. Hopefully it won't be too late of a night tonight because tomorrow I head to a farm near Minnedosa.

Now I'm just waiting to see how tonight unfolds...