Encountering Vegetables

Reflections by volunteer, Adrienne C., age 23.

Adrienne just completed her Masters in Education at Boston College, where she also received a B.A. in Education and Spanish. She will be teaching Spanish at a junior high in a suburb of Boston this fall.

Stanfordville, NY- June 3-4
There is something incredibly humbling about doing manual labor on the farm. It’s good, honest, dignified work that is 100% dependent on natural processes. I can’t really think of any other work that connects workers so intimately with nature. If the crops don’t grow, there’s nothing to pick; thus, there is no work. Despite human attempts to analyze the hell out of things like weather patterns, crop growth, volcanic activity, etc., we are still ultimately subject to the whims of Mother Nature.

At the end of 3 or 3.5 hours harvesting, plucking, weeding, cutting, we were sweaty, tired, and ready for a break. Fortunately, the beauty of upstate New York and the pool at St. Margaret’s awaited us. As I was running along the back roads of Stanfordville, I thought about all of the men, women, and children who have no choice but to labor in the fields day in, day out. We are in New York-- they are in Southern California and other areas where the climate is more temperate and the sun’s rays more determined. We get to escape to air conditioning and return to our comfortable quarters while they retreat to crowded apartments, overzealous immigration officials, and the imminence of getting up and doing the same thing for ten or more hours the next day. I hate to use the separating language of “we” and “they” that draws attention to migrant farm workers’ “otherness,” but it is naïve to go through life thinking that there is a common set of experiences for all people.

What do I take from this? An appreciation that goes into each piece of fruit, ear of corn, and glass of juice I consume. Someone, somewhere labored to afford me this privilege. Chances are, they worked for something lower than minimum wage and toiled for more hours than is permissible by law. Additionally, and of more importance, I am in a unique position to influence hundreds, if not thousands of young people through my chosen career path. By educating my students about the injustices that many people endure so that a nice, ripe Dole banana could be eaten for breakfast in a kitchen in Acton, Massachusetts, I have a small hand in making the world more just. After all, someone taught even the greatest of leaders, from Dorothy Day to Cesar Chavez to Barack Obama, before they grew into successful, influential adults.

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