- 5th
- January
- 2011
small miracles
Horticulture is a tricky business. I’ve never been one to show any interest in our green friends and how they grow, but this cherry picking gig has forced me to take note. For instance, plants need water to grow, right? Everyone knows that drought is bad news; and therefore rain should always be welcomed with open arms.
Wrong, my friends and especially wrong when it comes to cherries. Picture a balloon filled with juice and mentally start filling that balloon up with water. As you pour in the water, the juice becomes diluted, and the balloon starts to swell. If the balloon fills with too much water, it pops. This is similar to what happens to ripe cherries when there is a particularly wet summer – like the one we’re experiencing in Central Otago right now. Every week since Christmas we’ve had at least one day per week of heavy rain. Not only does this make work damp and uncomfortable, but it totally destroys the ripe cherries. When looking up at a tree, the fruit looks beautifully ripe, but when I actually get up my ladder and take a closer look at the fruit, it’s all zombie cherries. Circular rings, the beginning of splits, form around the stem. Sometimes you can find decent cherries within a clump, yet other times, you can peel away the useless fruit only to find the cherries at the center are covered in blue and white mold. Even a perfect cherry from the top, may prove otherwise once you turn it upside-down. Huge splits on the base of the fruit can be quite revoltingly fascinating, but are totally worthless for export, thus worthless to me.
My typical rainy day begins with my alarm at 4:55 am. I can hear the rain pinging off the roof, so I wait an extra 5 minutes until 5 when my phone goes off with a message from my supervisor: No work til latter on. I’ll txt. I lay in bed for a while, listening to the rain lessening, and finally decide to get up when I receive a text saying we’ll begin work at 7. We start picking, and almost immediately the rain begins again. The boss has fires up the helicopter at least 4 times this morning as soon as the rain lets up, but as soon as he starts buzzing the trees to dry them off, the clouds open up and pour down on us again. Finally at 10, our supervisor calls it quits. We can go home, but can’t go very far. If the rain ever stops, we’ll be back out on our ladders again.
After so many days of working in wet clothes, with leaves and tree bits clinging to my hands and in between my fingers, I’ve gotten to the point where I can ignore the wet. I just concentrate on thinking, as I discriminate between the good and the rot: It could be worse; at least it’s not snow…
