Pastures of Plenty

"Pastures of Plenty" was written and first performed by Woody Guthrie some time in 1941. It is sung from the perspective of migrant farm worker who is arguing the essential importance of laborers, workers, and other marginalized peoples that were often overlooked or dismissed by the rich and powerful. It is written to the tune of Pretty Polly, an English ballad that had been identified and collected by Cecil Sharp in both the southern Appalachians and the United Kingdom.

Lyrics
It's a mighty hard row that my poor hands have hoed

My poor feet have traveled a hot dusty road

Out of your Dust Bowl and Westward we rolled

And your deserts were hot and your mountains were cold

I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes

I slept on the ground in the light of the moon

On the edge of the city you'll see us and then

We come with the dust and we go with the wind

California, Arizona, I harvest your crops

Well its North up to Oregon to gather your hops

Dig the beets from your ground, cut the grapes from your vine

To set on your table your light sparkling wine

Green pastures of plenty from dry desert ground

From the Grand Coulee Dam where the waters run down

Every state in the Union us migrants have been

We'll work in this fight and we'll fight till we win

It's always we rambled, that river and I

All along your green valley, I will work till I die

My land I'll defend with my life if it be

Cause my pastures of plenty must always be free

Analysis
Woody Guthrie wrote "Pastures of Plenty" from the perspective of a migrant farm worker, a life with which he was intimately familiar as he spent much of the 1930s wandering the the western United States as an "Okie", "Okie" being a derogatory term used against migrants from Oklahoma and the surrounding states that had been severely impacted by the Dust Bowl. The intended audience - the "you" and "your" referred to in the song - seems to be Americans, especially on the West Coast, who might take for granted the labor and effort expended by farm workers in bringing food to the tables of American families, and who might regard the workers as unimportant or even a nuisance. The final verse of the song is especially politically charged. Guthrie refers to the land he labored on as a migrant worker - and perhaps the land of the United States itself - as "my land" which he will "defend with my life". The notion is that the land itself belongs to the workers and the laborers, and not the "landowners", a socialist-tinged belief that Guthrie also expresses in the latter verses of his more famous This Land is Your Land.

Themes & Connections

 * Great Depression
 * Dust Bowl
 * Labor Movement
 * Migration

Other Versions and Performers
Pastures of Plenty, like most of Woody Guthrie's most famous songs, has been performed by a large number of artists, including many famous artists of the folk music genre of the 1950s and 1960s such as Pete Seeger, Odetta, and Bob Dylan.