Farm Work Quotes

We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure

I was in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas. I've argued for Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the United Farm Workers. I've been a radical for a long time. I guess it's too bad. I'd be more marketable as a right-wing redneck. But I got into this to tell the truth as I saw it.

I was working on the farm to get in shape, about a mile away from my parents. You know, I did everything as a kid to stay in shape - jogging, work on the farm, driving the tractor. I'll never forget.

In his new autobiography, 'Capital Gaines,' Chip talks about the farm work - and he says he does, in fact, do it himself.

To this day, I hate walnuts and I hate onions because on weekends when the walnuts and onions were in season, we were out there first thing in the morning and out there until the sun went down topping onions or picking walnuts.

We need a president who understands the contributions and values of rural America, a president who understands the men and women who are up at 5 a.m. every day to grow the food that we put on our tables.

The only thing the Socialist [Communist] party could do for the peasant--said the Bolsheviks--was to help organize the paid agricultural laborers.

Were the workers who sweated to put food on my table paid at least minimum wage? Did they get health benefits? Overtime? Were they unionized? Protected from pesticide exposure?

Among poor people, there's not any question about women being strong -- even stronger than men -- they work in the fields right along with the men. When your survival is at stake, you don't have these questions about yourself like middle-class women do.

I was blessed to grow up on a farm, and when you're a farm boy, exercise is part of your lifestyle. Like it or not, that environment makes you work out. On the farm, nature is your gym. You walk and run and swim and have to do a lot of work with animals too.

The Industrial Revolution did not spell the end of agriculture, or even the end of food production, in the United States. It just meant that a much smaller percentage of Americans had to work on farms to feed the population.

I - I try to do as much as I can, wherever I am. So, at the farm, I'm always thinking of some new project, some new thing I can do.

I feel closest to God with a pitchfork full of crap in my hands. I'm serious!

I would hate to live in the country, unless I was living on a farm.

I love weights, but it's too far to get to the gym. So I make the farm my gym: I split wood and haul tires and do work on the farm, and that's sort of my weight training portion.

Food service workers, home care workers, farm workers, and other low-wage workers log long hours. They come home tired after providing services and producing goods that make our country stronger. They deserve fair treatment from their employers, and they deserve a voice in collective bargaining.

My days are spent wrangling children, chipping dried manure from boots, washing jeans, and frying calf nuts.

My grandparents back in Kentucky owned a tobacco farm. So, to make money in the summer, we could cut and chop and top and house and strip the tobacco.

My father was in charge of managing the farm.

There are vivid memories from my childhood - what we had to go through because of low wages and the conditions, basically because there was no union. I suppose, if I wanted to be fair, I could say that I'm trying to settle a personal score. I could dramatize it by saying that I want to bring social justice to farm workers.

Farm workers are society's canaries. Farm workers - and their children - demonstrate the effects of pesticide poisoning before anyone else.

I would prefer to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help farmers with their work - for example a lawnmower.

I worked on a farm for a little bit.

My first job was cleaning sheep pens.

The tillage of the soil occupies the vast majority of those who work for their own bread.