Mmmmmmmmmm... Cherries

Short Version:
We stay with friends, learn about jealous fruits and other things, and eat delicious foods

Long Version:
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When we reached the vehicles at the bottom of the rain-soaked hike down the mountain from the Conrad Kain hut in the Bugaboos, cheery orchardists* Dave and Laura (Hi Dave and Laura!) told us to come and stay if we were in their part of the world at any point.

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Salmon Arm is not far from the Okanagan region where they live, so we dropped them a line and asked them if the hot water offer still stood.

And then, when they said yes, we did a little dance, and sang a little song, and spent the drive thither dreaming of clean, and warm, and not-so-stinky.

In retrospect, I'm not entirely sure what I'd been expecting from the house amidst the family-owned-and-operated cheery orchard; maybe a wee hand-built cottage, with a rickety tractor and a collapsible, portable stall for use at the various Farmer's Markets in the region.

What we found was rather different; a big but bigger-than-it-looked beautiful modern home, full of both art and life and with chains for drains, incredible lake views, and seriously impressive design smarts; a significant expanse of cheery trees on the home block, with other leasehold blocks both near- and not-so-nearby; and a really impressive production environment, through which we were fortunate enough to be guided by both Dave and his Production Manager, Shaun. If we'd arrived a few weeks earlier we'd certainly not have gotten near either of them, as harvest was in full swing; this season they packed and distributed 1400 tons of cherries to markets all over the world, and if the ones we tasted were anything to go by it's easy to see why they're able to command the premium market to the extent that they do. Dave's knowledge of the operation was both deep and wide, and hugely impressive; the layer-upon-layer of impactful elements and their sometimes-surprising interconnectedness were really quite amazing. As were the apples they grow as a hobby - we were quite astounded by their deliciousness.

We spent two nights there in the end, eating a lot of delicious Happy Meats and learning a lot about cherry and apple production; about the Okanagan region; about Canadian life and politics and history. We also learned two new Scrabble variants, drank cherry port, and listened to coyotes airing their opinions outside in the night-time. Apparently deer occasionally get trapped in the orchard, the way a bird will sometimes blinder into a room and not be able to find their way out again. Eventually the coyotes run them down and ingest them vigorously. At harvest time they also eat windfall cherries.

Mmmmmm, cherries.







* = Each time I write or type the word cherry, there's a good chance it's going to come out cheery. I've learned not to fight it.