Summer Work

(A few ladies I picked roses with)

Rose crops are big business in Bulgaria and have been for a long time. It's a national symbol and Bulgarians love to use the rose as a metephor to describe the beauty of the country and it's women. Every year a rose festival is held in The Valley of Roses. This region contains most of the rose crops in the country and is one of the biggest producers of rose oil in the world.

Although Bratsigovo is not in the valley of roses, many people in town own a few acres of rose crops. My counterpart is one of them. The other week I helped him pick his roses. We started work at six in the moring and were done by about eleven. I got pricked by just a few roses, but his hands looked like a cat had been scratching them for five hours. I guess through the years he's learned to accept that sometimes you get pricked and prefers to work faster and finish work earlier.

At the end of the day, after gathering all the rose buds, he sells them to a firm who uses them to make rose oil. This firm then sells the rose oil to perfume companies in Italy, France and the US. There are other uses for these roses as well. People in town make homemade jam, juice, tea, rakiah (whiskey), and liquer out of roses. I've also been given candy and shampoo made from roses.

The rose season only lasts for a month and then it's off to other pickings. Yesteray after work my counterpart invited me to his house to pick cherries. We filled a huge bucket full and he gave them all to me. Way too much for one person to eat, so I made a huge cherry pie. It's the first time I've ever made cherry pie. The crust came out great but the filling was a little too sugary and way too liquidy. Next time I'll put less sugar and maybe drain the liquid that the sugar creates or add flour or something to make it thicker. I'm not sure. Anyone know how to make cherry pie filling from scratch? Let me know!