Conehead

For just five weeks of the year, the cones on the Douglas Fir trees at Mt. Newton Seed Orchard are ripe for the picking. Once picked, the cones are bagged and sent to a greenhouse where the seeds (there are over 100 on a cone) are planted in trays to grow into seedlings for next spring's tree planting crews.

Over the course of those five weeks, a crew of cone pickers comes to work at the orchard, ballooning the regular staff of three to ten, sometimes fifteen bodies around the lunch room table. The pay is high (for a seasonal job) and the schedule is flexible: work as many days as you'd like, Monday to Saturday.

If you can believe my luck, I arrived in Saanichton, BC the week that the 2011 cone picking season opened and I moved into a house on a farm that is right next door to a seed orchard. Josh, my employment agent, has been working at the orchard one day a week since May, as a farmhand, and this IN sealed the deal. And so on September 7th, I became a cone picker. Three days a week, six podcasts a day. Good thing I saved up a summer's worth of This American Life.

Here's how it works. Wear clothes that you are okay with destroying. Sap, or 'pitch', in the tree world, doesn't wash out. Wear rubber gloves. It takes a week to get that brown stickiness off your hands unless you want to douse yourself in rubbing alcohol. Wear safety glasses, just to look good. Now that you are dressed, go to the area of the orchard where you are assigned to work in on a given day. Find the trees that are ready to pick: cones are still closed, still slightly green, but turning brown and starting to fan out a bit. Set up a tarp under the branches. Set up a ladder. Climb up with your hook-on-a-pole and pluck cones off, letting them drop onto the tarp. Clear everything within your reach, then move your tarp and ladder around the tree. Clockwise or counterclockwise, your choice. Just get the cones off the tree. Pile the cones into crates, label the crates with the tree # and location. Bring them in to the barn. Repeat.

 Looking pretty good at 14 feet up. Note the hook on a pole in my right hand - a cone picking must-have. 

 Josh moves his tarp. What a good worker. He brings his dock when he works on Wednesdays (see it by the orange shirt in the foreground) so I take a break from podcasts and listen to out-loud tunes.

Terry operates the Manlift, which comes around after we have picked with ladders to get the cones that we couldn't reach at the top of the trees.

The best part about cone picking is that I have found my crossword soulmate. Our skill level is about the same (moderate), our word knowledge is complimentary (I know french, he knows all obscure three-letter words) and our desire to finish an entire puzzle is equal (high). There are three breaks in the day (morning coffee, lunch, afternoon coffee) which gives Terry and I exactly 60 minutes of cumulative break time to plough through the day's puzzle. It's the Victoria Times Colonist and admittedly it's not the hardest crossword, though each week we show improvement. Exactly four days ago we finished an entire puzzle with limited co-worker help by the end of lunch! I'm no Rob Carson (who back in '05 would finish a New York Times crossword before I could finish a Jumble), but here at the seed orchard I am working my way up the ladder. No pun intended.