It started quite innocently. I read an article about organic living. ­Fortunately, it was interesting enough to read right to the end. Otherwise I would have missed one of the more profound experiences of my long and eventful life.

The article explained that it was possible for city people to learn what organic farming was all about, simply by becoming a summer apprentice on an organically run farm in British Columbia. I heard someone say, "I want to do this." When I looked around to see who had spoken, I discovered--to my surprise--that it was my gut. Yes, that area of my body that makes decisions for me when my head is insisting on logic, reason, feasibility and all other left-brained mechanisms that have a tendency to keep me from having fun.

So, I listened. And out of it came one of the most enjoyable, relaxing, love-filled experiences that anybody could ever want.
From the Stewards of Irreplaceable Land project (www.soilapprenticeships.org), I received a handful of applications from organic farmers who accept help during the summer from city folk on an exchange basis: work in trade for room and board.

Since I like the sea, I zeroed in on farms ­located on islands. After making contact by phone, I set out on a visiting trip that ­allowed me to get an idea of the physical aspects of this planned adventure into a completely unknown world. I am a city person who never in my wildest fantasies would have seen myself on a farm of any sort, let alone working on one.

After talking with several farmers and seeing their operations, my choice was made easy when I met Vlasta Ulovec and Rod McNabb on their apple orchard on Denman Island. Eleven acres of apple trees, pasture, gardens and tall pines on a southern slope surrounded by so much greenery beckoned me to stay. And that's what I did. I was given "The Studio," a spacious cottage, formerly a ­photographic studio, that turned out to be the coolest place to be on the hottest days.

Rod and Vlasta are, themselves, city people who'd had enough of city life and decided to switch to simplicity, clean air, fresh uncontaminated food and days spent outdoors. They are cultivating about 800 apple trees of 42 varieties. When I arrived, I was made part of this cultivation immediately: thinning.

For apples to become large, plump and juicy, they need room to grow. That room is created by allowing only one or two apples to grow where nature had started to grow an entire bunch. Of course, I had to learn how to judge the one or two buds to leave on, and which to snip off each bunch, depending on what type of tree, location on the tree, concentration and size of the apples. This aspect of focusing on what was in front of me and learning something entirely new was a great way of getting away from my ­habitual thought patterns.

In a simple exchange of work for room and board, we agreed for me to give a minimum of four hours every day at my convenience. I chose to start my day at 7 am, work one hour, have a coffee, work another hour or so, have breakfast, and work until the sun became too hot for me to be outside. Then I was free to do as I liked. I could go swimming in a little lake in the woods nearby or at one of the surrounding beaches. I could stay indoors and read a book--which I chose to do most days--or I could go over to Hornby Island, where the beaches are sandier and there's more tourist activity as a result of the many artists who live there.

When the heat abated, I would emerge from my room and put in a few more hours until dinnertime. I didn't consider my activities "work." Rather, I thought of them as a healthy, enjoyable way of passing the time while being in surroundings that appealed to my senses: the sound of insects in the air around me, the scent of plants and flower, the touch of leaves and branches, the incredible beauty of evening skies.

My relationship with Rod and ­Vlasta quickly became a friendship. Vlasta's way of preparing the food from her garden was an endless amazement. She never used a recipe, yet it always tasted great and she never repeated a meal. Sometimes, the petals of her flowers graced a delicious salad, and sometimes it was impossible to know what the dish was made of without asking her.

And then there were the animals--two dogs, four cats, a cow and her calf, a gaggle of ducks and chickens that used the coop only for sleeping and delivering their eggs. Observing the animals' behaviour around each other convinced me that their psychology and ours isn't so far apart, really. They have their personalities and needs, just as we have. Canine Piper, for instance, was the "old man" on the farm. Whenever he saw strife amongst the animals, he was the peacemaker. He just could not stand disharmony. Meanwhile, Roshi, the Bessenji, thought he was still living in Cleopatra's court, taking all the attention he got for granted and knowing very well how to get it, too.

If a farm wants to qualify as "certified organic," status they can't use synthetic agricultural chemicals--no herbicides, pesticides, growth inducers or retardants or chemical fertilizers. Whatever needs to be done to influence nature's way in bringing crops to maturity has to be done in a matter that doesn't interfere with ­natural processes. Left alone, nature is in balance. Upsetting this balance by ­artificially manipulating the natural cycle creates "problems" for which "solutions" have to be found that perpetuate the imbalance. That's my understanding of the difference between organic and conventional farming, simplistic as it appears.

What I also quickly learned on the farm was weeding. After pulling weeds from a yard-wide circle around 800 trees, I have some sympathy for the person who thought of chemical herbicide!

As the summer passed on with record temperatures, the apples grew. They got their water via an ingenious system fed from the nearby lake. Making sure that ­every little emitter peed out its little stream of water was one of my jobs. A clogged irrigation outlet meant a dry tree on which apples remain small.

Did we have excitement on the farm? Oh, yes. Chickens hatched and to guess who the father was could be mildly ­exciting. Deer sometimes found their way onto the orchard to eat the delicious apple shoots on the trees, and they had to be chased out.
The first harvest began in the last third of August with the most beautiful, juicy, flavourful Gravenstein apples I've ever tasted. About 200 trees had to be picked, so pick we did from morning to night, until it became too dark to recognize the colour. Colour indicates the degree of ripeness, and only truly tree-ripened fruit was picked, ­carefully placed into special boxes and kept cool, awaiting shipping.

The day before I left for good, at the end of October, when most of the apples were harvested and when frost was on the grounds some mornings, nature gave me a special present. Showers had been coming down all day. We were picking apples in our rain gear when, in very quick succession, patches of blue sky appeared then grew. The sun emerged from behind woolly clouds and there, spanning the top of the orchard, was the most complete, brilliantly distinct rainbow--an unmatchable ­farewell.

During those extraordinary months in the country, I took a few time-outs to visit friends and relatives and keep in touch with the outside world. Coming back to Denman Island on that little ­ferry each time gave me a feeling of homecoming. One day, I also realized that part of me had "come home" when I decided to live on the land for a few months. Such a part resides in most of us, hidden from our consciousness, showing itself only when our gut is allowed to make decisions for us.

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