In the Fields: Workers get used to hard work

SOMERTON — It's five in the morning, and Juvenal Flores gets up for another day of work harvesting lettuce in the fields near this city.

The apartment he shares with three co-workers from Fresh Harvests comes alive as they rise, prepare their lunches and get ready to go to work.

Outside their apartment, Somerton wakes with the sounds of trucks that come and go with farmworkers on their way to the fields. One of those trucks takes Juvenal and his three roommates to work.

"We're all used to working in the fields," Flores said. "I've been working so long it's not hard."

But while the workshifts this season haven't been as long as in past years, recent rains have made for harsh working conditions in the mud and cold, he said.

Lately, because of early morning frosts, workers have not been able to begin their days any earlier than 7 a.m., with only a couple of breaks before the end of the shifts, he said.

In a fluid motion repeated innumerable times over the course of a shift and a season, each worker, with special knife in hand, bends, cuts a head of lettuce at the base, removes the outer leaves and places the head on a conveyor belt that will carry it away for packing.

The enormous machines function at a brisk rate, setting the work flow for the laborers. It's not good to be seen falling behind, so workers match one another's pace.

"The truth is I don't feel tired," Flores said. "One gets used to working like this. But really, what we would like is to work more hours, but this season has not been so good."

The workers in a single shift can cut 120,000 pounds of lettuce, equivalent to two large truckloads that will be taken to the packing sheds and, from there, to market.

The workers, all from Mexico, come here on H-2A visas to work the harvests. Flores, a native of Michoacan state in southwestern Mexico, has been coming to this country for more than a decade, primarily to pick strawberries as well as lettuce.

"We are people of the fields, so we're used to hard work," he said. "This is nothing for those of us who have harvested strawberries."

Flores said he earns about $400 a week, less than in past years when he could take home $500 weekly.

Nevertheless, with a family of four in Mexico to provide for, Flores realizes that the money he will earn for six months of work here is more than what he could make in his own country.

"So we don't complain about the work, because we know that in Mexico things are very bad. There's no work and no help for people in the country."

The work day has ended and all that remains in the fields is the harvest machinery.

The labor buses stop in front of the workers' housing, and workers use the evening to wash clothes or go to the store to buy what they need for dinner or for the food they will take to the fields the following day.

Their muddy boots testify to a day spent in the fields, and the workers busy themselves scraping their footwear clean in preparation for the following day.

At 53, Flores doesn't know for how many more years he will have to continue the cycle of following the crops to this area or to Salinas, Calif., where lettuce is cultivated in the summer months.

The only certainty, he says, "is that it's something we have to do, because in Mexico things are not good. It's good that we have the opportunity to come here."

Cesar Neyoy can be reached at cneyoy@bajoelsol.com or 539-6890.