What Picking Cherries Taught Me as California Reconsiders Farmworker Legacy

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When I think back on my childhood summers, a few activities stand out: reading lots of library books, watching The Price is Right, and picking cherries.

I was about eight or nine years old the first time my dad woke my brother and me up at dawn and took us out to work in cherry orchards that surrounded my hometown in Eastern Washington.

I remember lying down in the backseat, trying to capture a few more minutes of sleep before we’d arrive and park among the rows and rows of trees, strap a metal bucket to our chests, and embark on a full day of filling that bucket over and over. My dad and brother, who is a year older than I am, often handled the higher branches that required using a ladder, while I excelled at the low-hanging fruit. We’d come home covered in dirt and exhausted.

Last month, California lawmakers renamed a state holiday on March 31 to Farmworkers Day after the New York Times published allegations that now-disgraced labor rights icon Cesar Chavez had abused young women.

The renaming happened swiftly. Lawmakers called the change “long overdue” as if we are rectifying a wrong that should have been fixed years ago. But, to me, this incident reinforces how farmworkers have been marginalized, discriminated against, and overlooked for centuries in the United States since the time enslaved people did most farm work.

My hope would be that this holiday becomes a substantive and longstanding tradition, but I’m skeptical. We have Mother’s Day, but research shows that moms are some of the most overworked, undercompensated and stretched-thin members of society. But, hey, we love our moms!

The same type of hollow praise could happen to farmworkers. Farm labor is considered a category separate from all other types of jobs, hence that unartful term “nonfarm jobs” that makes up most jobs in America.

According to an explainer from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, “The answer may go back to early America. Highly seasonal, farming has always had a special place in our history — and our hearts.”

Farm labor is hard to count because workers include farmers, their family members and hired workers who are often seasonal employees. Oh, and a lot of them lack proper authorization to work in the country, so that makes them harder to account for.

Plenty of other industries hire seasonal workers and hire undocumented workers, and yet they are counted. Instead, separating farm work from other categories makes it easier for employers to exploit workers and for consumers to build up a protective wall of ignorance. Americans might balk at buying a sweater made by a child in India, but we’re okay eating produce picked by children in our own communities.

U.S. diets and the economy depend on the food harvested here, but Americans, by and large, prefer to look away and not have to recognize farmworkers to the extent we should.

Californians take pride in being a state that feeds the rest of the nation with our produce. This state is home to more farmworkers than any other state, with about 800,000 seasonal and full-time workers each year, representing about 2.2 percent of the state’s workforce.

“There has not been a farmworker movement for decades,” said Miriam Pawel, a journalist who has written two books about the United Farm Workers on an episode of Forum that aired days after the New York Times investigation was published. “Declaring something as Farmworker Day instead of Cesar Chavez Day doesn’t really do anything for the farmworkers in the fields who are working in very tough conditions right now.”

Farm work has been a job that we regard as something you do if you’re desperate and have no other options, instead of regarding it as a job worthy of dignity and respect because of how hard it is.

Looking away from farm work is another way that the labor and economic contributions of immigrants and Latinos are erased. But for many Mexican American families, farm work has served as an accessible stepping stone to achieve the American Dream. Despite the grueling hours and low pay, thousands of families, like my own, have had farmwork in our history.

A few years ago, photos of graduates donning their cap and gowns surrounded by orchards went viral. The graduates in regalia, contrasting with the lush green of fruit trees, were both visually and emotionally striking because farm work and education come off as incompatible, as opposites. The images conveyed the message that leaving the fields equates to progress, but those images also conveyed gratitude for parents who taught their children what hard work looks like and that the returns can be worth so much more than a paycheck.

Those weeks picking cherries were what we might now call a side hustle, but they were among the most formative experiences of my life.

We’d usually spend a few weeks doing this while my dad took vacation from his regular job at a potato processing plant. My parents were very explicit that the reason for taking us to the fields was to teach us the value of hard work and what adults had to do to make money.

The lessons from those summers in the fields informed so much of my work ethic and the value of manual labor. I also had the privilege of knowing that my days picking cherries were numbered. I would eventually return to school, and if I earned good grades, my parents told me, I would have other career options. But I also knew there were many people who would spend their whole working lives in the fields.

Whenever I buy cherries, I think about how each little bunch was probably picked by someone — a real person, like me — who deserves to be compensated for their hard work. And for that, we have to keep the fight alive and make sure state holidays and words of praise have substance. It means not looking away from farm work and giving that occupation the respect it deserves.