Popcorn season is my favorite time of year. It’s squeezed right in there between the early, cool spring days and the first days of summer. It’s right when things start to get busy. And it’s right when the orchards look their best – almost as if they’re putting on their best outfit to welcome the summer sun. And what an amazing welcome. No wonder the sun sticks around.

When I went to my parents’ for Mother’s Day, the first sweet cherry blossoms were popping open, and the bees were just starting to make their way through the trees. My mom has always said that you can count on blossoms by Mother’s Day. This year, however, things are still a little cool and the trees weren’t anywhere near being in full bloom – and the orchards didn’t quite look like fields of popcorn.

While I was in Traverse City, I visited Glenn and Judy LaCross in Cedar. That was a beautiful drive on some country roads. That’s one thing I do miss being down in the Grand Rapids area: having nowhere to go and getting lost on the way there. On my way back home from the interview, the winding road took me past a steep hill. At first, it looked like an empty steep hill. But, just inside the fence at one of corners of the field was what looked like a lone cow. But, wobbling around just behind the cow was a calf – a very new calf. The baby still was wet – fresh with life. Of course I had to stop and watch this animal take its first uncertain steps. A couple stumps and branches made the calf stumble, but it kept on teetering around its mother. After watching the cows for a few minutes, I decided I should capture the moment with a camera, so I ran back to my car – which I had forgotten to turn off. I turned off my car, grabbed the camera and ran back across the empty road just in time to see the mother cow start licking the calf clean. Both were nervous that I was there, so I quickly snapped a few pictures and went on my way. I don’t know if I could have asked for a more awesome way to start my week.

Even though the calf had unsteady legs and stumbled more than it walked, it kept going. And just in case something happened, the mother cow was there to help the calf along and make sure it survived. This is what mothers do – they look after their children while letting them find their own legs.

The whole scene made me wonder what the fruit industry would be like if it had a mother – someone to reassure it when it wasn’t going just right; someone to pick it up when it fell; someone to protect it from outside forces that could hurt it; someone to inspire it to keep going. Then I realized that the fruit industry does have a mother – well, maybe not a mother, but something very similar. It is made-up of the industry innovators who keep finding new and better ways to produce, process and promote fruits. These innovations and value-added products are helping to ensure the industry has a future. The reason U.S. fruit products can compete in the world market is because there are people out there looking out for the industry – people making fresh-cut a reality; people bringing direct marketed fruit to local communities; people finding new technologies to make U.S. fruit fresher longer; and people working to promote U.S. products to as many markets as possible. These are some of the reasons the U.S. fruit industry will survive. Who knows what the mothers of invention will come up with next.

It’s funny to me how things like cows make me think of where the fruit industry is headed. Funny because they seem totally unrelated. Funny because I know many of you are thinking “Where does she come up with these things?” But, in the grand scheme of things, I guess it’s kind of like the whole 7 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. Eventually, everything is related somehow – even if the segue doesn’t quite make sense.