them apples

There's an apple stand off the interstate in northern Washington state. The red barn rises out of the lolling hills and green.

 'FRESH CIDER.'

I've heard stories about how good this cider is: crisp and clear, perfect in late summer or all through fall. The stand's been there for the seven years I've lived here, but I've never been in all the time I've lived in Seattle.

Seven years later, I make it out there. I'm looking to get out of the city for the time. It's an hour and a half drive along a single four-lane road until you see the barn.

When you pull off the interstate, you make a hard round-a-about and end up at a dead four-way. The barn has a gravel lot, and the car tires crush then pleasantly, sounding like when you leave the city to get to your grandma's house in the country. The red barn walls rise in front of your car, the wood a little weathered now that you're close. There's a white farming family manning the place: an older dad and his son, freshly thirty, unloading cases of apples into a large machine that pulps them down and spills out their juice. Heaps of apple pulp lay in piles around them.

Corn fields press in close, swaying behind the barn and the dad and his kid pulping apples. I don't see any orchards, and the only apples I see are in boxes.

Inside the double doors, there are three small children, all tow-headed and under ten. They man the small check-out stand, strangely quiet and shy as two newcomers enter. Their mother works a larger counter across the empty barn, working the donut maker. She's making donuts from a pre-made paste and working the dough with her hands. We order a half dozen, and she pours out a vast plastic jug of canola oil, then fries the dough that's floured her hands.

"Do you own all the corn around your farm?" I ask shyly.

She's older, in her thirties like her husband. These three kids are clearly hers.

"My father-in-law sold all the land a few years ago. The rent it out. The renters plant the corn."

She doesn't offer more explanation, and I'm too embarrassed for her family to ask. Or rather embarrassed by our country, and sad for her family.

Because clearly, there came a time, when it became cheaper, instead of tilling the land the man owned, to sell if it to a large farming corporation, and found it cheap, and quite profitable, to plant lots of corn for cheap and sell it fast, to anyone who would buy.

But the family, they kept the barn. The order some apples--maybe from a local farm in eastern Washington, or maybe from some farm corporation because it's cheaper, and that's all they can do right now. The son, now proprietor of his family's barn, works with his own son to pulp these apples and make some juice. His wife makes apple cider donuts. His babies work the Square app at the counter.

"Do you take card?"

It's a nervous question -- we're already holding the half-dozen donuts. The powder is on my fingers.

It's a stupid question. Of course they take card. How would they ever make a living on just cash? The babies at the register, still shy and sweet, ring me up on Square.