29 September 2010

I felt such relief as I drove up the long gravel driveway with my car sitting lower than usual, put out the Apples and Cider sign one last time, and drove away from the orchard in the early morning fog. Working here hasn’t been a completely terrible experience, but it isn’t an experience I care to repeat. Once I mull on it for a bit, I’ll write a post about what I’ve learned since I’ve been here.

My dear friend Sally has been kind enough to open her seaside cottage to me for the coming week before Dad flies up to drive back with me. As I stepped out of my car in her drive, I was met with the smell of spruce and cedar and sea. It’s a glorious combination that I wish I could capture for you, but I fear I’m not eloquent enough. The best I can do is tell you that it smells of Christmas and the cold Atlantic on a crisp morning.

When I arrived at the cottage, Sally wanted to cook breakfast for me, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d already had toast with almond butter earlier in the morning. She scrambled eggs—her secret ingredient is cottage cheese, which makes the eggs fluffier—and toasted English muffins, and then we sat down together to eat and ended up talking for two hours. How I’ve missed the simple pleasure of conversation over a meal! Afterwards, we went for a strolling walk around Flye Point, and I listened to her stories about what the area was like when she was growing up—she’s been coming here in the summers for sixty-five years.

As we stood on the wind-whipped precipice of the peninsula, gazing out over the cresting, incoming tide and Goose and Gander Islands, I realized how much I will miss the sea when I leave here. The crash of it over the rocky shore; the way it changes from gray to blue to green to black as the sky alters; the movement of the tides; the way it catches and shatters the sun- and moonlight…

I spent most of the afternoon and evening studying for the GRE Literature in English subject test, and then after a dinner of homemade macaroni and cheese, carrots, and salad, Sally and I played a game of Scrabble. She beat me quite soundly. She claimed that it’s only because she’s been playing for sixty years and this was only my first time. I think she’s just good.

I had my choice of five rooms to choose from, and I picked the only one on the second floor. My room is directly over the deep back porch, and I can peer between the cracks in the wooden boards that make up the floor and see the porch below. Three of the walls are made up almost entirely of windows, and the glass panes, after all these years, are ill fitted in their sills, so the air creeps between the cracks. The ocean is only feet away, and my lullaby tonight is the shush, shush of the waves, the creak of the old cottage as it settles down for the night around us, and the melodic alto song of the wind-chime on the porch in the breeze.

28 September 2010

After collecting apples from under the trees in the orchard, winding up the water hoses, and labeling three hundred half-gallon jugs, my work is complete. My job is finished, over, done. Hallelujah.

with my friend Vivian,

at the Blue Hill Fair earlier this month

with my friends Margaret and Sally,

at the American Folk Festival in Bangor last month

this is the windjammer I saw (see 26 September 2010 post)

27 September 2010

Today was a day of firsts, even as it was my last full day of work.

This morning, as I walked up to the top of the drive to put out the Apple and Cider signs, I smelled wood smoke for the first time since I’ve been here. It was chilly here today, overcast and windy. I stood at the edge of the long, deserted road for several minutes, reveling in the burgundy maples, the flaxen birches, the still virescent oaks. The smell of wood burning in a distant fireplace drifted towards me on the wind. Autumn has come to New England.

On the way back from picking apples this afternoon, we stopped on the narrow, twisting causeway that stretches between the isles and collected seaweed as the tide went out. I raked it up into heaps and piled it into the bushel baskets. As I shook the rocks, sand, shells, seagull feathers, and crab carcasses from the seaweed before dumping it in the bushels, I asked dubiously, Tim, you don’t…eat this, do you? You never know with these staunch organics. He thought my question was hilarious and assured me that they didn’t. Not this seaweed, anyways, he said.

It’s taken me two months, but I finally managed to impress Tim today. After lunch we drove the thirty minutes out to Stonington on Deer Isle to pick apples from a certain tree he’d heard about. The tree was beautiful, growing through the crevice between two massive rocks. It was located on a hill, so one rock you could easily walk onto and have access to one side of the tree. That’s the side of the tree Tim chose to work on. The rock on the other side of the tree was massive with a ten-foot, sheer vertical face. I was left to that side to collect the fallen apples from the ground and as many as I could reach with the ladder. No matter which way I position the ladder on the hillside, as soon as I started to ascend, it started to tip. I stood at the base of the rock, hands on my hips, head tilted to study it. I tried a couple of times to get a hand- and toe-hold, but my rubber boots couldn’t find purchase on the rock face. So I pulled off my boots, set them neatly aside, and scaled the rock.

When Tim came around to get another ladder from the truck, he stopped at the base of the rock and stared up at me. How did you get up there? he asked, bewildered.

I climbed, I informed him, stating what I thought was the obvious.

He glanced around and noticed my boots. Are you just in your socks?

Yep, I said calmly from ten feet up in the air.

Why?

Well, could you make it up this in Wellies?

I couldn’t climb that thing at all. What are you, a mountain goat? I think his mouth even hung a bit agape.

In a past life, I answered blithely and continued to gather apples.

26 September 2010

Early this afternoon as I was driving the cracked, twisted roads towards Blue Hill to go to the library, I looked over my shoulder to the east and out on the bay, ivory sails brimming with the salty wind, wooden bow cutting through the whitecaps, was a windjammer.

This, of course, is not the one I saw. I couldn't figure out how to work my camera without running off the road.

25 September 2010

I spent most of the day at the library taking a practice test for the GRE Literature in English subject test. It took me almost three hours to complete, and the two hundred thirty questions turned my brain to mush. I didn’t do too badly, at least for my first time taking a practice test, and I’ve a full two weeks more to study for it.

I finished the test just about the time the library closed, but I didn’t feel like going back to the dim solitude of my apartment, so I pulled a quilt from the back of my car and sprawled on the colorful patchwork beneath a birch tree on the library’s lawn with my almost-complete collection of Mary Stewart books—which, as my prized possession, I carry everywhere with me—and my laptop. When I wasn’t rereading (for only the hundredth or so time) my books or talking to my mother and sister on Skype, I merely lay on my back, the ground cool and damp through my agéd quilt, tracking the progression of a vaporish xebec across the endless sea-sky, a pale kraken lurking after it.

24 September 2010

I had the orchard to myself today, and I spent the morning and early afternoon digging up about one hundred fifty willow saplings, labeling about a hundred more half gallon jugs for the cider, and pulling up and cleaning the last of the daikon.

A heavy blanket of fog and mist has crept in from the sea this evening, turning the land into a hauntingly beautiful, eerily otherworldly vista.

23 September 2010

Today is the autumnal equinox, the first day of fall. The trees are just beginning to blaze with color, and each day the weather grows cooler.

I spent all morning picking apples at various places in the area. Have I mentioned that I think I’m allergic to apple trees? My arms are covered in a welt/rash that itches like mad, and the apple trees are the only thing I can think of that would have triggered a reaction. Of all the irony.

I spent the rest of the afternoon collecting a massive headache. I had to cut down Leslie’s two big flowerbeds today for the winter, and everything in there was so pungent it went straight to my head. Catnip, oregano, flox, and heaven only knows what else, but all of it stunk. By the time I’d cut it all down with my dull clippers and wrestled it into the compost piles, I was dizzy with the menagerie of smells.

Leslie invited me to go to Bar Harbor with her tonight to see a movie about the library at Alexandria, but she wanted me to drive. Even after I told her I had a resounding headache and my car is getting low on fuel, she still said, “Well, I’d really rather not have to drive my car.” I suppose I could have pitched a fit and refused, but my parents have raised me to be too polite, so I gave in. Then, when we got there, Leslie realized she had read the advertisement wrong and gotten the dates mixed up. So instead of watching a movie about Egypt, I had to sit through two hours of weird Italian familial drama.

It wasn’t worth my eight dollars or the fuel I burned, but it was nice, I’ll admit, to get out for the evening.

22 September 2010

We started selling cider and apples today. I set up the store and the signs by the road and then spent the morning planting more garlic, cutting down some of the plants in the garden, and helping Leslie make pesto. Then, I had the entire afternoon off. Oh, it was glorious!

21 September 2010

My fingers smell of basil and parsley this evening. I harvested both today, clipping the basil leaves and bundling the parsley. The first cider pressing was today, but I didn’t get to participate because I was busy packing apples and then working in the garden. Aside from the basil and parsley, I pulled up the tomato plant and planted garlic.

Did you know that there is a correct and an incorrect way to plant garlic? That you must place the clove a certain way in the ground or it won’t grow?

20 September 2010

I inadvertently aided in nature being “red in tooth and claw” today. I was washing out bushel baskets, and the plastic baskets are left outside all year when they’re not in use, so I’m always leery about what creatures might be in between them when I’m unstacking them. In one, there was a ratty bundle of tuft, and I thought idly to myself, Huh. That looks like a mouse’s nest. I turned it upside-down to dump out the debris, and out of one of the holes at the bottom of the basket popped a mouse’s head. I dropped the basket, shrieked, shouted a few things, jumped around, and then thought, Oh, no. There are probably babies in there. And there were. Five of them, no bigger than the first joint of your little finger, pink and hairless, squeaking weakly for their mother as she disappeared into the grass.

I did what I could. I put on gloves, picked them up off the cold ground and gently tucked them back into their nest, placed the nest in the grass along the fence where I’d last seen the mother and put the bushel basket over it to keep the cat from eating them. Tim said that the mother will probably come back and find them.

I don’t think she will.

19 September 2010

Much of my studying yesterday involved copying and pasting into a Word document the works/excerpts from works that I need to familiarize myself with for the test. That way, I can study them even when I’m at my Internet-less apartment.

Today, I made it through one hundred eighteen pages of the three hundred forty-two I copied and pasted before my brain said, No más! Sheesh.

18 September 2010

My former professor warned me that, when I take the GRE subject test, I’m going to walk away feeling like a “freaking moron.” Just studying for the test for four hours turns my head to mush. I feel like my brain is a sponge: I can only absorb so much before it is saturated and what it is unable assimilate is left to ooze and puddle around it.

Where is Mephistopheles when I need him?

17 September 2010

I’m afraid my blog has become rather boring and brief as late, and for that I apologize. I’m certain there’s nothing more tiresome than reading rote recitation of what I do each day, but for the life of me, I’ve had neither the energy nor the inspiration to write anything else. After getting up with the sun and physically laboring for eight hours or so, I have a hard time wrapping my mind and pen around the mysteries and revelations of life. I hope you’ll bear with me though. In a week and a half, I’ll be finished at the orchard (yes, I can hear the Hallelujah chorus trumpeting through my head), and I’ll move down the road to spend a week with my dear friend Sally. I’ll have nothing to do but sleep late, sit in companionable silence with another soul, read, write, and study for the GRE Literature in English subject test. Mayhap then I’ll be able to ponder and mull over deeper matters than apples, peaches, pears, and plums.

16 September 2010

I’ve been sleeping so much better now that the weather has cooled, though I may have to dig out the extra quilts I packed before too long.

I spent all morning hauling and stacking firewood. I had to fill a 5x5 foot space under Tim and Leslie’s stairs with firewood, and then, on their front porch, I had to fill an 8x5 foot space. Oh, how I ache this evening. I think this is the first task I’ve been assigned that’s actually made me sore. Tim and Leslie are set for the winter, though. And I saw enough spiders to give me nightmares for several lifetimes…

15 September 2010

My alarm clock went off far too early this morning, but I got up, fixed breakfast (toast with almond butter and a glass of chocolate milk), washed my face, brushed my teeth, studied (for the GRE Literature in English subject test) for about forty-five minutes, and then I just couldn’t keep my eyes open to read anymore. So I climbed back in bed, set my alarm clock for five minutes until eight, and dozed for another hour.

Today wasn’t too busy. I packed more peaches. I know, I thought I’d packed the last of them, but these were the very last to be taken from the tree. I’ve been assured that there are no more. There better not be. After that, I picked up apples that had fallen from the trees and put up more rodent guards. Tim and Leslie had to both go to the market today because they had to meet with someone there, so I got the majority of the afternoon off.

I spent the evening with the Dowe’s Acres girls. Yep, they have a name for themselves—and a song, which they sang for me with very little prompting. Margaret had a dinner party at her house, and though they wouldn’t hear of me bringing anything, Sally brought spinach-artichoke dip, Vivian made a fresh salad with balsamic vinagrette, Margaret made homemade pizza, and Diana brought a chocolate cake. We ate and talked and laughed (rather uproariously) for hours. It’s so good to have friends, and while I’m counting down the days until I come home (26!), I’ll miss them sorely.

14 September 2010

I had a better reason today for tears than bugs in my applesauce: an onion.

I woke this morning to a storm coming in off the sea. Torrential rain, thunder rattling my windows, lightening sizzling the gray sky. I spent the first few hours of the raging morning in the cold, low-ceiling basement in Tim and Leslie’s house putting labels on glass bottles for vinegar, on plastic jugs for cider—several hundred of them. I spent the rest of the day helping Leslie make peach chutney, and believe me, it is an all-day affair. The onion I chopped was the stoutest one I ever have. Tears were streaming down my face, my nose was running, and my eyes were stinging so badly that I had to squint to be able to see at all. It was excruciating, and I was laughing like a maniac. I suppose I’ve always been a bit of a masochist.

Peach chutney is basically anything you can find in your kitchen—and peaches—tossed into a pot. Peaches, onions, garlic, lemon zest, the lemon itself, apple, honey, freshly grated ginger, celery, mustard seed, coriander, turmeric, chili powder, peppercorn, raisins, a whole host of other spices, and I know there’s more, but I can’t remember. As I was standing over the burner carefully stirring the pot with a long wooden spoon, another storm gathering outside, I couldn’t help but mutter over my strange brew, “Double, double, toil and trouble.”

13 September 2010

I’ve started wearing a coat, socks, and a scarf in my apartment it’s been so nippy these past few days. The weather transitioned from summer to fall practically overnight.

I culled the leaves on the brussel sprouts, harvested the last of the Patty Pan squash and pulled up the prickly plants, washed crates—after about the fifth one, my fingers were red and stiff from the cold water and brisk wind, and though I’d had the presence of mind to put on my raincoat and Wellies, my jeans were soaked and plastered to my legs; I must have cleaned thirty or forty crates—that will be used to store jugs of apple cider, weeded the lettuce bed, cleaned out another bed overgrown with some kind of plant with thorns so fierce I felt their bite even through my gloves, and cut back the raspberry bushes.

Tonight, I went to pour a bowl of applesauce for dessert only to discover fruit flies in my applesauce. It was really too much. I have three more weeks here, and if I do not go mad—pulling out my hair, jumping up and down, screaming obscenities at the ceiling mad—before I make it home, it will be a sheer miracle.

11 September 2010

Today was the first day I’ve been here that I’ve not set an alarm clock, though it seems my body is getting used to rising early for I still woke long before I anticipated. Today was also one of the most relaxing days I’ve spent here: I didn’t do much, really. I studied for the GRE Literature in English subject test for about four hours at the library and then spent the rest of the time reading. It was glorious, though I’ve stayed up far later than I intended.

The weather is shifting here, and there is a slight, chill bite of approaching autumn in the air. I revel in it. I’ve added sweatpants and socks to my nightly ensemble for the first time this evening—or, rather, this morning.

10 September 2010

I slept a solid ten hours last night, and while I won’t say I woke up feeling refreshed necessarily, I didn’t spend the entire day yawning while I packed the last of the peaches, collected the crutches from beneath the pear trees, and put up more rodent guards.

For those of you who know me, you know that 1) I love Disney movies, and 2) I couldn’t sing my way out of a wet paper bag to save my life. I was here all by myself for most of the day, though, and it seemed as if no one were around for miles; so while I was walking through the orchard, the sky overcast, the rough sea visible in shining slivers through the woods, the wind chill and brisk, the gulls crying overhead, I burst into Colors of the Wind from Disney’s Pocahontas. I was gearing up for the chorus—And how high does the sycamore grow / If you cut it down, then you’ll never know / And you’ll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon—and I spun around, arms flung wide, breath of crisp air drawn to belt out the next line…and staggered to a halt, struck dumb, and for one mad moment convinced my voice had conjured a wolf from the very elements. Then the dubiety cleared and I realized that it was not a wolf that my words had called forth from the wild, but a husky sitting several feet from me, head tipped to one side as if he were trying to figure out what kind of creature had emitted that horrific cacophony of sound. Did you come to see what was dying? I asked him gleefully—a dog! Oh how I have missed canine companions since I’ve been here—and his tail thumped affirmatively. He was gorgeous with silvery black and white fur and those disquieting pale blue eyes that are so common to the breed. He had a collar on, and I discovered that his name was Balto. Not very original for a husky, but then, I have a chocolate Labrador named Cocoa, so I can't exactly judge anyone's lack of ingenuity. I was astonished to see on his tag an address in Massachusetts, but when I called the number listed I found out that his family is staying just down the road. He let me hug him one last time and then loped off into the woods towards the sound of his people’s voices calling for him. I was sad to see him go.

9 September 2010

I’ve felt like falling asleep on my feet all day long. I dragged myself through packing sixteen crates of peaches and felt rather dazed while manning the farmers’ market by myself this afternoon. Of course, it didn’t help that the market was dead and it was raining.

I fixed dinner, but I’m too tired to eat what I prepared…

8 September 2010

A fog rolled in off the bay overnight, and the weather remained indecisive throughout the day while I collected fallen apples, made a delivery of peaches, weeded and put up wire rodent guards around the trunks of the apple trees, and worked the farmers’ market in Blue Hill.

This evening, Sally had a bunch of us over for dessert and games. After a slice of blueberry cream pie and four rounds of Uno, I was ready to call it quits at nine-thirty and head back to my apartment to get ready for bed. They, however, were just getting started. The game of Yahtzee lasted two hours. I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time, but by midnight, I had been up for eighteen hours and was already dreading my alarm clock in the morning and another nine-hour day of work. I was the youngest of the six women present by four decades, but they had more energy by far.

7 September 2010

For anyone concerned with my potential state of homelessness, worry no more. I spoke with Sally—a sixty-eight year old Vermonter, who’s been coming here to her family’s cottage by the sea every summer for sixty-five years—and she said she would be more than happy to have me stay with her for that week. I have to say, I’m relieved. While staying at the women’s shelter would be an enlightening experience, it would have been—as my best friend pointed out—“kind of the same enlightment you’ve been getting these past few months.” Good point.

Today was fairly uneventful, at least compared with yesterday. I spent the morning packing peaches. It’s not that I never want to see another peach again; it’s just that I don’t want to sort, pack, and weigh another peach again. Let me do some quick math… Okay, this is just an estimate, but since I’ve been here, I’ve sorted, packed, and weighed at least four thousand pounds of peaches. At least. Holy guacamole.

After lunch, I went through the orchard, weeded the area around the trunks of the apple trees, and then wrapped the wire rodent guard around the base. I’ve been assigned the task for the entire orchard. I finished about ten out of eighty or so today, and then Tim and I drove out to Naskaeg Point and picked crabapples for the next two hours.

One of the things I’ve noticed since I’ve been here is just how much physically stronger I’ve become, especially in my arms. When I first got here and had a hard time lifting things, it irritated me that Tim just said, Come on, you can lift that, and stood there watching me struggle. Aggravated, I would think to myself, Look, I know I like to claim to be a liberated, modern woman, but you could show a little common courtesy and carry this darn thing for me before it rips my arms out of socket. But now as I lift heavy loads with much more ease than I did six weeks ago, I think, triumphantly, Haha!

6 September 2010

The air was crisp and the wind smelled of fall today as I harvested all of the winter squash, pulled up the plants and hauled them to the compost, washed each squash and then dipped them in a diluted Clorox solution, put wire fencing around the trunk of each of the eighty saplings to keep the rodents from eating gnawing on the trees in the winter, and stripped four trees in Sedgwick—a nearby town—of their apples.

I’m going to be coming home early: a month from today, actually. Dad’s flying up on the sixth of October to ride back with me. We’re going to stop at Cornell and the University of Virginia on the way back to tour the schools and get more information about their PhD programs in literature. I found out today, though, that I have to be out of my apartment by the twenty-ninth of this month. There’s a couple from Vermont coming to take my place for the rest of the harvest, and they arrive on the second of October. Apparently, Tim and Leslie decided over the weekend that I needed to be out by that Wednesday in order for them to get the apartment cleaned and set up for the incoming couple before they arrive on that Saturday. I have three weeks to figure out what to do for that week that I’m left homeless. I’ve noted that there’s a women’s shelter in Ellsworth—a few towns over—and I’m only half-joking when I say it. I can’t exactly afford a hotel or anything on sixty dollars a week. I plan on asking Sally and Margaret if they would mind if I stayed with them, and hopefully that will work out.

Today when Tim and I got back from picking apples, I asked if I could have one of the butternut squashes that I’d harvested today. He told me of course, I could have my pick. I chose one out of the ten or so. It wasn’t the largest, by far, but it was a good-sized squash. I knew I would eat the entire thing, because butternut squash is my favorite squash. As I made my way back to my apartment, though, I heard Tim clear his throat. Uh, Ashlee, he said, I’d like for you to get a different one. Leslie and I will want to have that one. A little disbelieving—he had said I could have my pick—I made my way back over to the pile, put the one I’d selected back, and reached for a medium-sized squash. Tim cleared his throat again from behind me, so I stepped back and turned to him. Tell you what, I said, not bothering to keep the snarkiness from lacing my voice, why don’t you pick me out a squash that you don’t mind if I eat? He stepped around me, perused them, picked out the smallest butternut squash there was, and offered it to me. I looked at it, looked at him, looked at the pile of squash, looked at him, took the proffered vegetable, said Well, thanks, and then turned around and walked away. Next time, I’ll just go to the grocery store.

5 September 2010

As autumn steadily approaches, the summer people—rusticators, as they were once called—are packing up their cottages and making the odyssey back home. The roads are beginning to have less traffic on them; store hours are changing; shops are closing down and being boarded up. There are two seasons of life and work here: summer and winter. I’ve come here during a time of transition from one way of life to another, and it is fascinating to watch the slow metamorphosis in these tiny peninsula villages.

I went to the Blue Hill County Fair with Sally and Vivian tonight. While they went to the craft show, I made my way to the other side of the fairgrounds to the livestock arenas to pet sheep and goats and draft horses and watch an oxen pull. Actually, I didn’t so much watch the competition as I wandered around petting the oxen and talking with their owners. I spent most of the time petting one pair in particular—Spike and Murdock. The animals are so massive and powerful, yet so sweetly docile. I spoke with the owner for some time and asked a ton of questions. One thing I asked him was what he did with them once they were too old to work. Naïvely, I asked if he put them out to pasture and let them enjoy the wildflowers and the shade for the rest of their lives. He said, I ship them off for beef. Appalled, I said, You mean after twenty-five to thirty years of grueling labor—never complaining, always faithfully following your every command—you have them turned into hamburgers? He had the grace to look slightly ashamed, but replied, Waste of money elsewise. I tried to hug Murdock, but my arms wouldn’t make it all the way around his burly neck. That’s the most horrific thing I’ve ever heard of, I informed his owner.

I’ve decided that once I’m truly out on my own and making enough money to easily support myself and my Irish Wolfhound, I’m going to have an oxen retirement center where those gentle beasts can ruminate over the flowers and bask in the shade for the rest of their years on earth.

4 September 2010

After I checked out of the hotel this morning, I spent several hours at the bookstore—my favorite pastime, which I’ve missed sorely since I’ve been here. I wish I could have stayed there for hours longer, but by three o’clock, I came to grips with the fact that I couldn’t stall any longer and needed to leave civilization and return to my lonely peninsula. I stopped by Olive Garden and treated myself to a soda, salad, breadsticks, and zeppoli, and then I drove the hour and a half back to my apartment.

I spent the evening unpacking, listening to music, starting two movies but turning both off, flipping through my GRE Literature in English Subject Test study book to discern what horrors await me, and finally resorting to cleaning.

3 September 2010

I packed three hundred twenty pounds of peaches today, and then I loaded my car with an overnight bag, Hermione, and my collection of Mary Stewart books and drove up to Bangor. The hurricane is supposed to churn its way past us overnight. By the time it reaches Maine, it is only supposed to be a category one storm, but since I’m right on the coast and in the middle of the woods, my parents got me a hotel room for the night—they couldn’t live with the guilt if a tree were to crash through my roof and join me in bed during the night.

I have to say, I’ve never been so thankful for a hurricane. I’m relishing this respite. I ran on the treadmill, took a sinfully long shower, marveled over the toilet (A toilet! Can you imagine? Not a bucket, a real toilet), strolled through the mall reveling in the Friday evening press of people, went to a Borders to assuage my bibliomania, video chatted with my family and best friend via Skype, washed and dried two loads of laundry, and read the book I purchased at the bookstore.

The lights are bright, my bed king-sized and firm, the Internet free, the air conditioner set to its coldest setting, the TV turned off but present if I wanted to indulge in the Discovery channel, the signal on my cell phone full, the toilet just around the corner, and I am in the midst of hundreds of sleeping travelers. Thank you, Earl, Mum, and Dad. I’m in heaven.

2 September 2010

After packing peaches all day for the market tomorrow (during which I’ll be packing yet more peaches for the market on Saturday), I worked the market this afternoon in Brooklin alone. I must say, I quite enjoyed it and spent the majority of the time talking with Bob, Courtney, and Scott—fellow farmers. The entire atmosphere felt much more relaxed.

I bought tomatoes from Courtney today. He gave me two yesterday when I mentioned how much I loved them, so I got a pound from him today. They’re really some of the best tomatoes I’ve had in a long time, but Tim didn’t approve of me purchasing them from Courtney, because he isn’t strictly organic. Tim went on and on about how Courtney grew them in a greenhouse (God forbid!) and sprayed them for bugs (the horror, the horror), etc. Finally, I interrupted his tirade and informed him that I didn’t really care. You will. You’ll regret it one day, he barked. No, I said, after mulling over it for a moment. No, I really won’t. I can think of a lot more things to regret in life than the consumption of a great tomato, organic or otherwise. He wasn’t really sure what to say to that.

1 September 2010

The asparagus almost drove me mad today. The vegetable has already been harvested, but a farmer will leave behind several crowns and what’s left is allowed to grow into tall stalks with fern-like tufts at the top. The overgrown vegetable, to me, resembles papyrus. I was to weed the asparagus patch today—after I watered various plants, stripped three apple trees of their fruit, and weeded several vegetable beds—paying careful attention to the invasive dandelions especially. I was even given a tool to pull up the dandelions: a long, straight metal rod with a flat, fork-like end that you drive down into the soil alongside the dandelion’s roots and use to work the weed out of the ground. I lasted for one row. It wasn’t the scorching noon sun overhead or the still air or the stubborn weed (I was actually quite good with the dandelion-remover tool). It was the incessant, feathery brush of the asparagus’ fronds against my skin—it made me feel as if things were crawling over my flesh, no matter how much I swatted away the drooping plants. By the end of one long row, I was dizzy and had this driving urge to leap to my feet, claw at my skin, and scream at the top of my lungs over and over again. Thankfully, I was able to resist such impulses, but I refused to finish weeding the asparagus bed. Instead, I moved to the strawberry patch.

When Tim found me an hour later meticulously weeding the strawberries and asked about the asparagus, I explained to him my predicament. He just looked at me as if I were an idiot—or in need of a straight jacket. But there wasn’t anything crawling on you, he pointed out obtusely, so you’re just going to have to get used to it. I refused stubbornly, albeit silently. He had the same reaction when I told him I was uncomfortable climbing the rickety A-frame ladders to pick fruit from the tops of the trees. I’m not known for my gracefulness or coordination. His response: Well, stay up there until you get comfortable. I wanted to fall off the stupid contraption just to prove my point and say I told you so.

The last few days have been uncharacteristically warm for this time of year in Maine—upper eighties and into the nineties. And since my apartment is on the second floor and has no air conditioner, it’s been miserably hot here. This is my own private, sweltering doldrum. I can understand why the ancient mariner shot the albatross.

Where are those blustering nor’easters? Those fearsome blizzards? I mean, the weather was one of my top reasons for moving to New England…

31 August 2010

Peach season is dwindling to an end, and I’m told that I’ll pick the first apples off of the trees tomorrow. Honestly, I cannot say that I have much energy left for apple season. Eight long hours of hard physical labor leave me exhausted, and a deep fatigue is settling into my bones as the grueling days repeat themselves. What must it be like for those who must labor so day in and day out, year after year, until they’ve ground away their youth and wearied themselves into old age? They are much stronger men and women than I, that is certain.

Am I truly so naïve to wish for a life that I enjoy? To hope for a career that I look forward to every day, or at least one that I don’t hate? To pray that not all the adventures I long for will pass me by and remain unrealized? Or is life really just a miserable plod of surviving day to day? I cannot think of anything more depressing than the latter, and if that is the course that all of our lives must take, someone direct me to the cyanide. Can life ever be what we make it, or are we all destined to look back over our years and view the scattered refuse of our tattered hopes and dreams with regret and sorrow? But surely, surely we were put here on earth for more than that.

It struck me today—as I was pruning saplings, weeding for hours, picking apples, watering the strawberries, onions, celery, and leaks, and packing peaches—that the reason this past month has been so difficult is not the isolation or the demanding, back-breaking work. The reason it has been so laborious is because I thought I would love both.