WAPATO, Wash. – For 25 years, Miguel Contreras has been steady as a heartbeat. The then-young field worker from Mexico showed up at Vernon White’s orchard on Brooks Road in 1981, hoping to pick fruit. He stayed through that harvest.
And the next. And the next.
Now White is an old man whose tongue is sharper than his legs are sturdy. When he no longer could handle the 70 acres of apples in Wapato, Contreras – as always – was there.
“I found me a sucker,” said White, 90.
About a year ago, he sold the land that he bought as desert in 1955 to Contreras, his longtime leadman.
Their situation is far from unique. Farm ownership among Hispanics is on the rise across the country.
Between 1997 and 2002, when the last federal census of agriculture was conducted, the number of Hispanic farm operators jumped by 17,142, to 50,592.
That’s more than 50 percent in five years. Those farmers controlled more than 20 million acres of U.S. farmland.
The figures don’t mean much to White. He poured 50 years of sweat into the soil, raised a son there and spent many happy days with his wife dreaming about the future. He wanted to pass the place onto someone worthy, who might remember in a decade, two decades, how it all began.
“Now I’m getting to the point where my days are numbered,” he said, sitting in his living room, surrounded by a lifetime of photographs.
Outside in the orchard, Contreras, 45, was working – mowing, spraying, walking from one row to the next, waiting for harvest to begin.
In the two decades since they met, Contreras rarely has left White’s side.
The younger man was about 21 when he came with friends to the farm. At first, he thought White was odd, and the older man had no inkling Contreras would be anything more than another worker who would come and go.
“He was very quiet,” White remembered. “Didn’t say much.”
But the pair had more in common than they realized. Both are compact as fireplugs, with strong arms and tough hands accustomed to hard work. And both share a knack for teasing – when it’s too quiet at White’s home, Contreras, who lives nearby with his wife and kids, calls to check on him.
“I say, ‘I’d like to speak to the nincompoop,’” said Contreras, flashing a smile.
Juan Marinez of the Michigan State University Cooperative Extension Service has been studying the nationwide increase in Hispanic farmowners for several years.
For three or four generations, farmers of European ancestry have persevered, he said. But with each generation the number of children born to farm families has decreased, and many of those children are getting a higher education and not returning to the fields.
“The last generation on the farm is saying we don’t want this farm to go to pieces,” Marinez said.
Conteras was White’s best option, although he never dreamed of owning land.
Growing up on the outskirts of a small town in Michoacan, he tended cattle and hoed chili peppers so his family could scrape by from one day to the next.
Today, Contreras lives in a small home just down the hill from White. Like the older man, his living room is covered with family photos – mostly school pictures of his four kids, ages 8 to 17.
The clan will move into White’s home when he “kicks the bucket,” as the 90-year-old is fond of saying. That was part of the deal the two men struck last year.
But Contreras isn’t looking forward to that day. In 25 years, the men’s relationship has changed.
Two years ago, White walked into the carport on the side of his home to whistle at baby swallows nesting in an exposed beam. He leaned against a garbage can for support, but it slipped and he fell to the ground and broke his hip.
White called Contreras, who drove him to the hospital.
It took White weeks to recover, first in the hospital, then in a rehabilitation center. Contreras’ wife, Roselia, visited him often, bringing the mail. That she spoke little English and he spoke little Spanish didn’t seem to matter.
A year later, White sold his 70 acres to Contreras for $200,000, the exact amount of the Farm Service Agency loan that Contreras was able to obtain.
The land was appraised for $370,000.
Contreras is grateful.
“(We’ve) become close. He has done for me a heck of a lot more than my own father ever did – giving me a job, a sense of security, things like that,” Contreras said.
But White shrugs it off. In two decades, the young field worker from Michoacan became his best friend.
After a year of farm ownership, Contreras’ future is as wide open as his acres of apples, and he sees himself working there for years.
In a perfect world, he said, he’ll eventually pass the place – and its history – on to his kids.
But will they want it?
Contreras shakes his head. He doesn’t know.
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