Harvest Gypsies

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
There’s apricots in Santa Clare
Kern County they have apples there
And grapes they’re growing everywhere
All for the harvest gypsies
(Instrumental)
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
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
And the gondolas and railway lines
Filled with men when it is time
Drawn by the orange and the lime
All harvest gypsies
(Instrumental)
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