Am I allowed to change my mind?

This is what I wondered this morning as I dreamed about office jobs and how you always get to enjoy rain and snow storms through windows, head covered by a ceiling, legs tucked under the warmth of a desk.

Here is a list of the jobs I have for the month of September:

1. Cone pickin' (no further explanation at this time: this warrants its own post) - 3 days a week

2. Vegetable packing for restaurants and CSA boxes - 2 nights a week

3. Farm work  - here and there

There are three farmers running gardens on the farm where I live right now, and with two other farmers who have separate pieces of land, they form Saanich Organics. Since my arrival I have been jumping in to work for various farmers when they need a few hours of extra help. Hence farm work here and there. 

On Sunday, Lisa asked if I could work for her on Monday morning, and I accepted enthusiastically, still keen to get a bit more organic farming experience under my belt. When I woke up Monday morning, it was wet and cold. Mentally unprepared to dress myself for such weather, I himmed and hawed and stumbled around until I found long johns to wear under my usual farm jeans and shirt. As I zipped up my raincoat I thought about my legs. Surely it wasn't so cold and wet that I needed my rain pants. Josh had sold the west coast as being A. warmer than Ontario and B. drier than everywhere on the west coast because Saanich is in a "dry zone" and C. He had left the house 30 minutes earlier in shorts. I threw on my thick (cotton) overalls for extra warmth but figured that I'd be stripping them off soon enough. 

I walked down to meet Lisa at "LJ" - her patch of the farm - and she handed me four flats to pick strawberries. The rain was coming down pretty hard now and the wind was picking up. I smiled, squatted and assumed strawberry-picking position: knees on the ground, bum on boots, bare hands riffling through plants. Farming in foul weather couldn't be too bad. Within two minutes, the rain soaked through to my underwear and within three minutes I was chilled to the bone. There would be no stripping. And I still had 3.9 flats to fill.

I picked as fast as I could, reasoning that if I could get a good pace going, I might warm up. I shivered through every pint, and when I told Lisa I had finished, I secretly hoped that she would tell me that was enough for the day and I could go home. This didn't happen. "Why don't you help me harvest salad mix?" Lisa suggested, not looking up to see my blue lips. I grabbed a container and told myself to suck it up. I could last a little longer. "How much are we harvesting?" I ask, hoping for a nice easy number, like 1 pound. Or half a pound. "12 pounds!". Uh oh. I stuck it out for another 20 minutes and finally I admitted to Lisa (who despite not living on the farm arrived well-prepared, in full rain gear) that I was frozen and needed to change into something warmer and drier. 

The three minute walk up to the house has never felt longer, and the entire time I wondered whether I could handle this whole farming thing when it wasn't sunny and 28 degrees. And then came sweet sweet relief. I guess that in the end I did get to strip. I peeled off every last wet layer in the car port and dashed into the house knowing exactly what to put on: rain pants. 

Handy Woman To-Be

I arrived on Vancouver Island on Tuesday afternoon and my first order of business was to get myself over to Camosun College. After several confusing emails back and forth and an application sent a month ago without response, I wanted to find out whether I had been admitted to their Trades Exploration Program for women. Josh, who had been acting as my fall-in-Victoria employment agent was unimpressed with my late-summer change of plans. Though he had already lined up a patchwork of farm jobs for me, I instructed him to hold off as I might now be going to school. It felt a bit like I was biting the hand that was feeding me, but hey, I didn't find out about this program until August and I couldn't pass up the opportunity: 11 weeks of training in welding, plumbing, carpentry, electric, automotive, a forklift licence (hello!) and tuition/equipment covered by the BC government. No obvious agricultural application, it's true, but I have yet to visit a farm that doesn't have some sort of homemade building structure. Plus, what city girl doesn't want to have the skills to unplug a distressed friend's toilet?

Wednesday afternoon Josh and I set off for Camosun by bicycle. This was my first chance to practise my three-day-a-week ride to school should I get in to the program. If Josh was still frustrated with the ambiguity my school application had thrown into my fall schedule, then he is a Saint for doing that ride with me. Let's just say that my bike legs were a little out of shape and Vancouver Island has hills that make Ontario look like the prairies. This amounted to a slow, sweaty, grumpy me and a trip that took one hour instead of 30 minutes - one way.

There are two pieces of good news to end this story.
1. I got in to the program! It starts the first week of October which gives me one month to comply with Josh's original employment schedule for me. How's that for compromise?
2. On the ride home, we saw a box of free stuff at the end of a driveway. Too afraid that if I stopped moving my legs they would never start again and I'd be stranded 15km from home, I opted to pass up the potential goodies and push on. Josh on the other hand, who was switching between coasting and riding on his easiest gear so as to stay at my slow pace, stopped. "I'll catch up to you". What he found in that box was a confirmation that I have made the right decision: