One thing I really like about my business is the surprising inquiries I get.  The other day I came home to a message from a man in Brooklyn who owns a bakery.  I called him back, and he said he wanted to order my fruitcakes for his store.  I told him I don’t have an export license, but he said he wanted to try them anyway, so ordered one of each for his own consumption.

I googled Jude Nwabuoku and saw a photo of him and his bakery, and it looks fabulous.  I mailed the fruitcakes, and hope he likes them, though I can’t see shipping from Kelowna to Brooklyn.  I suspect there’s someone within a thousand mile radius of Brooklyn who makes fruitcake, so perhaps they could supply him?

A month ago I was watching the news and they were talking about the cranberry harvest in the Fraser Valley.  Huge tanker trucks pull up, and the cranberries get poured in through the top, just like water.  Then they’re all delivered to Ocean Spray, who buy the bulk of the harvest.

At Thanksgiving when I bought a bag of Ocean Spray cranberries, I wanted to see where they’re located.  I turned the bag and it said Massachusetts on the back.  So the cranberries went from Langley to Massachusetts and then back to Kelowna where I bought them.

You see the moral dilemma we should all have around this sort of thing?  While I loathe fanaticism of any kind, I do think the general principles around the 100 Mile Diet are sound.

We’re all forced to lose our eyesight with these new light bulbs in order to save the planet, but if we just stopped buying ridiculous items like well-travelled cranberries we could probably still have the bulbs that illuminate a room.

I’m also going to re-think some of the things I try to grow in my little garden.  After God knows how much watering, I have one pumpkin.  It just seems too expensive for the Earth to provide me with one of those.  I think a solid crop of tomatoes is probably the wisest, as I freeze them and eat them in stews and sauces all winter.

And the bees?  They’re all going to die, as confirmed by an old beekeeper named Bob Chisholm.  He came to inspect my lone hive, and said, “Foul brood.”  I said, “What?” I wondered what my children could possibly have to do with the bees.

He said it has nothing to do with one’s offpsring and explained it’s a term describing a blight that kills bees and is very contagious.  I’ll have to burn the frames and start over with new bees, though the boxes are salvageable.

But you know what?  Next year I’m getting all new supplies from Bob, and then I’ll be making my own honey before you know it.  I’ll no longer have to go to Costco to buy honey that’s come all the way from China.