fridaymay14,2004

Chicory Center Home

On-the-Fly Farms Update Bulletin #2:

Items for Sale or Barter;

Social Action - Day Labor

Hello from Bridgman!

This bulletin is brought to you by On-the-Fly Farms, a project of

the soon-to-be-renamed Chicory Center. C'mon out here and think up

a better name. Win a bunch of arugula or turnips!

Thus far, we've planted over 50 different crops at On-the-Fly. Big

stuff is in the "next field over" - pumpkins (sugar, white, and big

'uns), corn (blue and purple too), squash (these great ones called

red curri that make sweet pies, crookneck, straightneck), and many

varieties of pole and bush beans. Closer to home, there are five or

six different tomatoes, beefsteak and then heirlooms; turnips 

galore; three different carrots; fingerling and caribe and yellow 

russet potatoes; sunflowers of five varieties; black tomatoes too; black and

purple eggplants; moon and sun watermelons, as well as crimson 

sugar and crimson babies; and purple podded pole beans. B. is 

bringing out some Cherokee Trail of Tears Beans to plant, these 

are just as the name suggests, and surely come with a 

responsibility; cantaloupes and casabas; lettuce and mesclun and 

snow peas; zucchini and zinnias and patty pan squash; leeks!; 

three different cukes; and kale and many herbs and wildflowers! 

How's that for a start?? Now we're just in the middle of planting 

succession crops of, say, carrots, to provide more as the year 

goes on.

Two days ago, I signed up for the Bridgman Farmers' Market - may 

have a little arugula to sell with the coffee roasted here, come 

May 29, the first market!

So, what's available now??! Not many crops yet! Looks like the

blackberries and strawberries will be in about a month.

So for now, there is some mint, that smells like spearmint but is

fluffier-looking; our first crop! I will pick a big bunch for you,

for a dollar or a cookie.

To augment our first crop, we've still got home-roasted Zapatista

coffee; and freshly-roasted Maya Vinic decaf coffee, also from

Chiapas. The cost is $6 for a half-pound, $10 for a pound ($11 a

pound for decaf).

Still available from the Mut Vitz Cooperative, are 23 oz. jars of

honey, made by bees feasting on the coffee flowers on the Zapatista

coffee plants! Tasty. These are $7.

The other item, still available, is fairly-traded, organic olive 

oil from Palestine. This oil is a project of the Palestinian 

Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC). This olive oil costs $15 

for a 750 ml bottle, and is the tastiest olive oil! Part of the 

proceeds go to PARC's Rural Women's Development Project.

On another note, a few of us at On-the-Fly are involved with efforts

to support Day Laborers in Chicago. Day laborers congregate at a

dozen corners throughout the city, taking whatever work is 

available. This work might include moving services, construction, 

roofing, painting, lawn maintenance. Often, these workers - who 

come from all over the world, including Mexico, Central and South 

America, Puerto Rico, Mongolia, Korea, Poland, and many other 

lands - are exploited by the contractors and employers who hire 

them.

One way that day laborers are most reprehensibly exploited is when

they toil for a day, a week, or longer - and then are not paid AT

ALL. This type of exploitation is indeed of epidemic proportions;

it's happened to nearly every day laborer. In response to this

reality, the Latino Union has formed a Wage Theft Task Force,

continuing and formalizing a four-year effort of the Union.

Currently, C. and I are working on a case involving Martin and

Raul, both from Mexico. Martin and Raul worked for two weeks 

for a contractor who has refused to pay them in full; each is

owed around $800. The contractor, Teofil Dobre, is an immigrant

himself, from Romania, and though not rich, finds that by 

exploiting other immigrants - poorer immigrants of color - he can 

cut his costs.

Our efforts to support Martin and Raul have been many, without

evident success up to this point. But our visits to the contractors'

house, a proposed picket, numerous phone calls to the contractor,

filing charges with the Illinois Department of Labor, and other

tactics chosen by the workers, may have the cumulative effect of

wearing Teofil down. We cannot tolerate such blatant racism if we

choose to create and live in a just society.

A step Martin and Raul are considering now is filing charges in 

the Cook County Pro-Se Court. "Pro-Se" means "on one's own behalf,"

and in this court one can bring charges of up to $1,500 against a

defendant. In Pro-Se court, Martin and Raul would not rely upon

lawyers, but would make their own case. Proving Teofil's guilt 

would not be difficult, for he wrote two checks that bounced.

The step, one of many in a scenario repeated in dozens of situations

taken on the the Wage Theft Task Force, is the one that actually

comes with a steep cost, in the area of $140 per worker, perhaps

beyond what Martin and Raul can afford. If you would like to assist

this effort by chipping in for filing charges, let us know. (If you

would rather assist by joining a picket and neighbor-education

program outside Teofil's house, let me know about that too!)

I hope that this mix of farming news and social action is to your

tastes. It seems that justice must be sought in a variety of ways.

If you would like to order mint, coffee, honey, or olive oil right

now, or assist the efforts of the day laborers, send an email, or

call. If you compost at home, or would be willing to set aside your kitchen scraps, On-the-Fly would be glad to take your

scraps out of the waste stream and out to the farm. Deliveries are

available Sunday evening or Monday, May 16 and May 17.

On-the-fly,

David