We’re grateful that our crew from Puebla arrived at our farm on Friday after nearly a week long journey from their homes to our farm. Thanks to the help of many volunteers and our crew we have finished the planting of our 2018/2019 strawberry crop. This week we’ll be working on harvesting over 1000 pounds of roselle hibiscus to dehydrate. We’ve also got acres of sweet potatoes ready to take out of the ground and sugar cane to harvest and plant. We’ll finally get our kale, lettuce, collards and cabbages transplanted, and do we will do our best to catch up to save the season that has already started to pass us by. We’ve shared this experience with you to illuminate the situation that our government has created through the expensive and time-consuming H-2A guest worker visa system. While we work on developing our farm incubator to grow the capacity of our local food system, currently our choices are to import labor or to import our food. The challenges we face as farmers are just one part of a larger issue we face in reforming immigration policies in this country. We hope that you will vote on Nov. 6th for candidates who will work to fight the culture of ignorance and xenophobia surrounding immigration, and to remove officials who have based their campaigns on hate speech and intolerance to those who they perceive as a threat. -Farmer John
