Back when I was a young girl and teenager, I spent most of July and August out in the blueberry fields, hand picking fruit. Or in the packing shed, watching berries spill down a conveyor belt, attempting to perform quality control. Rainy weekdays were blessings: days we couldn't work on the farm, and days that we packed with everything good and fun and non-agricultural related. Trips to the library to check out towering stacks of books. Back-to-School clothes shopping at Rogers Department Store in Grand Rapids. Days spent reading or baking cookies.
Rainy August weekdays like today are perfect days to fill with syllabus planning, and brownie baking, and closet cleaning, and vacuuming, a mix of intellectual and domestic work rather than play. Days to work ahead so that when the sunshine returns I can linger outside under the dappled light. Days to work ahead so that when I go back to school I have a handle on the weeks unfolding.
(although i just may need to do a little preliminary online back-to-school clothes cyber window shopping:)
Excellent post that brought a flood of memories of early years. Tho producing our food has been greatly mechanized the laborious tasks you mention of harvest and preparation for market were the same for many other types of food.
ReplyDeleteIn east central Wisconsin there were no blueberry crops but the labor to tend plants and manually harvest crops such as beans and cucumbers occupied much of the summer for young people, including my own. All of that needed to be done after the cows were milked morning and evening. The first fall frost and school bells were most often a welcome change.
Thanks again for a well written and memory stirring post.