By Danny Locke
5^th grade, El Dorado county
Illustrated by Foothill High School

Hi, I'm a baby Thompson seedless grape. I live in a cluster with all my family. We are partly shaded by big green leaves, but it is late spring and the sun feels warm on my face. We are attached to our vine by a strong stem. This stem brings us the water and minerals we need. Our vine is long and straight. My family and I had a close call this morning. A man came by and thinned some of our neighboring clusters just a few inches away from us. We almost didn't make it!

I can feel some cool water spraying on me like a shower. Farmer Jack has just started irrigating. It's a good thing, because it stopped raining last month here in the San Joaquin Valley. The sun feels good.

It's already July. The warm sun isn't just warm. It's hot! The days are long too. I've noticed that our vine seems a lot more crowded and heavier too. I guess we are all getting plumper. I think we are getting sweeter too. Sometimes a spider crawls by and tickles me.

The hot summer went by fast. My family and I have gotten round and juicy. September is almost here. It is almost harvest time, and we're ready. Sometimes birds come by, but the birds haven't pecked me.

We were cut off the vine this morning and laid on a paper tray. The farm worker worked fast and spread all of the clusters evenly so we all have lots of sun. No more nice green leaves to shade us. It's early September, and the sun is still hot. I'm starting to wrinkle already. In another week I'm going to look like a raisin! At least I still get to be with my family on our cluster for a while longer.

We are raisins now! I used to be green, but now I'm brown. I'm not juicy anymore but I'm even sweeter than I was. My family and I are still in a cluster but our stem is shriveled and not strong anymore.

We were hauled off this morning to the Home Grown Raisins plant in Fresno, California. What an adventure! It was always so quiet on the farm. I've gotten separated from some of my brother and sister grapes on our cluster. The plant has lots of strange sounds and lots of machinery. I will soon travel on a conveyor belt to be cleaned and processed.

We were all shaken up and separated. I can see that soon I will be placed in a little red box with a new raisin family.

I am packed tight in my red raisin box. I traveled again—this time to a little store in Placerville called Murphy's Grocery. Some workers put my box on the store shelf this morning, right in front. I wonder who will pick me out?