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Christina and Mauricio, two folks in their 20s with deep ties to Watsonville, started gleaning for somewhat different reasons. They talked about the multiple, nuanced connections in their lives (and family histories) to gleaning. Their candor and their commitment come through in their descriptions of their relationship to gleaning, their efforts to expand the ranks of gleaners to be more representative (particularly of the Watsonville area), and in the connections they make between their lives and politics and their family histories.Christina talked about her mother and father's sides of the family. Her mother identifies with her Irish roots. Her father has mixed Mexican and Russian heritage. There was tension between the two families, she says, because her mother's side of the family disapproved of Christina's father. And there was a certain tension within her father between the Russian capitalist and the Mexican sides of his background. Christina talked about the complex heritage of her mother's Michigan farm roots, her urban San Diego childhood, and her father's early history of work as a saboteur and spy for the UFW during the farm worker strikes. She traces some of her interest in growing food to her mother and her mother's mother. But when she thinks of fields and field work, she thinks of the injustices her father told her about, not about the Michigan corn fields on her mother's side of the family. Her father's two heroes, he told her, were Cesar Chavez and Jesus Christ. The lessons he passed on to Christina from Chavez were peace (including peaceful resistance), tolerance (accepting difference), and giving back to your community. Her aunt and uncle started the Cesar Chavez Service Clubs which have spread from San Diego throughout southern California.Mauricio's mother and father came from farming families in central Mexico. The main crop was corn on his mother's side and guavas on his father's. Together, his parents immigrated illegally to California. Mauricio remembers the cornfields and storms from early in his childhood, when his family returned to visit their families in Mexico. And he remembers the collective process of scraping the kernels from the dried ears of colorful corn. His father was politically active, fighting for water rights for their community when a US oil company sought to move into the region, threatening both land and water. The cruelties of agribusiness impacted both families and led to his parents leaving Mexico. Of the 7 children in the family, only Mauricio and one older brother were born in this country. Though his father died when Mauricio was 8, he passed on his political passion to Mauricio.Remarkable and very rich stories.
Listen to Christina and Mauricio's Stories
Nick grew up in the Santa Clara Valley when it was "The Valley of Heart's Desire", full of orchards and fruit canneries. Both the Croat and Russian (Volga German) sides of his family came to California around the turn of the century and went into fruit farming. Nick picked apricots, sold his grandfather's apples at a ramshackle roadside stand, and worked summers at the canneries putting himself through college. Then, as the developers were moving into the valley, the orchards were being uprooted, the canneries were relocating to their new fruit sources, and "The Valley of Heart's Desire" morphed into "Silicon Valley", Nick followed a similar trajectory into software design.
Listen to Nick's Stories
For this inaugural Friday glean, fewer than 30 gleaners met at the Giant Artichoke in Castroville and caravaned to a field a few miles south owned by Ocean Mist. Henry pulled the flatbed truck up close to the field, so we didn't have to carry our baskets too far. A couple of the young men tended the bins on the truck and saved our backs by exercising theirs. The comraderie was wonderful. A breeze kicked up, making a balmy day even more pleasant. With fewer gleaners than the Saturday gleans have been getting, it took the whole morning to fill the 6 big cardboard bins with over 5000 pounds of lettuce. Fortunately, there were more nice solid, rot-free heads to glean than there were last time.One of the highlights of the glean was the Brunson family who worked well together. The daughter, Janie, is blind, a Braille competition champion, and an inveterate reader and creative writer. Another highlight was the chance to talk to Ag Against Hunger driver Henry Arias. He talked about his 40-year career with an ice company and about the changes he saw in produce refrigeration and handling.
Listen to stories from the September 4th glean
The day threatened to be hot and humid, with a whiff of smoke in the air from the fires to the south. The field was one of Ocean Mist's near Castroville, just a short drive from the Giant Artichoke where we all met. Plenty of iceberg lettuce left in the field, so with 50 or so gleaners working together, we made short work of filling the 9 big cardboard bins on the flatbed truck: an hour and a half to cut, clean, carry, and load over 8000 pounds of lettuce. With two microphones, we collected some fun stories: one of the gleaners running from bull oxen in a sweet potato field in S. Korea; another doing “urban gleaning” of bread and pastry from grocery stores in San Jose for the food pantry; mother-daughter teams working with the homeless and hungry; and the field manager explaining some of the huge changes that heightened concern about food safety has brought to the fields; and more. Two of our project members from Seattle were down helping out: Rusten's sister Suze and her friend/intern Kenya. They gleaned a while, then grabbed a microphone and headed out to collect stories, too.
Listen to stories from the August 29th glean
