Hay stack and automobile of peach pickers, Delta County, Colorado

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Peach pickers gathered around a hay stack and a parked automobile make this scene of Delta County, Colorado, stand out from the usual farm views on the board. Delta County sits on the Western Slope, where irrigated orchards along the Gunnison and Uncompahgre rivers produced large crops of peaches in the early twentieth century. Seasonal labor at harvest time brought families and migrant workers into the valleys, and their simple camps, wagons and cars often appear in documentary photographs of the period. The picture is worth a close look for the way the hay stack, the machine and the workers together show how orchard work and farm life overlapped.

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