The Interface - 9/30/10

Stocked with pies, crumbles, syrups and nearly every kind of apple you could ever want, the Champlain Orchards farm shop is as Vermont as Vermont gets. Go upstairs, though, and you’re in Jamaica.

Bill Suhr, the owner of the Shoreham orchard, opened the door to the Jamaican immigrant workers’ second-story apartment in front of me, letting loose a wave of steamy hot air.

“It’s hot up here, and they keep it that way,” Suhr said. “Welcome to Jamaica.”

Suhr employs Jamaicans each year through the H2-A program, a government initiative that allows nonimmigrant foreigners to work in the agricultural sector for one season per year. This year, Suhr has employed 25 Jamaicans to maintain the orchard and help with the apple harvest.

I had walked right into the middle of dinner. The kitchen was a beautiful chaos:  sizzling meats and vegetables, a blaring TV, a warm barrage of Jamaican, English and Creole and about a dozen Jamaicans each preparing their own massive masterpiece of a feast. They had just finished a 12-hour day, so a hefty tub of pork, potatoes and dumplings seemed appropriate.

“It’s hard to get used to your food, man,” Utneil Hines said to me. “Foodkind, you can’t get it as easy as you can get it in Jamaica. There, you can just step over and pick your food. Here, you go to the supermarket.”

Hines, 22, is a first-year worker at Champlain Orchards. He’s three weeks into his stay at Shoreham. (“Vermont is very, very cold,” he said. I apologized in advance for January.)

Hines is from St. Elizabeth Parish, one of the Jamaica’s most popular tourist destinations, as he was quick to let me know. He is a farmer, a self-employed car mechanic, and a cab driver. He heard about the H2-A program from his father and brother, veteran apple pickers at the orchard who are also working there this season.

The Jamaicans’ work schedule is extraordinarily demanding, by their own design. They work throughout the day filling large bins called jacks with 13 sacks of apples each, completing about 11 jacks a day.  Although they do have the option to take time off or finish work while the sun is still out, they rarely choose to do so.

“It’s from 7 until we say when, sometimes even later,” Hines said. “We just do our stuff, normal. We don’t really force it. It’s fun, because we’re all here. We get along quite well.”
Suhr takes the Jamaicans into Middlebury on Tuesday nights to go shopping, but that’s their only scheduled break off the orchard.

“I don’t really get to know this place a lot, don’t really get a clear view of the place. We just go (to Middlebury) for one food stop and then we go back,” Hines said.
Curtis Barclay, 35, shared this point of view.

“It’s cool so far. The only thing is we don’t get to go out a lot. The only thing we know is Hannaford. Or T.J. Maxx,” he said.

Barclay is a native of Portland Parish and a father of three children. He said he isn’t frustrated about the self-imposed constraining hours of his work schedule, however. After all, he has been working at Champlain Orchards for four years now. “Really we come here to work and we need the money, so that’s where it comes from. Work the 15 hours,” he said.

“This is my vacation. I work and make some money and I bring it back. Yeah, it’s no problem,” Ken James told me.

James, 54, has picked apples through the H2-A program in Massachusetts, Maryland, Florida and Vermont. He lives with his wife and two children in St. Elizabeth Parish when he’s not in Shoreham.

“I do a little bit of everything in Jamaica: carpentry, farming, I drive for a funeral home,” he said.

The day-to-day isolation of this Jamaican microcosm is somewhat inevitable given the demands of the apple harvest and their own financial goals. There’s just no time to experience Vermont off the orchard. Interactions with Americans who aren’t fellow workers are also rare.

“Down in Jamaica we actually socialize with Americans more. Sometimes we are out (in the orchard), and they are like scared of us,” Hines said, a big smile contrasting this somber observation. I asked him why and he shrugged, nonplussed.

“I don’t know. Maybe the color,” he said, laughing lightheartedly. “I’m just doing my job. It doesn’t really matter. I don’t live here so I don’t have to get used to it.”

This cheery levity in the face of an exhausting work regimen and an isolating foreign environment was both humbling and inspiring to witness. A subtle nostalgia seemed to underlie this overarching “no problem” attitude, though.

“I’ll be even more excited that that is home,” Hines said when I asked him about his return. “That’s home. We’re just staying here because of work. In Jamaica, that’s our home. Here is your home. Home is everything.”

Hines, Barclay and James all said they feel very welcome here and would love to come back next year, continuing a Champlain Orchards tradition of over thirty years. After such a long history, the Jamaicans are an integral part of the business and family at the Shoreham orchard.

“Bill is constantly in touch with these guys everyday, and they give him a lot of feedback every year.

“They are a key part of what runs our business,” said Andrea Scott, Suhr’s wife. “They’re just wonderful people. We love them.”

I asked James and Barclay if there was anything they’d like to tell the students who’d be reading this article. After some thought, Barclay said, “I would want all the college kids to take a trip to Jamaica.” I told him that visiting his country is one of my dreams, to which James replied, “You should sleep more often.”