Summer fruit is coming in and berry season is here. Our friends had told us about a young man who is growing and selling the most superb organic raspberries, and so it is to his farm in Abbotsford that we’re headed.

Collin Regehr, who is twenty six, decided to follow his father into farming about six years ago. While his father has experimented with growing raspberries, they’re currently the main focus of Collin’s ventures. With two acres planted with two varieties of raspberries, the crop can vary from 5,000 to 15,000 lbs in a season.

Our first visit is on a grey, overcast day in mid-July.

The plants are laden with ripe fruit, the air cool and delicately scented with rose and honeysuckle. The soil between the rows of plants is dark and very soft from the excess rain.

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The monsoon is making its way across India, and I’ve made my way back to summer in Vancouver, Canada.

Okay, let’s try that again. It’s summer, and we’re headed for one of Vancouver’s farmers markets, this one at Trout Lake.

Farmers and vendors from all over the region including the Lower Mainland, the Okanagan and Vancouver Island show up with some of the best that the province of British Columbia has to offer.

Unfortunately, it’s been a cold and wet spring. That, on top of  last Fall’s heavy rains, has made  it the worst growing season in decades and it has hit farmers hard.

Although it’s been rough, you wouldn’t know it from the smiles and friendly exchanges here, as always.

Browsing at the stalls and planning  the next meal along the way, I join the line-up at Rise for the best bread around. They’re usually sold out by noon, so you need to get in early.

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I’m very pleased to present this blog’s first interview, recorded over the course of several visits to the home of Mr. and Mrs. B. P. Appanna in Kodagu.

Mr. Appanna is a retired professor of History, former president of the Karnataka Kodava Sahithya Academy, and a collector and custodian of  some very unique cultural treasures of Kodagu. Having spent a lifetime teaching in schools and colleges across Coorg,  Bacharaniyanda P. Appanna shows no signs of being anywhere near ready to sit back and enjoy a sedate retirement.

We’re seated in his office, and in the background,  I can hear Mrs. Appanna, (also a retired teacher but currently the very active president of the Kodava Mahila Sangha),  fielding phone calls, fixing appointments for various cultural and social engagements she and her husband are to attend. “There is never enough time to do everything!” laughs Mr. Appanna.

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