Nature Farm Fresh

At Simran Orchids, G/117, that’s where we set things up. Nature Farm Fresh is mostly just us dealing with crates and bags of produce. It gets quite cool in the mornings when the first loads arrive. We spend a lot of time checking if anything got bruised. It’s a lot of lifting. My back feels it by the afternoon. We have some scales and a few tables. The walls could use a fresh coat of paint but nobody really looks at the walls here. We’re too busy making sure the boxes go to the right places. Sometimes the delivery truck is late and we just sit on the crates talking. It’s quiet enough in the Sahyadri area compared to the main road. We know most of the people who come by. It’s not like those big supermarkets where nobody knows your name. We just handle the food. It smells like earth and vegetables in here most days. Sometimes it's a bit of a scramble to get everything sorted before the heat gets too bad. We just keep the floor swept and the crates stacked high. It’s simple work, nothing special about it, just getting things from the farm to where they need to go. We keep a small radio playing in the corner. That's about it for our daily life here. We take our lunches together on the small bench outside when the sun isn't too strong. It's a living.