Rows Red

For the last couple of days I’ve been very contemplative about something that living in Tiny House has brought to my attention. As you can see from the photos I take of the field across the road, we live across from a farm. It’s a small one, especially compared to the larger concerns in the county. No livestock, just a big whack of corn and a side plot for what may be tomatoes, but I’m not sure yet. Every morning I hear the diesel farm trucks come roaring up the road and the tractor gets started, right about 6 a.m. (yay). It’s been interesting to watch the farm go from snow covered field to lush green rows of my favorite summer crop.

Just after dawn. The plastic chairs on the back are where the farm workers sit and... ?

Apparently putting in the ready-grown plants for that side crop is a little labor intensive for the lone farmer (makes sense), and he’s brought in some help. This is where it got strange for me.  His field hands are (most likely) Mexican migrant workers. They are the first “brown people” I’ve seen in town, and it’s both comforting and sad to me to see them. They look like my uncles, like my cousins, only shorter. They look like my grandfather, and if it were 40 years ago, he would have been one of them. My father’s father was a migrant field worker, and some of my uncles were too.

Every year my grandfather would leave his wife and kids in Puerto Rico, migrate to the states, and work his way up the seasonal route to New York, ending the season in Buffalo. He planted and picked, sending his wages back home, so that my father’s family could survive in their tiny cement home on an island in the Caribbean. Given what the current climate is in this country, I suppose I should justify his labor by mentioning that he was a legal citizen of the United States, as are all Puerto Ricans whether born here or on the Island. Not that it matters to me.

When I was a teen, my family visited my Tio Tomas, who was working on a farm in Pennsylvania to make extra money for his family in PR. He and the other hands, his friends (?), lived in tin roof bungalows, barely “trailers” as we think of them, with no air conditioning and no shade trees. They worked long hours in the field, and kept their spirits up by singing and joking. I don’t know if they worked on machines or not, but I doubt it. They probably were pickers, bent over field crops or climbing rickety fruit tree ladders. At night they gathered around a fire and cooked their meal, playing dominoes to pass the time before they went to sleep. I think we were there on their day off, and I remember how he let me have a wicked cooking knife that I admired. He was so very happy to see us, and the dignity that he and his friends shared was evident. I think that his one and only summer as a migrant worker, and I know his situation has greatly improved since then and his famly is doing well.

When I see the men across the road getting ready to start their day tending the food I’ll eat one day, I want to thank them. I’m on my way to work, so I don’t stop, and they’re gone when I get home, but I want to say ‘!Hola! Gracias por su trabajo duro, se lo agradezco.’ My Spanish is terrible, one sign of how very different my life is from theirs. The success of my parents, both Puerto Rican, came with certain social costs, and my mostly monolingual-ness is one of them. That success also brought me many gifts.

Food for my table. (one of my three 4x4 beds.)

I’ll never have to work in a field for poor wages and no healthcare, hoping I don’t get sick or hurt. Because my mother is so fair and I can pass for white or Italian, I’ll never have people label me as a fruit picker, or wonder if I’m here legally. I’ll never have someone telling me I’m taking American jobs, not that anyone really wants to do the work my abuelo and tio did. As I tend my own garden, growing food that will also feed my family and friends, I don’t think I’ll complain anymore about how my back hurts. I think I’ll keep my mouth shut and be thankful that this brown person gardens for fun and personal satisfaction. It’s the least I can do.

Tags: Life & Stuff, Seriously