Success with Small Fruits

by Edward Payson Roe

The houses soon grew scattering, and the wide, level, open country stretched away before us, its monotony broken here and there by groves of pine. The shell road ceased and our wheels now passed through many deep puddles, which in Virginia seem sacred, since they are preserved year after year in exactly the same places. A more varied class of vehicles than we met from time to time would scarcely be seen on any other road in the country. There were stylish city carriages and buggies, grocer and express wagons, great lumbering market trucks laden with barrels of early cabbages, spring wagons, drawn by mules, piled up with crates from many a strawberry field in the interior, and so, on the descending scale, till we reach the two-wheeled, primitive carts drawn by cows—all converging toward some Northern steamer, whose capacious maw was ready to receive the produce of the country. We had not proceeded very far before we saw in the distance a pretty cottage, sheltered by a group of tall, primeval pines, and on the right of it a large barn-like building, with a dwelling, office, smithy, sheds, etc., grouped about it. A previous visit enabled me to point out the cottage as the home of the proprietor, and to explain that the seeming barn was a strawberry crate manufactory. As was the case on large plantations in the olden time, almost everything required in the business is made on the place, and nearly every mechanical trade has a representative in Mr. Young's employ.

As we drove up under the pines, the proprietor of the farm welcomed us with a cordial hospitality, which he may have acquired in part from his residence in the South. On the porch stood a slender lady, whose girlish grace and delicate beauty at once captivated the artists of our party.

There was the farm we had come to see, stretching away before us in hundreds of green, level acres. As we drove to a distant field in which the pickers were then engaged, we could see the ripening berries with one side blushing toward the sun. Passing a screen of pines, we came out into a field containing thirteen acres of Wilson strawberries, and then more fully began to realize the magnitude of the business. Scattered over the wide area, in what seemed inextricable confusion to our uninitiated eyes, were hundreds of men, women, and children of all ages and shades of color, and from the field at large came a softened din of voices, above the monotony of which arose here and there snatches of song, laughter mellowed by distance, and occasionally the loud, sharp orders of the overseers, who stalked hither and thither, wherever their "little brief authority" was most in requisition.

We soon noted that the confusion was more apparent than real, and that each picker was given a row over which he—or, more often, she—bent with busy fingers until it was finished. At central points crates were piled up, and men known as "buyers" received the round quart baskets from the trays of the pickers, while wide platform carts, drawn by mules, were bringing empty crates and carrying away those that had been filled.

Along the road that skirted the field, and against a pretty background of half-grown pines, motley forms and groups were moving to and fro, some seeking the "buyers" with full trays, others returning to their stations in the field with a new supply of empty baskets. Some of the pickers were drifting away to other fields, a few seeking work late in the day; more, bargaining with the itinerant venders of pies, made to last all summer if not sold, gingerbread, "pones," and other nondescript edibles, at which an ostrich would hesitate in well-grounded fear of indigestion, but for which sable and semi-sable pickers exchange their berry tickets and pennies as eagerly as we buy Vienna rolls. Two or three barouches and buggies that had brought visitors were mingled with the mule-carts; and grouped together for a moment might be seen elegantly attired ladies from New York, slender mulatto girls, clad in a single tattered, gown which scantily covered their bare ankles and feet, and stout, shiny negro women, their waists tied with a string to prevent their flowing drapery from impeding their work. Flitting to and fro were numberless colored children, bare-headed, bare-legged, and often, with not a little of their sleek bodies gleaming through the innumerable rents of their garments, their eyes glittering like black beads, and their white teeth showing on the slightest provocation to mirth. Indeed, the majority of the young men and women were chattering and laughing much of the time, and only those well in the shadow of age worked on in a stolid, plodding manner. Mingled indiscriminately with the colored people were not a few white women and children, and occasionally a white man. As a rule, these were better dressed, the white girls wearing sun-bonnets of portentous size, whose cavernous depths would make a search for beauty on the part of our artist a rather close and embarrassing scrutiny. The colored women as often wore a man's hat as any other, and occasionally enlivened the field with a red bandana. Over all the stooping, moving, oddly apparelled forms, a June-like sun was shining with summer warmth. Beyond the field a branch of Tanner's Creek shimmered in the light, tall pines sighed in the breeze on the right, and from the copse-wood at their feet quails were calling, their mellow whistle blending with the notes of a wild Methodist air. In the distance rose the spires of Norfolk, completing a picture whose interest and charm I have but faintly suggested.

Several of the overseers are negroes, and we were hardly on the ground before one of these men, in the performance of his duty, shouted in a stentorian voice:

"Heah, you! Git up dar, you long man, off'n yer knees. What yo' mashin' down a half-acre o' berries fer?"

Mr. Sheppard was quick to see a good subject, and almost in a flash he had the man posed and motionless in his attitude of authority, and under his rapid strokes Jackson won fame and eminence, going to his work a little later the hero of the field. The overseer's task is a difficult one, for the pickers least given to prayer are oftenest on their knees, crushing the strawberries, and whether they are "long" or short, much fruit is destroyed. North and South, the effort to keep those we employ off the berries must be constant, especially as a long, hot day is waning. Indeed, one can scarcely blame them for "lopping down," for it would be inquisitorial torture to most of us to stoop upon our feet through a summer day. Picking strawberries, as a steady business, is wofully prosaic.

While the sun had been shining so brightly there had been an occasional heavy jar and rumble of thunder, and now the western sky was black. Gradually the pickers had disappeared from the Wilson field, and we at last followed them, warned by an occasional drop of rain to seek the vicinity of the house. Having reached the grassy slope beneath the pines in the rear of the dwelling, we turned to note the pretty scene. A branch of Tanner's Creek came up almost to our feet, and on either side of it stretched away long rows of strawberries as far as the eye could reach. Toward these the throng of pickers now drifted, "seeking fresh fields and pastures new." The motley crowd was streaming down on either side of the creek, while across a little causeway came a counter current, the majority of them having trays full of berries. The buyers, like the traders with the nomad Indians, open traffic anywhere, and at the shortest notice. A mule-cart was stopped, a few empty crates taken off and placed under the pines at our feet, and soon the grass was covered with full quart baskets, for which the pickers received tickets and then passed on, or, as was often the case, threw themselves down in the shade. The itinerant venders came flocking in like so many buzzards. There was at once chaffering and chaffing, eating and drinking. All were merry. Looking on the groups before us, one would imagine that the sky was serene. And yet, frowning upon this scene of careless security, this improvident disregard of a swiftly coming emergency, was one of the blackest of clouds. Every moment the thunder was jarring and rolling nearer, and yet this jolly people, who "take no thought," heeded not the warning. Even the buyers and packers seemed infected with a like spirit, and were leisurely packing in crates the baskets of berries scattered on the grass, when suddenly Mr. Young, with his fleet, black horse, came flying down upon us. Standing up in his buggy, he gave a dozen rapid orders, like an officer on the field in a critical moment. The women, who had been lounging with their hands on their hips, shuffled off with their trays; half-burned pipes are hastily emptied; gingerbread and like delicacies are stuffed into capacious mouths, since hands must be employed at once. Packers, mules, everybody, everything, are put upon the double-quick to prepare for the shower. It is too late, however, for down come the huge drops as they can fall only in the South. The landscape grows obscure, the forms of the pickers in the distance become dim and misty, and when at last it lightens up a little, they have disappeared from the fields. There they go, streaming and dripping toward the barns and sheds, looking as bedraggled as a flock of black Spanish fowls. Such of the mule-drivers as have been caught, now that they are in for it, drive leisurely by with the heavy crates that they should have gathered up more promptly.

The cloud did not prove a passing one, and the rain fell so long and copiously that further picking for the day was abandoned. Some jogged off to the city, at a pace that nothing but a fiery storm could have quickened. A hundred or two remained under the sheds, singing and laughing. Men and women, and many bright young negro girls, too, lighted their pipes and waited till they could gather at the "paying booth," near the entrance of the farm, after the rain was over. This booth was a small shop, extemporized of rough boards by an enterprising grocer of the city. One side was open, like the counter of a restaurant, and within, upon the grass, as yet untrodden, were barrels and boxes containing the edible enormities which seem indigenous to the semi-grocery and eating-house. In most respects the place resembled the sutler's stand of our army days. There was a small window on one end of the booth, and at this sat the grocer, metamorphosed into a paymaster, with a huge bag of coin, which he rapidly exchanged for the strawberry tickets. Our last glimpse of the pickers, who had streamed out of the city in the gray dawn, left them in a long line, close as herrings in a box, pressing toward the window, from which came faintly the chink of silver.