I mixed flapjack mixes in the measuring room and organized orders for Jess and Bruce's trip to Helena. Western Trails doesn't have a distributor, this means that we rely solely on people volunteering to drop off our products around the state whenever they go west. For five years it has worked because, as I'm learning more and more everyday, Montana is like a small town despite its size. Anyway, Shirley (our elderly volunteer paid by a federal program) and I ground flour and measured out rolled barley flakes and beans and flax seed, sealed bags and stamped sell by dates. Shirley is a wonderful woman, mother of 5, great grandmother of 2, her husband died of asthma in North Dakota 15 years ago - and she is so adorable and funny, really funny - anyway, Jess and I have been enjoying her quite a bit recently.
Today we got up early and picked raspberries at Sue Price's in Savage (so many) and then back in Glendive I mixed bags of rolled barley and flax seed with Shirley (we wear hairnets, labcoats and rubber gloves, it's great). Then Alvin called me to come down to his farm for our tractor driving lesson/onion pulling fest and I told him I had all these raspberries but didn't know what to do with them (seriously so many...jam? pie? wine?). When I got to Alvin's, he had prepared two pie crusts for his wife Dena's Raspbery Cheesecake Cream pie...ohhhhmaannnn. The rest of the afternoon went as follows:
Tractor lesson. (I drove a combination automatic/standard John Deere around Alvin's field, down shifted, up shifted reversed! The whole deal! Alvin is a great teacher and LOVES explaining things in painstaking but necessary detail, very patient and thorough in the way that so many farmers are...detail detail detail - encouraging, safe)
Raspberry mashing.
Onion de-weeding.
Irrigation channel fixing.
Pie making, cream cheese mixing, pie filling
Sheep herding, beer drinking, shit shooting
Bed Sleeping.
No comments:
Post a Comment