Velvento 12 - Eat A Peach

Kostas has most of the family peach farms and has bought more over the years. He does all of the farm work alone, except when there are really pressing projects and the neighbors come to help. Everyone in the family seems to have peach farms, but no one does it as their only job. It's early morning work and an extra source of income.




Cousin Dimitri works in town at the peach collection center. Many of the people town have small peach orchards, and in true Velvendino fashion, rather than selling them individually, they all bring them to a central collection facility where they are collectively sorted, refrigerated, carted and shipped all over Europe. The farmers are guaranteed income, the facility provides jobs, and all of Europe and Russia gets their peaches...talk about cooperation! You don't see too much of this in the US Capitalist system, and it is beautiful to see it work so well.


While we were visiting the family farms, everyone reminisced about the old stories. When my sister was carrying peaches in her skirt, Thea (auntie) Evyenia said it's exactly how she used to carry them. My dad has certain stories that he always remembers and has told us over the years, and while we were there, we discovered that the rest of the family has been retelling the same stories all of these years.


"We used to have an old barn where we would cook, eat, talk and sleep after working all day in the fields. One night we were cooking dinner over a fire inside the barn, and the smoke from the fire disoriented the mice in the rafters, and one of them fell down inside one of my sister's dress." Dad couldn't remember which sister it was, and when he retold the story to them, Evyenia said "that was me!"


"My mother used to put me to sleep in the barn and shut the door while they went out to work in the fields. After a while I would wake up, look around to make sure no one was around, and then come outside to play in the yard. Every once in a while my mother would come back to check on me, and I would run back inside the barn, shut the door and pretend to be asleep." We all laughed recounting the story, because in my dad's brothers and sisters version, his mom knew exactly what he was doing.