A Bun Dance

After spending a month picking strawberries near Shepparton, the Australian 'fruitbowl' town in the Victorian plains, I couldn't bear to smell, let alone eat another strawberry for several years. I still have the muscle memory of being hunched over, sitting awkwardly on an upturned bucket for up to ten hours a day, the heat in the open field almost unbearable. Apart from our poverty, the only thing that kept us going was the anticipation of a cooling swim in an irrigation canal at the end of the day - until somebody mentioned water snakes.

Later, we discovered that picking Packham's pears paid prettier. The shade of the trees was welcome too, but you had to be careful that the weight of the pears in the canvas sack around your shoulder didn't cause you to plummet from the top of a ladder.

I've yet to grow pears. Perhaps it's the heriditary worry about Codling moths. That and a lack of space. There's quite a bit of that in Victoria.