jessica.kerman@heraldbulletin.com

ORESTES — The sweet smell of tomatoes fills the air in Orestes as trucks — each one filled to the top — constantly travel through the small town. As early as dawn, some workers are already on their way to the plant, to start packing tomatoes.

Adrian Lazoya, 27, is one of the many migrant workers at Red Gold who start as early as 6 a.m. sometimes, working until after 5 p.m. every day, including weekends. He’s traveled from Texas for almost every packing season since 1998.

In previous years, after work, he would walk back to his blue cabin, where the temperature would get to be as hot as 100 degrees inside. This year, Red Gold opened its third apartment building, equipped with air conditioning and a cable and satellite television hook-up.

These days, Lazoya goes back to his apartment building and relaxes in the cool room while he watches football on his television.

Last year, he did not make the trip to Red Gold, so when he returned to the labor camp, it was completely different.

“Within a year, everything changed for the better,” he said.

The Orestes Town Council held a special meeting Wednesday morning to close out on Red Gold’s latest update to its labor camp in the town.

“No more blue huts,” Austin said.

The apartments range from eight-person to two-person housing, and each has a private bathroom and small kitchenette.

“Basically, we’re the cream of the crop with our seasonal housing,” Tim Ingle, director of human resources, said. “We want to make sure we have the best, safest, clean housing opportunities in terms of our employees. We’re kind of in the top echelon when we look at other canners, the gold standard as far as seasonal wages or seasonal housing.”

The labor camp in Elwood also has one apartment building, Austin said.

John Shettle, president of the Orestes Town Council, said the money for the buildings came from three federal grants of about $500,000 each that are distributed to the town council, then given to the corporation in need.

Some people at the 20-person meeting asked why other camps in Indiana were not taking the same measures to update migrant housing.

“Indiana is encouraging companies to do this,” Austin said at the meeting. “The USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) has a program similar to this one. It takes a lot of cooperation, and I guess it takes a lot of faith. It can be very intimidating.”

Red Gold operates two of the four registered labor camps in Madison County. G&E; Farms, which produces jalapeño peppers, operates the other two.



Schools provide structure for migrant children

According to information from the Indiana Association for Community Economic Development in 2006, most migrant farmworker families consist of two adults and three children.

For families in Orestes, those children attend summer school in Elwood, which is run through Texas.

Most of the children who roam around the labor camp in Orestes have been traveling from Texas to Indiana annually their entire lives.

Daisy, 10, said she likes to be in Indiana because she has close friends that live at the camp and go to school with her.

“We talk,” she said. “We go with our friends. We go to the playground.”

Wednesday was the last day of summer school for the migrant students, and Daisy said the group spent the day at the Indianapolis Zoo learning about animals.

“And we went swimming,” she added.

During the school year, the children in Orestes attend Alexandria Community Schools. Ruby, 14, walked around the labor camp sporting one of her bright yellow Alexandria-Monroe T-shirts that she’s collected over the years. She’s been switching schools annually for eight years, she said.

Scott Zent, director of staff and student services for Alexandria Community School Corporation, oversees the migrant programs. The fall migrant program is funded through No Child Left Behind.

“Basically, to be considered a migratory worker, you have to have moved in the past three years, and you have work in certain jobs that are listed,” he said.

These jobs include work on anything from tobacco farms to fish hatcheries to Christmas trees, Zent said.

The program pays for a co-teacher to work with students who have language problems in the elementary and middle schools.

“Most of them do know how to speak English, but not fluently,” Zent said.

The children take the LAS Links, a language proficiency test, to determine how much help they need from the co-teachers.

“If a child comes in and they’re proficient, they really don’t need a lot of extra help,” Zent said. “Sometimes, we do get students who are coming straight from Mexico, and when that happens, they’re a lot more needy than the students who come from Texas.”

High school is slightly different. The students work on individual modules, and teachers assist them through the classes, “kind of like an independent study,” Zent said.

The classes are given through a program in Texas.

The culture barrier is usually not a problem for the migrant students or the residents, Zent said.

“They already know each other from last year,” he said. “We don’t separate them out. The students go to regular classes.”

All of the students are familiar with the program, Zent said.

“We’ve always had the migrant programs, so the students from the time they’re in kindergarten are familiar with the fact that the students come in and then leave,” he said. “Our students know that there’s going to be five to eight migrant students in their classes every year.”

Zent estimated that between 75 and 100 students would attend the Alexandria schools this year. Most of the students return to their schools in Texas as if they were regular transfer students.

“Another good thing is it’s the beginning of the school year, so everybody’s new to the class,” he said.