It Only Hurts When I Blog

Greetings, Bloggy Buggy Riders!

It's Saturday, my favorite day of the week.

Charlie and I are going to Amish country today to buy some vegetables.

We don't know how much drought they've had this year, so I'm not quite sure what they'll have. I think it's too late for corn, but I still have a little in the freezer I put up last year.

In a good year, we've seen tomatoes for as low as TWENTY CENTS a pound, and I'd like to get some potatoes, cucumbers, a watermelon, and who-knows-what-else.

There's one farm we go to that sells these GIGANTIC tomatoes - they are more pink looking than the photo above, and rather misshapen. Some of them must weigh POUNDS each. A nice SLAB of tomato please, underneath my steak! Oh - that's BIGGER than my steak.

Back to corn...

I don't think I've told this story about a corn-buying expedition one year. We bought 7-10 dozen ears (for probably a dollar a dozen) from a girl and her brother who had the back of their buggy piled up with corn. Now that's a lot of corn! The girl mentioned how much work it was to put all that corn up. (Of course, she is also thinking of all the canning work afterwards, and I just throw it in the freezer after I have cut it off the ears and pre-cooked it a little bit).

The Amish girl made a little joke that Charlie would need to help me with that corn. We all laughed about it, and of course it was true! We were just about to drive off, and she stepped over to Charlie's window. 'I hope I didn't hurt your feelings', she said. Charlie said 'What?' She said 'When I said that about you helping with the corn, I hope I didn't hurt your feelings'. He said 'Not at all! I will help with the corn!' She was satisfied that she hadn't offended Charlie by 'expecting' him to do women's work in the kitchen. Imagine that?

We saw a couple of teenaged Amish boys who were working for a non-Amish farmer one day. They were absolutely shining with anticipation and fun, as the farmer was driving them around in his big truck, and buying them pizza for their lunch. They don't see that every day!

Joe remembers going to a farm where a woman was filling plastic grocery bags with produce. Her little son's 'job' was to stand there with both arms bent, and two fingers on each hand sticking out, making himself into a human bag holder. It was priceless!

Charlie remembers a little boy scrambling onto the bumper of his truck so he could peek inside and see all the 'stuff' that he had in there. We don't know if he saw anything 'cool' or not, or whether he recognized anything at all in there, but he surely was curious about it!

Another Amish farmer was selling corn from a large wagon. His sons were playing in the shade on the ground underneath the wagon, and having a fine time. The farmer told us a man had been by driving a small pickup truck, asking for a thousand-dozen ears of corn. The farmer was mildly disgusted, because HE knew that a thousand dozen wouldn't have fit in the man's truck.

We regularly see an older Amish man at the nearby 'country buffet' at lunchtime. We figure he must be a single man who doesn't cook for himself, and eats there instead. He sells vegetables and baskets, but we've never seen him with any kids in tow, which is unusual.

Well, we've got to hit the road and get those veggies! BLAM! I'm outta here!