Lyr Req/Add: Harvest Gypsies (Boo Hewerdine)

Subject: Lyr Req: Harvest Gypsies
From: astro
Date: 13 Dec 08 - 04:13 PM

I just heard this recently on Folk Alley online music stream. Is this a contemporary song or traditional? This was done by Kris Drever.

astro

Subject: Lyr Add: HARVEST GYPSIES (Boo Hewerdine)
From: MoorleyMan
Date: 14 Dec 08 - 09:08 AM

It's a Boo Hewerdine song actually.
Here's the words:

HARVEST GYPSIES
(Boo Hewerdine)

In October we will come
A hundred and fifty thousand strong
When the picking's over we'll be gone
They call us the harvest gypsies

We only come because we must
We are driven here by dust
And they won't even look at us
They call us the harvest gypsies

The hardest that it's ever been
I sold my blankets for gasoline
And it's only hunger I have seen
Now I'm a harvest gypsy

There's apricots in Santa Clare
Kern County they have apples there
And grapes they're growing everywhere
All for the harvest gypsies

In a walnut grove I met a man
Who lost a child before San Fran
We're strangers they don't understand
We are the harvest gypsies

And the gondolas and railway lines
Filled with men when it is time
Drawn by the orange and the lime
All harvest gypsies

They hate it when their taxes rise
And the squatter camps that they despise
Without us they would rot and die
Without the harvest gypsies

And the Holbrooks we were farming men
And I dream one day we will again
To miss the soil's a curious pain
When you're a harvest gypsy

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Harvest Gypsies (Boo Hewerdine)
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Dec 08 - 02:32 AM

MoorleyMan

These words really take me back to growing up in Idaho where migrant workers were used and many times abused by the locals, but were so important to getting the crops out. In most cases, they were just overlooked by us all and were invisible in some sense.

The humanity was not seen. The loneliness of being in a different country, underpaid, and definitely not appreciated by most. It shames me to some degree realizing the neglect from me and from family and neighbors.

Thanks for providing this...
astro (from Idaho), but for many years a transplant in California (where the same conditions exist)...

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Harvest Gypsies (Boo Hewerdine)
From: GUEST,Mike Morris minus cookie
Date: 16 Dec 08 - 11:22 AM

Harvest Gypsies was the title of a slim book by John Steinbeck (a collection of articles, really) detailing the plight of migrant workers in Depression-era California.

Subject: RE: req/ADD: Harvest Gypsies (Boo Hewerdine)
From: GUEST,astro
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 05:20 PM

I will look this up at the library...anyone who grows up in farmland US will see difficult lives right up close. There was a lot of drinking in the community of workers, which I always attributed to being a long way from home and loneliness...not a part the local community...

Thanks Mike...


Astro in Tucson for the holidays....

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/Add: Harvest Gypsies (Boo Hewerdine)
From: GUEST,Quebecker Fan of Steinbeck
Date: 22 Jan 17 - 09:23 AM

There is another song about the Harvest Gypsies. It was written and performed by Woodie Guthrie, and is titled "Dust Bowl Refugee". It is even more folksy than the Hewerdien song. Must listen!