Semesters, Seasons, and Other Passings of Time

I thought the busiest time of this apprenticeship would have been the weeks before and during the Ossipee Valley Music Festival. Looking back at those days building those stages, wrangling artists all day and bartending all night, it seemed that nothing could top that. But apple season on the farm is a cloooose second.

Have you ever had an apple cider donut? Have you ever seen like, 4000 of them made? The sheer amount of donuts that fly through this door will forever stun me. 

The ebbs and flows of farm life are wild to witness. One day, it’s just me and Jojo picking apples in the orchard for a few hours a day, listening to our respective podcasts and checking in once in a while with Bill & Molly. Then one day you wake up and there are hundreds of people in the orchards, on the playgrounds, ordering sandwiches and just, everywhere on the farm!

I think about last year, going to an apple farm with my boyfriend one weekend to do all the fall things. Eat donuts, hold hands, do a corn maze, etc. A fun annual tradition that everyone in Western New York and anyone apple farm adjacent partakes in. But it’s a vastly different experience now, and I imagine next year when I visit an apple farm as a customer once again. It’s a years worth of work, for a few months of public action. The hum of a busy farm is much different than the quiet mornings we had all winter, but that’s why we came here, right?

– Caitlin