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their aunts fill her bucket to the top first, and the race would
be on. Who would be next to get a full bucket? Perhaps the
emotions of greed and envy played a part in their increased
incentive to pick? The children soon became proud to be major
contributors to the harvest. Anyone who grew up in a farmingtype community knows how much work harvesting is. In that
culture, if you did your share of the work, you felt like you
belonged to something.
As you can see, some traditions are hard work. We would
try our best as adults to have fun and to make it fun for the
youngsters and anyone coming in new to the arrangement. It
was a great joy to see the cousins able to get to spend time
together growing up. Out of thirty-seven grandchildren, many
of them still have a strong brother/sister kind of bond today as
a result of the good times they had during those picking
moments. The adults also treasured their time to exchange in
conversation while they picked together in the same section. It
was a rich, enchanting social gathering as well as a harvesting
ritual.
The wives took on the role of coordinating with each of the
families on who would attend and what each family would
bring for lunches. Then they decided where we would meet to