CSotD: Apple time below the line
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Sarah Laing, whose personal blog has been featured here, has now started "44 ways of looking at an apple," which presents small, well-crafted cartoons illustrating small moments involving, yes, apples. It is a lovely venture.
Having spent a little more than a dozen years in apple country myself, I've got nothing against her stated goal: "I’m viewing it as an exercise in visual poetry, even if it has an ulterior motive of trying to make English people eat more braeburns."
I think everyone should eat more apples, and I'm not particularly conflicted by my loyalty to Champlain Valley apples versus Sarah's New Zealand apples because, frankly, and despite all the technology that goes into these things, apple season here is relatively short: A MacIntosh isn't really worth a damn once it goes into storage.
The kiwis have figured out what apples travel well, and they put apples on store shelves that are crisp, juicy and not in conflict with the local product because of that whole summer/winter thing the hemispheres do.
I'm going to be interested in any cultural nuances she brings up, as well as any practical differences between apples there and apples here. For example, the cartoon cited above is tagged as "Hungarian folk songs" and she says, in the accompanying note, that it is a song they sang in school. I've never heard it, but now I'm curious. On the other hand, some of the other entries in the blog seem very, very familiar to me.
I enjoyed covering the apple industry in my reporting days. On the one hand, our farmers were shipping apples overseas in competition with the state of Washington, and this is big business. On the other hand, though maintaining an orchard is technically a monoculture, there is a mom-and-pop aspect to the business that gives it a small-town Timmy-and-Lassie-on-the-farm atmosphere.
Even the "big agriculture" aspects remain personal. There was a time when the locals turned out to pick apples, and I've come across old photographs of students from Plattsburgh Normal School out in the orchards. It never, I think, rose to the level of the potato harvest in Maine, where school was dismissed for the event, but it was, nonetheless, something that involved local folks, back when local folks did things like that.
Those days are in the past, but I did a couple of stories on the Jamaicans who come to pick apples each fall, and even that has a local flavor to it. (I don't know how they get the apples off the trees and into the crates in New Zealand, but perhaps Sarah will feature it on her blog. Hint, hint.) The Jamaicans are part of a process which requires farmers to (A) advertise for local pickers first and then (B) provide decent pay and living conditions for the "guest workers" who come once the locals have not applied. These workers are signed up through a government program that has been much criticized but, at least in the Champlain Valley, seems to work out pretty well.
Obviously, some guys will sign up to be pickers and only last a year. But the ones who like the work come back year after year to the same orchards, and the real veterans become almost family members. I ran into cases where the pickers and farmers exchange Christmas cards and one case where a farmer and his wife took a vacation to Jamaica and dropped by to visit with some of their long-time pickers and meet their families.
Granted, that's not the average situation, but the Jamaicans truly are welcomed each fall, especially by local merchants, since they often make purchases to send home. The pickers are middleclass in Jamaica. One fellow's wife was a school teacher, and, the year I met him, he was buying a hot water heater for his daughter, a hair dresser. It would be cheaper to buy it here and ship it home, he explained, than to purchase it there when he returned.
Apple growers cherish and trade on this small-town atmosphere, with farm stands that branch out into miniDisneylands, not only offering cider donuts and apple-themed kitsch souvenirs, but hay rides and school outings. For my granddaughters, a trip to the orchard in the fall is as much a part of their lives as going to the Nutcracker at Christmas or, for that matter, to the sugarbush in spring.
So I'm going to be interested in this venture, as much for her beautiful artwork and writing as for whatever I glean of the connections between apples there and apples here.
At the moment, there are nine postings, which were put up in five days, a pace I hardly expect her to maintain, and that's a good thing, because they are small, delicate pieces and you can probably read all nine in about five minutes, but you really shouldn't.
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