Thanks-working

Even though it comes a day late, I write this blog post in keeping with the theme of Thanksgiving, so I'll mention a few of the things that I am grateful for.  I am thankful to Katy and Evan Vigil-McClanahan for hosting such a wonderful Thanksgiving gathering at their farm in Esparto.  This was only the second Thanksgiving in my life I've spent away from my family in Washington State, and so I really appreciated the company, conversation and the delicious food.  The oven-baked turkey rivaled the bird my dad usually BBQs, and the grits and gravy were a new addition to the Thanksgiving spread (I was excited about grits and gravy because a character from Dave Chapelle's 'World Series of Dice' sketch draws his name from that delicious dish).  This morning however I awoke feeling none too ready to slap some leftovers in a tupperware and hit the road at 6:30 AM for the trip up to the farm.  My overindulgence in the Thanksgiving feast led to my contraction of an obscure and somewhat serious ailment called Suttercountyitis, which though poorly researched is highly curable: the patient must not cross that county's boundary line until all the symptoms have passed.  I am giving myself until Monday to fully heal and recover from that illness.

Having a day (or in my case, due to the onset of Suttercountyitis, days off) off for a major holiday is not something I take for granted working in the field of agriculture, and I am thankful to have some time for myself.  It is safe to say that few of the conventions of what once were part of the typical American working life, such as 40 hour weeks, two day weekends, major holidays off and three weeks of vacation, actually exist for farmers or farmworkers.  One of the many tasks I do at Pleasant Grove farm is enter in time cards in a database, which contains information about how and where the employees spend their work days in order to account for labor costs of various crops and fields. This work, while not the most glamorous, opens a valuable window into agricultural labor.  During the harvest season, which began in October and ended on November 20th, the crew put in an astounding number of hours. Many worked seven days a week, for at least ten hours Monday through Saturday and eight on Sunday. Some even racked up close to 90 hours in one week.  That's a lot of time, but crops need to be harvested while the weather is good and the overtime pay really adds up for them.  For some, the idea is to earn as much money as possible during the growing season and then take three months off; others will spend the short winter working nine hour shifts five days a week in the farm's seed cleaning mill.  The farm closes for two weeks in December.

The approach of the two week farm closure, the end of harvest season, and Thanksgiving have brought up uncertainties I have about my own job at Pleasant Grove and have prompted some reflection on my own identity and the social context in which I work.  This began the previous Friday, when I spent the afternoon picking up pieces of roots in the old almond orchard with a few of farm's Mexican immigrant workers. My motivations for joining in this task were straightforward. I ate a really enormous chile colorado burrito at the Pleasant Grove Store for lunch and knew that if I returned to work in the office I would enter a deep food coma and become completely unproductive. I also figured after eating such a gargantuan mass of pork, cheese, rice, beans and flour getting some exercise couldn't hurt.  No one asked me to do this job, but I figured it would be fine since I have done other jobs that 'the guys' do, like driving a tractor and cutting up pieces of metal in the shop.  At other farms, like Full Belly in the Capay Valley where my friend Rawley works, I've weeded flower fields and washed carrots alongside the mostly Mexican crew.  I always appreciated the opportunity to converse in Spanish and learn about the lives of people who do the very important and very hard work of growing food. 

A major downside of my farm job is that I spend too much of my day alone. When I was doing rice irrigation, once Mike, my supervisor and the farm's rice expert, finished training me he stayed in the office and sent me out to check the irrigation pumps and the water depths in the field. Once irrigation season ended I worked in the office and sometimes went to the fields to cut samples of rice before harvest, two tasks I performed alone.  That's the nature of farming staple crops on a large scale: at Pleasant Grove farms there are less than 20 employees farming over 3,000 acres.  Compare this to Full Belly, whose crew of fifty farm 300 acres of higher value crops like tomatoes, melons and flowers.  I have always liked working outside and I often enjoy the solitude that farming offers.  The expansive fields and vistas of the mountains offer refreshing moments to contemplate the world without having to attend to hundreds of elementary students and their boundless energy as I did at my old job. But on those days when I spend hours listening to my iPod while I count, sort and weigh rice samples, I yearn for company other than overplayed songs.  During my short stint pulling almond roots out of the old orchard I really appreciated the increased level of human interaction.  I got to know a few of the workers, contemplated the term of address wey and developed more of a sense of community on the farm.

As a student of anthropology, I am well aware that everything exists in a cultural context and the farm where I work is no exception.  The world of a large-scale--albeit organic--farming operation in the Sacramento Valley of California is very different from the places I've worked and lived before.  I grew up in Seattle's white upper middle class liberal culture; when I lived in the East Bay I experienced the area's activist community and worked for many years in a predominately Latino school in the working-class town of Hayward.  As I imagined before I ever crossed the county line, the racial and political realities in Sutter County are very different.  I am just beginning to uncover more about the community where I work and how its racial codes, gender norms and social values operate.  Even though I like my co-workers on the farm, there are good reasons why I cross back to Sacramento County every day after work: I feel much more comfortable living in a city and all it has to offer: bikeable neighborhoods, amenities like food co-ops and yoga studios and a greater diversity of people. Because of the emptiness of rice county, it is wonderful living somewhere where my chances of encountering another human being are infinitely higher. 

I'd like to return to the theme of gratitude which I began this blog post.  I feel very fortunate have embarked on this journey into the world of agriculture which began nearly two years ago when I was accepted into the UCSC Farm and Garden Apprenticeship.  I am thankful for the opportunity to work on a farm in the Sacramento Valley and gain some insights into its' agricultural and social realities.  Regardless of how my position at Pleasant Grove Farms evolves I've come to appreciate much about this region.  Finally, I want to thank those that are reading this blog. It is a sort of therapy for me to collect thoughts, experiences and emotions, to attempt to make sense and find a way to express them.  I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.