Emphasis Preaching Journal

I grew up on a small, family-owned-and-operated fruit farm in the Niagara Peninsula. The farm was my family's sole source of income and consequently the days and weeks between the melting of the winter snow and the falling of the autumn leaves were very important. Nothing was taken for granted, and our family rarely took more than a day away from the farm. But that didn't stop us from having fun. One of my best memories had to do with the ripening of the first peaches.

The peach season followed the harvesting of our cherries. Because the cherry season was short, they had to be picked, sorted, and marketed quickly. It was a tense, hot and sticky production. But that didn't stop our family from searching for those first peaches. Each evening, after the last cherries had been delivered and the baskets and ladders had been placed in readiness for the next day's work, my parents would call my brothers and me to have a trailer ride. My parents would sit together on the wide seat of the tractor, and my brothers and I would sit at the back of the trailer (where the ride was the bumpiest). Then we'd drive through the peach orchards looking for the biggest and the reddest peaches. By the time we arrived back at the house, my father had pointed out five or six special peaches and we were all laughing and singing -- completely relaxed from the tension of the day.