Raisins!

Raisins!

When I was a little girl, my Mom was a cook at the Junior High School. Each day when she went to work, we would go with her and walk to the grade school from there. One day the Head Cook Bessie, gave my brother and I a snack to eat on the way to school. We each got a huge ball of raisins. Now when I say ball, I mean basketball size, of course since I'm older, I'm pretty sure it was a ball of raisins about the size of my fist...but it sure seemed big at the time. So my brother and I walked to school, eating raisins the whole way.

I did not eat another raisin until I was fifty years old......safe to say I overdosed on raisins that day!

Which brings me to the present. The other day I was driving near Fresno State University. There is a large agricultural department and they are always growing one thing or another. As I was driving by I noticed sheets of butcher paper with something piled on it. Of course I stopped to investigate and realized what it was. They were drying grapes to make raisins!

Raisins drying at Fresno State

Not quite sure why I thought it was so fascinating, but I think part of it was because I really believed it was a much more complicated process.

More raisins.

I've found the older I get, the more I appreciate simplicity.

Madera County raisin farm.

Later that day, we went for a drive out in the country to see if we could find more raisins being dried and we did. As desperate as we are for water here in the Central Valley of California, now is not the time. If it rains now, the raisins would mold and it would ruin the crop.

Raisins!