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