Caesar Chavez Is My New Hero

                                           My battle scars from picking grapes.

Before I even moved to Arizona in the early 1970s,  labor organizer Caesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers organized boycotts, including of grapes, in support of farmworkers, primarily in the California valleys.  He and his organization worked to ban the short-handled hoe, an implement requiring workers to bend and stoop all day long.  It was a bitter fight which went up to the California Supreme Court before agricultural interests bowed to worker safety.

Here in Wise County, we've had too much rain for the grapes and some are starting to rot

so Suzanne and David have been frantically picking, along with kinfolk, volunteers and a few college students who seem to appear when they need money.

 Josh goes to UVA Wise and is quite pleasant to work with, though AARP eligible as I am, I can outpick him.

Of course, his body won't ache like mine will.  

Picking grapes isn't rocket science but it's tedious, hard, back-breaking labor.  I can manage two or three hours and then I'm achy all over, requiring aspirin and a long soak in the tub.  Gloves hinder my productivity, but I seem to be a klutz and draw blood.  Suzanne and David don't have the luxury of quitting the row, taking their clippers, and going home.  Pick or perish.

Row after row of grapes in three vineyards in two counties.

Doesn't have that manicured appearance that we see in the publicity photos of California vineyards....or even those we have on our own website.  It's harvest time.  All energy goes into picking, not making it look pretty.  And, larger vineyards, especially those in agricultural areas such as Napa, draw upon those evil illegal alien migrants as their picking labor.  Lots of food wouldn't get to our tables without those migrants.   

About 10 acres altogether.  Doesn't sound like much, but many suburban houses sit on about one-fifth of an acre...and the house takes up a good bit of that one-fifth. 

The basics are straightforward.

Great technique, Judy!

Notice my picking outfit...stylish. 

 Five gallon buckets.....

 Go into the white bin, which then goes by tractor to the winery, where grapes are pressed into juice.

The bunches of grapes in the local supermarket are so innocent looking, as if they'd practically fall off the vine, if you asked nicely.  But on the vine, in the vineyard, they can be obdurate.

 Tendrils twine around, grasping another twig, forcing me to work my hand up and around.  Multiple bunches meld one into another, so when I cut one one bunch, it hangs on for dear life to the other. 

Not easy picking....  Thank you Caesar Chavez for organizing farmworkers and making their lives less miserable.