The fields of oranges were huge, covering
many square kilometers. The best part though, was the smell of the whole place:
it felt like it opened the nostrils and entered strongly into the body, making
you feel more alive than ever. Here and there, workers picked up the oranges
from the trees and let the ones that were in the ground for the eventual
animals that came and ate them. Many machines existed to pick up the fruit but
this farm kept with the usual method of using people, which were more careful.
They had even go one more step further by hiring only women.
It was funny to be at the gates of the farm in
the afternoon, when the shifts ended, and seeing all those women come out, like
a horde of soldiers coming back from a particularly tough battle. And it was
exactly that as many times, the climate was particularly harsh. The sun was always
a bother but they also had to deal with various animals such as bees and wasps,
that every so often tried to make a hive in the area. The women had learned how
to deal with them long ago and they rarely sent someone to the main house to
ask for help. They could deal with it themselves.
In the house there was only a first processing
plant for the oranges, which selected the best of the best. But the curious
thing was that rarely any oranges were thrown out because of their state. Those
that were, however, were transformed into compost to feed the plants that
existed all over the farm. The owner of the emporium was called Archibald
Kostas. He was an English but with a Greek father and a German mother, an
uncommon but effective combination as he had inherited all the good traces of
both cultures.
Archibald had been born in London. His family
lived there because of his father’s work and they were happy it was that way
because they way all of this differences would make him a better person and a
more intelligent one. His mother was always very strict but loving and his
father was the kind of man that always brought a gift for their children when
coming back from work. Archibald had a sister called Athena, who was also an
English citizen. His father worked in a company that owned many shipyards
across Europe and that’s why they always moved and why they loved the sea. They
had always lived close to it and they wouldn’t change that for anything.
When he was a bit older, just before college,
Arbchibald traveled Europe with friends and discovered how much he really loved
the sea and what nice warm climates made for his body and normal behavior. When
he visited the Alps or the cities along the Danube, he was miserable. Not only
because of the lack of ocean but because the environment didn’t made him feel
good. Some people said it was the altitude and other that he was too used to
the same thing that he had lived all of his life but it didn’t mattered. He
discovered what he loved and decided to pursue it. In the end, most people had
no idea what they liked so young in life, so he guessed it was good it happened
to him.
Archie, as his parents and friends lovingly
called him, received his degree in agronomy and decided, when he was only
twenty-two years old, to fly down to Greece and settle there. Because it was
the birthplace of his father, he knew the country very well and how the people
were and what they liked. So with help from his dad he bought a good piece of
terrain north of Athens and began exploring what would be the ideal crop to
plant there.
There were a lot of options but Archie wanted
one that would employ many people of the region and also be good for them. He
wanted the farm to be completely ridden of any chemical agents or strange
artifacts that were used in the huge farm of Europe and North America. He
wanted something big but more relatable, close to the people. Citrus fruits
were a great option and most of them were cultivated the same way so if the
farm got really big he could mix things up by having many kinds in one same
place.
He started with the basic citrus fruit, the
one that everyone loved and that he knew would sell beautifully in the region:
oranges. It took some time to have all the trees giving fruit but, when they
did, he decided to hire workers from the region to help with the harvest. It
was like that that it all began, with just a bunch of trees and some hands.
Today, the farm spanned various hectares of not only orange trees but also
other citrus fruits like lemons, tangerines, grapefruits, limes and many
others.
At first, the farm sold only the raw fruit but
when his father visited the farm for the first time, some months prior to his
death, he advised his son to also process the fruits in another plant and turn
them in to juice. People love all those natural flavors, rid of the chemicals
that most brands put on their liquids and it was time people had another
option. They could start by selling some bottles on the local market and then
see if people actually like it. If they did, they could began expanding to
bigger cities and then the whole country.
Archibald had achieved exactly that some five
years after his father’s passing and, in his honor, had put a plaque next to
the main gate of the farm to inform people that his father had always been a
visionary, although frequently in the shipyard business. He had also been a
great father and Archie would always thank him for being such a great guy, so
relatable and supportive. Eventually, the juices that he sold all over Greece got
the name of his fathers, Kostas. Every person in the region loved driving past
the Kostas farm because of the smell that invaded the body and refreshed the
environment nicely.
Archie, however, had not inherited his dad’s
ability to form a loving and caring family. The owner of such a great
enterprise was also a lonely man after three divorces and the death of one wife
that surprisingly showed no signs of wanting to leave him until she died in a
car crash not very far from the farm. From those relationships, he had gotten
two sons and one daughter but they rarely visited him, after living with their
respective mothers for a long time. Those women hated him too much to tell
anything good about him to their children and it was clear they all resented
Archie, for no apparent reason.
He invited them every summer, to the farm; in
order to try to connect with them one more time but it was all a waste of time.
They just didn’t like anything that he did, anything that he said. The only
time he felt they were a bit sympathetic was when his mother died after a long
and painful disease. He was broken and more alone than ever and seeing them in
the funeral and staying some time in his house was comforting and he even go to
think it would last but it didn’t. They were just being “nice” but they
couldn’t keep up forever so they left and rarely came back.
When
turning sixty, Archie had decided to stop looking for love. It had brought him
nothing but trouble and preferred to live in peace in his farm, surrounded by
helpers and workers that liked his company and that sometimes talked to him
about the problems they had or about general issued that everyone had on their
mind. Of course, he still liked to look at women but he had no intention of
taking any of them as a bride. Anyway, he thought his looks had passed, being a
thing of his early days so even if he wanted; looking for a companion would be
very difficult.
The thing that made him happier than anything
else was walking his farm, seeing the workers do their job and feeling the
scent of so many fruits. He would take a small bag with him and walk to the
edge of the farm, which now reached a cliff overlooking the sea. He would sit
there and take out of his bag a bottle of orange juice and picture of his
parents. He always remembered the first time they came here and knew how proud
they both were of what he had done with his life. The way they looked all over
was like seeing children in a candy store, in a really huge candy store.
He realized that precisely was the greatest
achievement of his life. Not the farm itself, not his children or the millions
of dollars won with the fruits and the juices, not even all that he owned. It
was the fact that he made his parents proud and happy. It should be every son
or daughter’s goal to make their parents smile and he knew he had achieved
that. Unfortunately, he would never get to be proud of his children, as he didn’t
even know them. He regretted it for a long time but then, he just didn’t care.
