Lunch in Paris

The coolers are absolutely stuffed full of apples, both the big one, and the garage. Two years ago, Farmer Bill insulated the garage walls & ceiling and installed an old air-conditioning unit that our friend Robin had laying about, and turned the garage into a temporary cooler for overflow supply. [Which means my car has to stay outdoors until the apple supply goes down far enough for everything to fit into the big cooler.]  Hundreds and hundreds of bushels of Honeycrisp, Regent, Keepsake & Honeygold.

Selling apples has gone well overall.  Most of the farmers' markets have been good to excellent this year; one of our local supermarkets has been taking a regular supply of several varieties; a produce auction in Iowa gets a delivery 3 days a week; and Twin Cities Local Food places a small order every week.  A few other sales possibilities have come up, and one of them is why Farmer Bill owes me Lunch in Paris.

Shortly after the Field Day, our apple instructor/consultant sent Farmer Bill an email.  There's a corn maze on the northern edge of the Twin Cities, run by a man who also raises a few strawberries.  He was thinking about adding apples to his concessions & wanted to try it.  Would Farmer Bill be interested?  Farmer Bill is pretty much always willing to try something new, so of course he was interested.  The next question is how to staff it.  Our current staff were pretty well booked for markets on the Saturday (and I was scheduled at my paid employment).  However, I wasn't scheduled to work the Sunday.  As I was driving home one evening from work, Farmer Bill called. That's not unusual, we often check in with each other at that time.  But when he told me to think of something really nice that he could do for me, I got suspicious.  When I got home, we did whatever farm things needed to be done, had supper, and the moment had come.  What would I have to do to earn this 'something really nice'?  Take a load of apples up to the corn maze on Sunday.  The maze is open from 10 a.m.-6 p.m.  I'd need to be there between 9 & 9:30 to get set up.  The drive is about 90 minutes or so, depending on traffic.  So up I got at 6:30 on Sunday morning, made coffee & had a quick breakfast, went out & loaded 800 lbs of apples into the van, and started north.  I found the proprietor of the maze, we found a place for me to set up, I sold apples until 6:00, then I packed up and drove back to the farm. I got back about 8:30 or so & unloaded the van; it was your basic 14-hour work day.  On my day off.

So for that Farmer Bill owes me lunch in Paris.

This Saturday is my birthday.  I was scheduled to work at the aforementioned paid employment. But being a real job, they also give me paid time off and I had asked for the day off a couple of months ago.  Early this week Farmer Bill mentions that two of his regular staff are taking Saturday off (not paid time off!), and what market would I be willing to attend?  I chose downtown, because we rarely do the downtown market solo, so I know I will be able to do a toilet run when I need to, there are good things to eat and drink: Hmong egg rolls, breakfast bagels, good coffee, pastries, etc.  I can buy a few locally grown vegetables before they disappear for the year and spend the morning with Farmer Bill.  When a co-worker asked what I was doing on my birthday and I told her, she said I should definitely hold out for a whole Weekend in Paris.

Turns out it was fortuitous that I chose to go downtown with Farmer Bill.  The son and d-i-l are doing a flying trip into the Twin Cities for a friend's wedding on Sunday.  They get in late Saturday morning and will hop a bus over to the market, hang out with us until the market ends, and then we'll all go out to brunch (which we'll make Farmer Bill buy).  If I had opted to go to another market by myself, it would have been much more difficult to organize seeing them.

For now, I'll hold Farmer Bill to Lunch in Paris, although really, he probably owes me more like a Week in Paris for all the markets I've gone to, strawberries, melons, sweet corn, and apples  I've picked, and hours I've put in weeding, pruning, mowing, managing the paperwork, doing supply and repair runs, and so much more over the past 10 years. When he's finally ready to really retire, we can talk about how long we'll stay in Paris...