continuous damn hard work. There is no rest in the growing season: Tim and Anna hand-pick zucchini for two hours EVERY day -- and that's just the start of the work. A bit of tea and then time to snip the parsley, cut eggplant and rhubarb and complete whatever daily maintenance and cleanup is required. Today I spent an hour in the steaming greenhouse picking up all the rotting eggplant that had been trimmed off the stalks over the past weeks, and learned why Anna was so pleased that i was available (and willing) to do it:
rotting eggplant smells just like rotting meat.
Not quite as instant gag-producing as, for example, rotting chicken (just imagining that while writing those words turns my stomach), but foul enough. the skins are strong enough to hold the partially-rotten fruit together -- until you pick it up -- but the underside has often decayed thru, leaving behind a smear of brown...
I know that from now on, when i eat, I'll be thanking whoever grew and picked the food.
And speaking of picking food, another revelatory experience: went with Tim to deliver a load of vegetables to his local buyer, and everyone working there was Anglo. It was a genuine surprise for me to enter a labor-intensive operation and not see a single Hispanic laborer doing difficult dirty jobs. this again reminded me and reinforced the sad truth that more than most Americans want to realize, Hispanics -- often illegal and so, reviled by the right -- actually make America run, and we should thank them profusely instead of hounding and deporting them.
Just as most previous waves of laboring immigrants, once distrusted and resented by the previous arrivals -- Africans, Italians, Irish, Chinese, Germans, Japanese -- now see themselves as a vital and legitimate part of the American experience, i trust that the ridiculous onus of being "illegal" will someday be a badge of courage and contribution.
LOCAL HEADLINES OF THE DAY:
AGAIN: DO THE GRASSHOPPERS KNOW?
If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton
