i hope you enjoy those berries...

pictured: harvested onions - we had nothing to do with this...but they were grown here, and look lovely!

today was harvest day here at barenfang. and just the other day, when everyone was saying how friday was the hardest day, alex and i thought - yeah right, how hard can it be - picking fruit and flowers and whatever else...that's fun! well, we were partially wrong.

like everyday, we started at 8am. but today we set out to collect lots and lots of ripe strawberries. immediately, it felt great, discovering big juicy gems hidden under the straw - i practically felt like an animal. i even thought the small strawberries were oh so cute - and imagined how great they would be as garnish on things like cupcakes. but then after hundreds of berries - the small berries start becoming irritating berries, hands start becoming sore, and you begin to notice a rash creeping up your already over-tanned arm. the whole time i was out there i was saying (to myself of course) 'i hope you enjoy those berries that are the best deal ever' (seriously, they sell these things for too little for the amount of man labor that goes into each precious little pint. and the smaller, probably less appealing berries take even more time!)

pictured: the harvest begins // aw, cute - smallest berry ever // snack time

after 5 hours of rash-induced strawberry fun, we took a nice lunch break (alex made fresh herb potato salad) and enjoyed some soft ice cream during the hottest week of the year. and at the end of lunch we were given our next task - pick 30 bouquets of flowers. i thought - easy. i thought wrong.

pictured: my first bouquet of the day // alex contemplating his next flower

it was estimated that it should take us 2.5 hours to complete all the bouquets. i thought that must be an extreme overestimate - but as it turns out, it took us 4 hours. yep. and just as with the strawberries - the first hour or so was pretty enjoyable (at least for me - alex didn't really like flower picking/arranging at all). but then, the skin of your fingers starts to fall off from "picking" (more like tearing) thick, woody wild flower stems. my hands have never looked so sad as they do right now. once again, 'i hope you enjoy those flowers' (that are sold for a mere 3 euros).

oh, and i forgot to mention, that practically with every job you do outside - bees, wasps, and hornets (alongside mosquitoes and other unpleasant fliers) zoom right by your ear - as if they know how to just scare you a little. and today we discover a seemingly friendly bee, fly thing - that happens to actually be called "bee fly". it sounded and acted like a teeny tiny hummingbird.

pictured: bee fly getting his nectar on