When we learned it was peach season here in Palisade, CO we knocked on doors until we scored ourselves a gig.
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The next three weeks or so, we’ll work full time harvesting 20 acres of peaches, and we’ll sleep right here, near the orchard. This income will help sustain us the next leg of our journey.
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Until then, it’s all peach fuzz and sweat and sore muscles. But, we love it, we really do. Work should be balanced between the body and the mind.

In the longstanding tradition of hobo culture, we took a seasonal job harvesting peaches on a small orchard.
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It’s a bumper crop this year, which means that the fruit is falling fast from the trees. We hustle to gather ’em up, peach fuzz itchy under our collars, the sun blaring down on our crowns at noon. There’s thousands of them.
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This tractor ride back, the coolness of evening on our cheeks, is when we heave a sigh of relief, that the picking is done til tomorrow. The trees wait here for us to return at dawn.

At 5am, the alarm vibrates its steady quiver in the darkness of our sheets.
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The doves in the peach trees out back aren’t yet awake, but the coffee is hot and the day is still crisp.
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We walk out into the peach orchard as in a dream, greeting this day of harvesting. Saturday or Monday are the same now; time is told by the trees. Our seasonal work focuses in on sweet fruit of the land, sunlight transformed into the peachy sugar nectar of summer.

We have worked on 13 farms since hitting the road. From butchering chickens, to milking goats, to, now harvesting peaches, we’ve made a hearty income as hobos working the land.
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The word Hobo entered American slang in the 1890s to describe a certain subculture of migrant laborers who traveled through rural towns for seasonal hire.
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Tramps only worked occasionally, when they had to, Bums didn’t work at all. But hobos followed the seasons, peaches in August, grapes in September. October brought apples and pumpkins. And, by golly, when the weather turned rough up there in the foggy west, it was time to hop trains south for citrus season.
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Life for us today isn’t so different, reliant on the land and on movement to create energy and sustenance for a ramblin’ life on the road

An estimated 10% of the harvestable food crop in our country will fall to the ground this year due to lack of labor. Five acres of peaches are rotting under the trees of this farm alone because we couldn’t get to them on time.
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“Nobody wants work like this,” Tom, the owner of the orchard, told us. “Guess it’s too tough for Americans.”
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It’s true; we’re the only white workers out picking. Everyone else came from Mexico to harvest, many through government programs that truck migrant laborers across the border. We’re grateful for this job. It’s good to be outside and moving, and the long hours deliver much needed cash to our bank accounts.

Saturday dawn under the bus. A clink of wrenches; slick and grimy grease; that clean and satisfied moment when the .006 feeler gauge passes through the valve gap.
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Small as they are, these sensations are rituals,habits that connect amateur mechanics deeply to their vehicles, and therefore, their locomotion. This is the early morning work of ultimate freedom.

This heifer calf is named Morning Glory and she loves overripe peaches.
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When picking’s done for the day, I always head straight for the cattle paddocks to share the unmarketable fruit with the animals.
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Good farms revolve in circles. They have no waste stream. Extra fruit goes to the cows and rabbits, one orchard’s surplus energy feeding other forms of life in a beautiful and cyclical dance of energy

Tomorrow we’re back on the road, heading to a place we haven’t seen before and will probably never see again.
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The taste of Palisade Peaches is juicy on our tongues, but we’ve gotta be moving, rambling on. The world’s so big and we’ve got so much left to see.