The town of Half Moon Bay was in the spotlight after a farmworker opened fire at two mushroom farms and since that tragedy more attention has been brought to the agricultural community in the San Mateo County coast.
"There are days where you don’t make something to eat so this helps.”
One local non-profit organization does something differently on Fridays by going directly to farms to bring food and aid to farmworkers. You’ll see a handful of people filling up a Black Ford F-150 truck with jugs of water, rain ponchos and blankets. They’re staff members with Ayudando Latinos a Soñar or ALAS, and they’re preparing for Farmworker Friday.
Jorge tells me, let’s go so you can see the process.
Every Friday around lunchtime, Jorge Sanchez and other ALAS staff members drive in a caravan out to farms to deliver food, blankets and other supplies. Today they’re picking up fresh ham and cheese sandwiches at a local deli. The team was then off to visit the first location at Cabrillo Farms in Moss Beach.
Jorge parks by a red barn to hand out food and water. He greets each worker by name.
Yesenia Garcia lives and works at Cabrillo Farms. She says, with their hours and transportation costs, it’s not always easy to access food. This is one less meal to worry about.
“ALAS has been helping since the pandemic started,” said Garcia in spanish. “There are days where you don’t make something to eat so this helps”
She tells me, ALAS has been helping since the pandemic started. She says these lunches offer some relief.
ALAS visits two to three farms a week and alternates between over 20 locations. Jorge says that these past years have been tough at farms on the coast.
“There was COVID, then came the fires, after the fires the flooding, and then the massacre,” said Sanchez in Spanish.
But Jorge sees joy when he and his colleagues come out to the farms with aid.
Before working with ALAS, Jorge worked as a paralegal in Venezuela. He came to the U.S right before the borders shut down when the COVID-19 pandemic started.
“When I first arrived here my first job was to toss seeds from a tractor,” said Jorge Sanchez in spanish. “I worked there for a few months, they paid me $100 a day.”
In his free time, Jorge volunteered at ALAS. Farmworkers had to keep working during the lockdown, so the organization distributed masks to farmworkers along the coast.
ALAS got fabric, and the mothers of the community made thousands of masks. Jorge was soon able to join ALAS as a full-time Community Case manager but there was a problem when it came time to work with the farms.
“The County didn’t know how many farms or farmworkers were here, they didn’t keep track of the numbers,” said Sanchez.
ALAS and similar non-profits had to create maps of where farms and farmworkers were located - through their networks and word of mouth. The organization delivered emergency food during lockdown, but then the farmworker team wanted to make it a regular thing, with farmworker Fridays.
ALAS initially started delivering supplies directly to 20 farmworkers on 4 farms. Jorge tells me, they now reach about 300 farmworkers.
At the second location, the team pulls off to Propagation farms located by Highway 92 in Half Moon Bay. This time we’re joined by some high school volunteers.
Once the nights get cold and longer, business slows down, and many farmworkers struggle to work full-time. There’s less growing on the fields at this time of year, and even those who work in greenhouses often work fewer hours.
Juan Cortez, is a manager at the nursery here. He says workers don’t lose their jobs for the season, but they get paid minimum wage. And their hours get cut. So Farmworker Fridays are especially necessary.
“Everything is appreciated,” said Jorge Cortez. “We appreciate what they do for the farmworkers.”
In the final moments of the lunch hour break, Jorge Sanchez cracks a joke with a few of his friends. He tells them to take care and behave well. Jorge says, this work is all about relationships.
“It’s one thing is driving in your car and seeing them, another thing is going to visit them, feeling empathy with them,” said Sanchez. “And putting yourself in their muddy boots everyday, with the wet clothes from the morning and those backs burned from the sun.”
And it seems to me like the workers feel that empathy from ALAS. On the highway, I see several farmworkers in a field spot Jorge in the black truck. Their farms aren’t on the list to receive food and supplies today, but they still wave at Jorge from afar.
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This story was reported in collaboration with Coastside News Group and it aired in the January 23, 2024 episode of Crosscurrents.
