The day started off by learning something very useful: almonds are not, in fact, nuts, rather they are fruits. Which goes to show how much research we did before coming here. We will not, however, be changing the name of our blog to Jack and Luke Go Fruity, for we do not want to give the wrong impression as to the nature of our experiences.
I rose first today and spent the morning gathering almonds off some of the smaller trees by hand. After a little rest and lunch, Jack joined me, and we started going after some of the bigger trees. We would lay down the nets and whack the branches with the poles, and then go about collecting the fallen almonds. With the bigger trees, one of us would climb up to reach the higher almonds. It is monotonous work, but it can be very rewarding, especially when you can get close to filling up an entire sack from one tree. Here on the farm, that passes as Grade A excitement. The repetitive nature of the work does make for pretty good meditative time, and, in truth, I was able to do a good deal of personal reflection in the several hours I was out among the trees.
We were joined at intervals by various pooches and by Tara, and we knocked off around 6 o'clock. At that point we went up to Tara's neighbor's house, whom we had met last night. Their names are Mark, from England, and Albánia, from the Dominican Republic. They are very nice and they have two adorable sons, 7 year-old Fabian and 6 year-old Javier. We hung out with Mark for a bit, talked music and had a couple of brews. Afterwards we came back to the house, its about a ten minute walk, and ate a delicious dinner. That pretty much concluded our day, now we're just chilling, doing a bit of reading and emailing. We hope to get some pictures up soon, but Jack's computer has been a bit shaky. Hope everything is well back stateside. My love to all y'all
luke
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