If I eat another one I’ll burst…….
I have been picking strawberries for about five hours now and the novelty of the delicate red fruits is beginning to wear off. I am fourteen and a group of four friends and I have cycled fifteen miles to a strawberry farm to make a bit of money as a rather short lived summer job (we didn’t have turf to get in) …I’m not doing very well though, as I have only managed to collect a punnet to hand in, in exchange for hard cash. The rest of the fruit is either in my stomach or on my trousers.
On a good day….
To give you an idea of what can be achieved at these farms; on a good day you could collect about fifty punnets and get enough money to spend on luxuries for the rest of the week. Our plan was to get the wages and then head on to the Wrangler Factory on the way home and buy a pair of jeans each. However, I have nothing to show for my labour other than a sore tummy, having fallen foul of the temptation of free eats. The rest of the lads are in the same boat.
We’ve had enough, in more ways than one, so we walk on the gaps in between the plants down the hill to the woman who is sitting behind a big wooden table at the entrance. I hand over the single punnet to the woman, as do my friends. These are met with a sour look of irritation and a mumble under her breath about not being able to get reliable staff anymore. It’s our first and last day at the strawberry farm as she tells us not to bother coming back tomorrow. That suits us….I don’t want to look at another strawberry until next year anyway.
The woman looks at the strawberries which were not the best quality and with barely disguised disgust, informs us that they were hardly representative of the farm so we may as well keep them. She hands over no money. We beat a hasty retreat, jumping on our bikes and heading off into the sunset down the road. As we were fed up to the eyes with strawberries the only thing left to do was to use the ones we had just been given as projectiles at any wall that was white enough to show the splattered fruit in all it’s glory, the occasional passer by got a taste too. It was very wasteful and irresponsible, but immense fun all the same.
Just a bit seedy…
I do still like strawberries though, even after the excesses of my youth and have them in the garden. We celebrated one year in our house this week and even though the strawberry plants were uprooted last year and re-planted, they have given us a good crop. We even have the wild alpine type hiding under the shrubs, which are sweet and juicy but a bit seedy, and some more of them growing from seed that won’t fruit this year. I have seen a lot of strawberries over the years but my lad has just come in with the biggest one I have ever seen today….It’s a whopper, and I must say probably one of the ugliest strawberries I have seen in my life….
Who are you calling ugly?
What exactly makes a fruit or vegetable ugly? There are gourds actually called Ugly Fruit, but they are so colourful that they are used as table ornaments. Occasionally we get an odd looking carrot or a potato that looks like baboons bottom, but none of those are what we would call ugly. Odd perhaps, but not ugly.
The factor that probably makes us think that certain fruit and veg are ugly is when we humanise them and give them personalities as we see faces. It’s our nature to find human form in things. My brother used to show me faces in the wood grain on the wardrobes in our bedroom at night, then scare me with stories of blood and gore. This would then result in me having to pay him to sleep securely in his bed for the price of my weekly pocket money…I had nothing to spend for years.
This strawberry that I am on about has the angriest grimaces on its face and gave me the impression it’s looking for a fight. It didn’t put up much resistance though…it was chopped up and drowned in orange jelly then put in the fridge ready for teatime.
If it had arms and legs it would have fought back I’m sure.
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