Strawberries & Mockingbirds
Are we biting the hands that feed us? So many questions.
When I was a kid in Kansas, we grew strawberries that were about the size of acorns and almost as hard, so I was flabbergasted when I first saw California strawberries, perfectly red, juicy, blemish-free … and, oh so sweet. While Santa Barbara is not thought of as an agricultural area, strawberries are almost a billion dollar crop in the northern part of our county and about 90% of the world’s strawberries are grown in California.
Strawberries are fragile little fruits which demand to be picked with a gentle hand at exactly the right moment since they don’t continue to ripen after being picked, and the market doesn’t tolerate bruised, damaged or underripe berries. We berry-eaters want sweet perfection. On our tiny Kansas farm, we stopped growing strawberries … they just weren’t worth the effort it took to plant, grow and pick them.
North of us, where the strawberry fields are, houses are not as fancy, Hollywood stars seldom linger, and most cars are battered and long-lived. If you’ve never seen the modern process of growing strawberries, this short video is a fascinating look at how labor intensive the process is.
Notice how many of the workers are running …. they’re being paid by the box and generally make about $15 per hour.
“Picking strawberries is one of the lowest-paid, most brutal jobs in agriculture. … the men and women in the strawberry rows have to bend double to reach the berries, in raised beds about a foot high, covered in plastic. The pain of this labor is a constant, and it’s worse at the beginning of the season. Workers will say you just have to get through the first week, when your back hurts so much you can’t sleep, until your body adjusts and the pain somehow gets less.” — Civil Eats, by David Bacon, April 24, 2024
As the current administration begins to implement its deportation plans, these underpaid, hardworking people are afraid of being deported, even those who have valid documentation are afraid of being rounded up and sent somewhere else … perhaps, their country of origin … perhaps a concentration camp in Guantanamo.
They are staying home. For decades, California has fed the country by using cheap labor, primarily from Mexico, to put food on our tables.
A different life path
These are real people. Lucrecia C., originally from Oaxaca, could be one of our grandmothers. A piece of her story is told in this Green America article where she says:
“legal residents complain too much”
“The strawberry harvest looks easy enough, but once you try it, it’s hard. I don’t wish that kind of work on my worst enemy. When you’re young, you work hard and get tired, but once you get home and take a shower, you’re fine. Now that I’m old, I deal with arthritis and osteoporosis; my feet hurt, and they swell. Many workers have been permanently injured. I have a nephew who hurt his back working in the strawberries, and a cousin who died of pneumonia because we worked in the mud when it’s raining.”
The foremen now choose workers who can pick 100 to 130 boxes per day. I know one who only hires immigrants without papers because she says legal residents complain too much. They tell the ones without papers they’re going to call immigration officials or fire
them if they complain.
If this administration were truly motivated to remove criminals from our midst, why are they focused on immigrants? Numerous studies have shown that immigrants commit fewer crimes. Makes sense … the penalty for criminal activity includes deportation so each immigrant family’s welfare depends on the workers being free and able to work.
Plus, in 2022, the last year this statistic was calculated, U.S. immigrants contributed more than $579 billion in local, state, and federal taxes. The ones who don’t become citizens will never collect any but the most basic benefits (public school and emergency health treatment) of our social network. (See table attached.)
Turning Points
For so many of us, November 5, 2024, was a turning point. I am just now coming out of the fog of trying to figure out what to do. This week, a message from a local women’s group asked for help for farm workers who are being targeted and afraid to go to work.
That message sparked a resolve to help some of our weakest neighbors who are now living in fear. How will they feed themselves and keep a roof over their heads? It doesn’t seem as if this billionaire-rich administration cares.
I recently set up a Buy Me a Coffee store and have decided to dedicate it to the immigrants who have helped build our country and keep us feed. All monies collected at this site will be contributed to the Santa Barbara Food Bank, a group that shares food throughout our county.
When I looked at my Buy Me a Coffee account which I haven’t used much, there was $75 there … that was just sent to the Food Bank. I’m putting my small word-and-image inspiration books in the Buy Me a Coffee store so anything you buy or donate there will go to feed hungry people.
The newest addition is “I want to be a mockingbird,” an homage to the talent and spirit of mockingbirds.
A few years ago, I wrote this poem inspired by the incredible talent and spirit of mockingbirds. While not gifted with bright plumage, these remarkable birds are smart enough to recognize humans and brave enough to attack intruders who threaten their young.
Later, it became a small chapbook shared with friends and family. Each two-line stanza is highlighted on a page of beautiful places that I’ve lived or visited. It seems like a good time to share it with all of you.
Mockingbirds do things their way. They borrow their songs from the world around them including other birds, musical instruments, car alarms, and environmental sounds. They sing almost constantly, even when we’d rather they didn’t (4 am serenades of up to 1,000 songs per hour can irritate even avid birders).
While this small, poetry chapbook is free and will be sent out as daily inspiration during the month of February, anything you donate will help feed the people who bring you strawberries.
As this bright, new year gets off to a rocky start, I think we’re going to need every morsel of beauty and courage we can gather.
And a few questions:
In the meantime, here are just a few of things I don’t understand about what’s going on in today’s political world:
Question #1: What’s the real purpose of immigrant roundups? If it’s supposed to be about getting rid of criminals, why are they focused on places of work … or schools … or churches?
Question #2: Are databases being scrubbed? I try to avoid conspiracy theories, so this is a hard question to ask. However, for this article, I went looking for the statistics I’ve seen often that say the crime rate of immigrants, legal or not, is lower than that of US citizens in general. I found links from the National Institute of Justice, a government agency, that looked like a trustable source. None of those links were still available.
Question #3: Why is the focus on working immigrants? While I support farmers and restaurant owners, I don’t understand why the brunt of this system falls on the workers trying to support their families and not at all on the employers who hire them. Under the heavy handed tactics of the current administration, we will all suffer … farmers, business owners, workers, as well as consumers.
Here’s what’s in the Buy Me a Coffee store right now … all money collected in this store will be donated to the Santa Barbara Food Bank.
A reader commented by email about the situation for mushroom growers and pickers. I asked her if I could share it here and she agreed. Here's what Barbara Ann Atkinson told us ...
"Here's another food product that soon you may no longer see: mushrooms. I moved to FL from north DE at the PA line. That area in PA is called the "mushroom capital of the world" for the numerous mushroom farms. And who do you imagine works there? Not Europeans. Not Asians. Not Blacks. And definitely not whites. Yep, Mexicans. They labor in horrible (smelly) conditions to send money back to their families in Mexico. And most of them are undocumented. I tutored a young Mexican for ELS who was striving for citizenship after he was able to leave the mushroom farms. He worked three jobs daily and was so delighted that he lived here in tthe USA. My heart is so sad for these hard working, humble people who are threatened by an idiot!. (sorry)"
When she gave me permission to print what she wrote, she added:
"AND you could add that so many of the mushroom farm owners will NOT allow ELS to teach them English. They are mainly housed on the farm in dorm-like conditions (dorm is too nice of a word)."
I was completely in the dark about mushroom agriculture so I was delighted to find this video which also gives us a deeper understanding of how the immigration system impacts agriculture.
I will never look at mushrooms the same way.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9NQ6VEciFk
Lessons from picking strawberries:
When I was 15, me and three others from my high school lied—yes, we lied—and said we were 16 to be old enough to go on a summer adventure away from the heat of southern Arizona. We signed up to go pick strawberries in Northern California. However, the contractor who signed us up, as a typical capitalist actually took us to near Hood River Oregon.
Here were four, under aged white liars living in tents among three different groups—primarily—blacks who do this every year, Hispanics who do this every year and older white males, almost all of which were alcoholics who had lost families because of alcohol.
That summer, not only did I observe and learn by picking strawberries and later cherries but started forming my beliefs about humanity which is always in a state of evolution as I learn more.
Some of the things I learned at the time:
1. Most of the best people I met were black.
2. Most of the worst were white.
3. The group most together were Hispanic and a mixture of wonderful to absolute asshole people. This was true of all three groups but more obvious with the Hispanics. Note: I’m not generalizing on each group but only sharing my observations from that summer.
4. The farmers were all white and did not give a damn about their pickers other than how they could use them to pick their crops.
5. I learned who B B King was because he wasn’t on my top 40 station at home.
6. I learned how the world looks from the bottom up.
7. I learned that a lot of people may have some empathy for these pickers but didn’t understand the full scope of their hardships because they were not pickers.
8. I learned so much more, knowledge that was amplified a year later when trying to pick potatoes in the blazing sun in Yuma, Arizona. Didn’t last long there. That was the year that high school students all over the state were exploited as sports teams, along with their coaches were recruited to replace braceros—Mexican pickers from Mexico—were banned that year by a racist government.
I’m not belittling this post. Just adding my input as an actual picker who wanted to get a summer away from home and had an educational experience.