Migrant workers make cherry picking a family affair

Story by Paul Peters

Photos by Katherine Head

In 1981 Ignacio and Adela Gutierrez paid a coyote-a guide for illegal border crossings-$2,000 to take them on an all night trek across the desert from Mexico into the United States.

"We came without permission of the government, no papers, no nothing," Ignacio said. "We were afraid sometimes. There are good people, but there are also bad people. But there was little work in Mexico."

When Ignacio and Adela crossed the border, they traveled to Grandview, Wash., where they had family and friends waiting. They have been in the U.S. for more than 20 years now and have five children who are U.S. citizens.

Ignacio and Adela themselves have become permanent residents of the U.S. According to Ignacio, he and his wife were given amnesty in 1985. They have become permanent residents, provided they renew their application every 10 years, and never get into legal trouble.

The Gutierrez family has made their home in Grandview for most of their 20 years in the U.S., but as migrant workers they come to the Flathead Valley every summer for a few weeks to harvest cherries.

At 5:30 on a Wednesday morning, when the sun just started to illuminate the cherry-laden trees, Ignacio and Adela were already in a Yellow Bay cherry orchard, picking.

Their daughters, 14-year-old Lillia and 15-year-old Myriam came out at 6 a.m.

"We slept in," Myriam said.

Both of them, like their parents, had a plastic bucket held in place at stomach level by shoulder straps. It's like wearing a book bag backwards.

The family picked rapidly as sunlight began to fill the orchard. The sound of the cherries falling into the buckets was a drum-like plunk-plunk.

As the buckets filled, cherries were padded by those that fell before them. Then the sounds of the orchard became a rustling of leaves, the hum of a diesel truck driving somewhere between the rows of trees, and other, unseen pickers speaking Spanish.

The work of a picker is sometimes referred to as unskilled labor. But to watch their hands deftly searching through the leaves, flicking a constant stream of cherries into their buckets, is to know that this work takes skill. The technique, according to the girls, is to grab the cherries by the stems and pull up.

"You have to get the stem," Myriam said.

The family picked from tree to tree, stripping all the bright red cherries from each.

Myriam is 5 feet tall and weighs about 115 pounds. The bucket she carries, when full, weighs about 30 pounds. Each member of the family fills one bucket in about 20 minutes.

While the girls pick from the ground, Ignacio and Adela stand on tall, broad-based ladders, and pick from the higher branches.

When the buckets are filled, they are dumped into plastic bins which also hold about 30 pounds of cherries. Orchard owner Mike Mitchell collects these bins throughout the day, pouring them out into plastic pallets on the back of a pick-up truck. He counts each bin that he loads, so that he knows how much to pay the family. The Gutierrez family fills about 65 of the 30-pound bins a day, earning $4.50 for each. That is almost 2,000 pounds of fruit, for about $300.

According to Ignacio, they have made more money than usual this year, in part because the cherries are larger, which makes it less work to pick a higher weight.

The money they make is split between the family members. Myriam and Lillia get to keep the money they earn.

What do they plan to buy?

"Clothes," they chime in unison. This morning, the two of them are picking in style, Lililia in a Hilfiger jacket and Myriam in a GAP sweatshirt.

The two of them say they have been picking for as long as they can remember, since they were children.

Do they like cherries after picking them for eight hours?

"I don't really eat them," Myriam says.

Later, she does pop one in her mouth.

"That was the first one this year," she said.

The girls only pick in the summer. During the rest of the year they attend high school in Grandview. Both speak English and Spanish with ease, slipping back and forth from one to the other. Their parents have not really learned English, and often they rely on the girls to translate for them.

When they are done picking, Ignacio said they would return to Grandview for a few days, pay some bills, and then return to the cherry orchard for a few more days to help prune. After that, the family will return to Grandview, where Ignacio and Adela will continue picking this fall during the apple harvest in Grandview.

The whole family said they look forward to coming to the Flathead Valley every year.

"Here the people are more friendly," Ignacio said. "They [the orchard owners] come out and ask, do you want water, food, soda?"

According to Ignacio, part of the reason for this is that orchards in the Flathead Valley are much smaller. In places where the orchards are bigger, they never see the owners.

The family never seems to lose their steady pace through the long morning. At 10 a.m., they will stop for a short lunch break, and at about 1 p.m. they finish for the day.

And after that?

"If it's not windy, we'll go swimming in the lake," Ignacio said.

Otherwise, they may go into Polson for hamburgers or pizza.

While working for the Mitchell orchard, the Gutierrez family lives for free in a one-room, rustic cabin on the edge of the orchard. There is a bathroom attached to the outside, under a lean-to.

"It's much better than a tent," Ignacio said. "Some families have their children and their whole family in one tent. It's sad."

The cabin's single room is clean and neat, made completely of aged wood. There is a bed and a couch against one wall, side by side. Ignacio and Adela sleep on the bed, and the girls use the hide-a-bed in the couch.

There is also a full kitchen in this room. A portrait of Jesus hangs between two of the windows. And on the shelf is a CD player that the girls use to listen to Mexican rap.

In the middle of the room is a table, with an old-fashioned stone mortar and pestle on top.

The mortar and pestle aren't just for show. On Thursday, Adela uses it to make food for an "asado," or barbecue that they're having to celebrate the birthdays of Ignacio and Mike Mitchell.

Ignacio is chef at the asado, grilling up "carnitas," - thin sliced, marinated pieces of steak, and "camarones del Diablo," or shrimp of the devil - a spicy dish. Everything was wrapped in Adela's homemade tortillas.

Mitchell speaks Spanish with the Gutierrez family, teasing Ignacio and Adela that they work too hard.

Ignacio jokes that they are going to come out later that night and pick by moonlight.

They also talk about the possibility of visiting Glacier National Park before they return to Grandview.

"I have seen more of the United States than Mexico," Ignacio noted.

In Mexico, he said, everybody is too poor to travel.

The Gutierrez family seems to have achieved a level of success in the United States. They have owned a house since 1988 in Grandview. Their three grown children have left the orchards. One son, a former Marine, is working as a security guard at a nuclear power plant.

"I would like [my children] to be able to make more money," Ignacio said, "I would like them to not have to work in the fields, to study and to go to school."

Ignacio himself only received a fourth-grade education in Mexico.

"It's a great place to work," Ignacio said of the U.S. "We're happier here - me, my children, everyone. But I want to die in Mexico."