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PLATTSBURGH (New York) PRESS-REPUBLICAN October 3, 2008 Jamaican minister prays, visits with apple pickers
By
SUZANNE MOORE
PERU, N.Y. -- In Everett Orchards, Cortland and McIntosh trees grow
side by side. "Very few apples are self-fertile." Laughing, the minister from Ridgemont United Church of Jamaica strolled deeper into the orchard, past ladders stacked by the brown-rutted road, apple-filled crates. "What a wonderful thing is nature, eh?" The symbiotic relationship is one that applies, too, to those who harvest the crop there each autumn -- this season, 60 migrant farm workers traveled from Jamaica to Everett Orchards, providing labor Tom and his brother Bill Everett can't get locally. The Jamaicans earn a paycheck unheard of in their island nation and are able to better support their families. But working so far from home exacts a price, one Daley understands so well that he undertook the journey to minister to his countrymen here. "The needs are different in a sense," he said. "All people need love; people need acceptance. "But in this case, they are lonely, struggling with being away from wives, children, girlfriends."
CONNECTION WITH HOME Those working in the orchards in close proximity to the Community Church of Peru are offered fellowship there. In fact, the annual mission to Jamaica organized by that church had its genesis in outreach to migrant apple harvester Roy Jones, who fell from a ladder while picking Peru apples and was left paraplegic from his injuries. The mission group partners with Daley's church, which helps identify those most in need of the help offered by the annual January effort. Daley, also a trained counselor, last visited the North Country following Hurricane Ivan, a storm that devastated much of the country while the migrant workers were in the midst of the apple harvest here. Most pickers at Everett Orchards have worked there for at least a decade, some 20 years or more. They come together as a kind of family within the camps, Daley said. "They have their own emotional way of surviving." And every man with whom he has ever spoken describes excellent relationships with the orchard owner and their families. "But the very nature of that relationship is limited," he said. The Jamaicans still, in many ways, remain strangers in a strange land.
Lewis Brown paused to visit with Daley for a bit, telling him about his farm in Jamaica, his cows, horses, pigs and goats. "You actually spend December, January, February -- three months -- at home a year," Daley said. "So when you're not there, who helps you? "My son," said Brown, rubbing a shine on an apple with the corner of his tattered blue sweatshirt. "So which district are you from?" Daley asked. "St. Catherine," Brown said. His conversation with the migrant workers, who he also visited at four other North Country orchards last week, is often light. He's there, he said, to give the people a sense of connection with home. But Daley gives openings for deeper discussion.
Had the workers experienced much hurricane damage this season, he'd
ask.
The minister led a Jamaican healing service of worship that evening
for all comers that packed in about 150 of his countrymen and
featured talks by growers about the vital role the men play here --
a living representation of the mutuality that flourishes here. For humans to mimic nature at times is a good thing, Daley said. In the depths of the quiet orchard, he laughed at the antics of the Everett's apple-fetching dog. He struck up a conversation with worker Laselles Davis, who when home in Jamaica is a fisherman. "So when you are up here," said Daley, "the fish are happy." The minister's hearty laugh rang out, joined by the guffaws of the pickers, of the Everetts and fellow-Jamaican Clayton Solomon, who represents the farm workers for Jamaica's Ministry of Labor. At last catching his breath, Solomon summed it up for everyone. "That's a good one," he said.
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