Aptos CA & Worldenough Farm - Jan 28, 2008 - Aptos, California, United States

MONDAY, January 28, 2008

Well, Friday arrived and we decided it was time to finally hit the road. It was quite the challenge (that’s an understatement) to back out of the dead-end street where we had been staying for a week. We finally made it and were on our way. Today’s trek was to the Santa Cruz UU church in Aptos, CA. It’s supposed to be about a 2-hour ride, but with the rain and hills, it took us a bit longer. No one was at the church when we arrived and we just settled ourselves into a spot in the front of the church. We finally met up with the property caretakers and figured out a place to put the camper for the next few days.

On Sunday morning, we were greeted by a delightful older gentleman, John, who gave us an entire bag of fresh avocados! He told us that they came from trees at his home where he has over 10 acres of land, 4 acres of which are landscaped with fruit trees and a vegetable garden. We made arrangements to come and visit his home and orchards after the congregational meeting after church.

Aisha and Soleil attended church school classes and Soleil made friends with a girl named Serena. Like most friends, they had a little bit of difficulty and then made up again. Aisha had a great class with the teacher and her classmates. The teacher is a counselor and demonstrated to them some techniques for positive communication.

So despite Sunday being a really yucky and rainy day, the girls and I grabbed our coats and boots after church and followed John for about 25 minutes up into the hills high above Santa Cruz. We found ourselves driving onto narrower and narrower roads, driving higher and higher up into the hills. At one point, we took our last turn which was up John’s road and found ourselves surrounded by beautiful redwoods and eucalyptus trees. It was magical. I kept telling the girls that with all this rain and vegetation, it reminded me of the rainforest in Puerto Rico. Finally, we reached our destination… Worldenough Farm.

John invited us into his home of nearly 30 years where he and his wife lived and worked. In the entry hall of their home, there were many black and white and sepia photos depicting John’s family and his wife’s family. There were even side-by-side photos of John and his wife (who grew up about 90 miles away from one another in Illinois and never knew each other until they were in their twenties) that displayed similar clothes, haircuts, poses and even the must-have photo of their time… each of them as a young child on a pony. He told these stories with such love and pride. It was hard to hear the story of how his wife died some years before. She was sitting in her chair and fell over. The chair fell and hit her on the head, causing a massive head wound. She died only days later. I told him I was so sorry to hear of his loss and with his sweet and gentle manner, he said ‘these things happen.’ John then introduced us to his companion, a dog named Chopper, who keeps him company and helps him in the orchards digging up groundhog holes. He also has three cats who wander about the house and generally look like they rule the place.

We finally went outside and first were introduced to two kinds of small mandarin-type orange trees. John invited us to peel and taste them fresh off the tree. We were then free to pick as much as we liked to take home for ourselves. Next, we moved on to navel oranges, then lemons, limes, grapefruits (which we passed on), pomegranates and two types of persimmons (both past their seasons), and finally two types of avocados. We spent time at each tree with John explaining where the tree came from, why it was in this particular spot, walking around the trees and taking in the fragrance, and looking for the fruits that were most ripe and choosing which ones to take home with us. It finally stopped raining by the time we got back to the driveway and our truck. We thanked John for his most excellent tour and for allowing us to take the fruits of his labor home with us. We all agreed it was a wonderful time spent together on a rainy afternoon and the girls and I will always remember listening to John’s stories about the trees, his wife, his children and his adventures as a gentleman farmer.