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 came because we must
We were driven here by dust
And they won't even look at us
We're only harvest gypsies

There's apricots in Santa Clare
In Kern County, they have apples there
And the grapes, they're growing everywhere
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

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

The gondolas and railway lines
Filled with men when it is time
Drawn by the orange and the lime
All the 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 I will again
To miss the soil's a curious pain
When you're a harvest gypsy