Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/119

CHAPTER 6. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—THE HOPI 106 Lettuce is the main crop in the part of the valley where I live. The efficient farmer discs, drags, scrapes and floats his land over and over until it is really level. In this southwest everything runs southwest. The field is separated into "lands" about 35 feet wide. Often rye or other green grass is planted and then sheep graze at 4c per head per day. It is irrigated again and again as the sheep graze. Then it is disced and the remaining green and the sheep manure add to the value of the soil. When once water is ordered, it generally takes a day and a night to irrigate a large field. I have irrigated by myself at night in this fresh ground. No matter how careful you may be, the water will tend to furrow in on one side or the other and miss the opposite side. Mormons and Mexicans are the best irrigators. The expert knows just where to put the "checks," extending out like arms from each side to divert the water so that no dry land remains. You may have from two to six lands running at once depending upon the volume of water. First you put a "tarp" of canvas across the ditch, leaning it against sticks and banking it around with dirt making a dam; and generally, further down the ditch, it is well to put a second tarp in case the first one leaks or washes out.

Walking around in this mud to make new checks or to plug up a gopher hole where water is going in the wrong direction, your shins become sore with the rubbing of the boot tops against them. The shift is generally 12 hours at 60 to 70 cents an hour.

After the ground has been soaked, vegetation, which includes the weed seeds, is thus given the chance to grow and then is disced under. When the weather is just right for planting special machines make straight, level beds about 2 feet across, with irrigation runs in between. The lettuce comes up on the very edge of each side of this bed. First come the thinners who generally work by contract and thin out the lettuce to one head every 14 inches. Afterwards it is found that in many places there are two heads or what is called "doubles." These are then thinned. All this is done with a short hoe; handle about 2 feet long. A worker on the end of a long handle tends to get careless and chop anything in sight if the lettuce is small. Later, when the lettuce is bigger, long hoes are used to cut the weeds and grass. The reason hundreds of people have to work at this job is that the weeds have to be removed before the next irrigation, and then you have to wait a few days until the ground is dry. Meanwhile, at daylight or dusk when there is little wind, an airplane dusts the field to kill bugs and worms. Every season some of these dusters are killed and the planes are wrecked. A liquid fertilizer in tanks is emptied gradually in the irrigation water at the intake. The advantage of having a large farm is that at times the run-off water from one field is used on the next field—or in some cases far out in the desert it is saved in reservoirs. Otherwise the water runs back in the lateral and is sold to another farmer.

When a good proportion of the lettuce has solid heads, and especially if the price is high, the long, yellow trailers are at the end of the field. Three men line up on each side of the trailer and two behind it and it is pulled slowly by a small tractor or, if the ground is wet, by a small caterpillar. The tool used