Horan - Harvest : an adventure into the heart of Americas family farms

HARVEST

An Adventure into the Heart of Americas Family Farms

RICHARD HORAN

For my joyous and musical wife, Mary, who, after harvesting cranberries all day long and while trying to enjoy a plate of fried clams at a seaside restaurant in Plymouth, was instead subjected to listening to Uptown Girl by Billy Joel, Wildfire by Michael Martin Murphey, Kenny Logginss Danger Zone, Pat Benatars Hit Me with Your Best Shot, Jackson Brownes Doctor My Eyes, and, last but not least, David Soul caterwauling Dont Give Up on Us. She turned a sour note into sweet harmony by confiding: You know, I am so fortunate to have music in my lifeto be able to play music and perform it and yet never have to take it as seriously as Jackson Browne.

And for all of the family farmers and farmhands who are Americas national treasures.

Is it too outlandish to wonder if, as a new agricultural economy becomes more like natures economy, our minds will expand?

WES JACKSON ,
CONSULTING THE GENIUS OF THE PLACE

The most insistent and formidable concern of agriculture, wherever it is taken seriously, is the distinct individuality of every farm, every field on every farm, every farm family, and every creature on every farm.

WENDELL BERRY,
THE WAY OF IGNORANCE

Contents

POTTERSVILLE

M idsummer 2010. Oswego, New York. I am sitting in my rusted-out Dodge Grand Caravan, in the soporific parking lot of the local Wal-Mart, waiting for my teenage daughter, Evelyn, to purchase a new cell phone. It is a belated birthday gift, but with no steady income, it is not one I can easily afford. I am listening to the radio. The president of the United Farm Workers, Arturo Rodriguez, is being interviewed on NPR about his Take Our Jobs campaign. He has just revealed that up until now, only about four thousand people had filled out applications to become farmworkers, and from those only a few dozen have followed through to the end. I am sweating and feeling a little sick to my stomach because below my feet the newly tarred surface of the parking lot is exuding a toxic vapor that has got to be mutating my chromosomes, killing my brain cells, and doing who knows what to my sperm count. The interview comes to an end and Rodriguez sums it all up with characteristic verve: So its a grueling effort, a grueling job that takes place and they get very little recognition for what they do. But the reality is that if it wasnt for them, we would not have food on our tables every single day.

I turn off the radio and sit there considering this truth, while at the same time watching the parade of the morbidly obese shuffling into the cardboard-cutout box store, not a tree or a blade of grass or a piece of fruit within a thousand feet. Suddenly I feel disoriented, lost, discombobulated... Where am I? Who am I? Whats happening here?

My stomach lurches. I close my eyes, press the balls of my feet against the floorboard, and drift back... back... back into my childhood...

Midsummer 1969. Im in my grandfathers refrigerated warehouse, an old brick building on Spruce Street in the Italian section of Stamford, Connecticut. He is the owner of a produce wholesale business, John Vitti, Purveyor of Fine Fruits and Vegetables. Im sitting on a wooden packing crate next to a large oak desk, and swinging my legs. To my right is a yawning, garage-style door through which people of an odd assortment of ethnicities continually enter and exit. I watch an ancient Italian woman shuffle in wearing a black-widow dress and a black shawl over her steel-gray head of hair. I watch her amble, birdlike, to the back of the store and rummage through the dozens of wax boxes heaped full of fruits and vegetables. There are other women rummaging through the boxes back there, too: mostly Italians, but some Puerto Ricans and Poles. Nearby, my grandfather, a bald, bull-necked man, stands patron-like among a group of short men, all in neatly ironed short-sleeved shirts, nodding and gesticulating, and speaking in Italian. They are extolling the virtues of the produce pomodori , prugne , cocomeri , meloni tutti quanti sono buoni one of the best harvest seasons ever. The sun is dazzling bright outside on the street, casting short, squat shadows. Inside, the cool moist air is permeated with the piquant odor of ripe fruit and fresh vegetables with just a hint of putrefaction. Everything is alive and lush. The black widow comes up to the desk, her canvas bag full of peaches. I stop swinging my legs and look up into her eyes. They are deeply set and the color of burnt almonds. She waits for my grandfather to come over and count her out. She looks at me and begins to rub my face with her gnarled hand. Her skin is dry as paper, but her toothless smile is an explosion of joy and sun-dried peace. There is a brown mole on her chin the size and shape of a chocolate raisin. She hands me a peach. I can tell she wants to vicariously eat it by watching me do so with my nearly complete set of teeth. I bite into it. The sticky juice tickles my cheeks as it runs down my face. She stands back shaking her head with great satisfaction, then motions with both hands, imploring my grandfather to look:

Guarda! Guarda! she beams.

He glances down at me, smiles, hands her the change, and then lovingly rubs my head: Bel ragazzino, eh?

Non ragaz, la pesca! Che succos! (Not the kid; the peach! How juicy!)

I am suddenly knocked headlong out of my reverie, my stomach dropping down into the bottom of my belly. My daughter plops excitedly down in the passenger seat beside me. She holds the new device in front of my face so I can admire it: Look! Look! It is square, black, odorless, and dead. I look up at her face; her smile is not as ripe, or bright, or nearly as fully satisfied as the black widows. Dad, whats wrong? she asks as I continue to stare at her, my eyes tearing up, my facial expression dripping with despair.

Nothing. Nothing, I lie.

But in fact, dear reader, everything at that moment was wrong. Everything! To start with, I was unemployed. Actually, I just lied again: it was worse than thatI was working as a substitute teacher at the local high school during the school year. Plus, to make ends meet, my wife and I were renting out rooms in our home and sharing our kitchen with four Chinese students. Have you ever tried to share a kitchen with four Chinese women? Its like trying to toast four slices of bread in a two-slot toaster. Make that six slices of toast. Added to that, my oldest daughter had quit college after two years because she felt like it was a waste of time and money, and she was right . Meanwhile, all across the nation, the ash trees were dying from the emerald ash borer. Biodiversity was declining at an unprecedented rate. Global warming was melting the polar ice caps. Entire island nations were sinking into the sea. The BP oil spill kept growing. Ocean gyres were filling with plastic. The population was increasing. The gap between the rich and the poor was growing wider. There was nuclear contamination. Haiti. Tibet. Afghanistan. Fucking Arizona! Health-care costs. Tuition. Peak oil. Fracking. Lobbyists. Corruption. Derivatives. Credit default swaps. Goldman Sachs. Glass-Steagall? Citizens United! Corporate tax loopholes. Corporate personhood laws. Corporate monopolies. Hell, we were all living in Pottersville!