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Central Pa. immigrant farmworkers welcome vaccines

Shots are seen as the best way to protect community, even by those who were hesitant at first.

  • Anthony Orozco
Community gardeners at the Painted Turtle Farm plan out how they install new plant beds.

 Anthony Orozco / WITF

Community gardeners at the Painted Turtle Farm plan out how they install new plant beds.

(Gettysburg) — A few minutes away from the Gettysburg National Military Park, immigrants start their springtime work on a community garden.

Gardeners, nearly all of them immigrants from Latin America, begin breaking down old plant beds and building new ones.

After working in fields and packing fruits in Adams County all week, you might toiling in the dirt may be the last place a farmworker would want to spend a weekend.

But Oscar Lopez said volunteering in the Painted Turtle Farm at Gettysburg College is a way to connect with his community and his roots.

witf · Pa. immigrant farmworkers welcom COVID-19 vaccines

“It is a way to relax. We’re doing something we like,” Lopez said in Spanish. “And to come here and be a part of this is like having a part of Mexico in your hands.”

Anthony Orozco / WITF

Community members break up old plant beds to make way for new frames at the Painted Turtle Farm in Gettysburg.

The farm is owned by the college and is a place where students can volunteer through the school’s Center for Public Service. The space is used in collaboration with Casa De La Cultura, a non profit initiative that promotes education and connection among Adams County Latino immigrants.

An outdoor activity with ample space, gardening offers a safe opportunity — amid the COVID-19 pandemic — to socialize with friends Lopez and his family have made over the years. Even in the safer setting, gardeners wore masks and worked in shifts, so the garden would not fill up with too many people at once.

As the country looks forward to when social distancing and masks are no longer needed, farmworkers like Lopez are next in line to get access to the coronavirus vaccine.

As is the case with many Latinos around the country, Lopez and his wife, Sandra Espinoza, were hit hard by the pandemic.

They were let go from their jobs at the historic Dobbin House Tavern in Gettysburg. He did food prep part time and she worked full time making sandwiches.

“In an economic sense, it affected us 50 percent or more of the income we were getting before,” Lopez said. “And as a [non-citizen] immigrant, we didn’t have the same resources available to us as citizens did.”

Now, Sandra Espinoza, is working at the same orchard in the county with her husband.

She recently received her first dose of the vaccine, even though she initially didn’t want it.

“Well, the truth is…I didn’t want to take it,” Espinoza said with a laugh. “It’s a new vaccine. I didn’t know about any side effects.”

But once all was said and done, her most noticeable reactions were a headache and the arm in which she got the shot felt heavy for a few hours.

Anthony Orozco / WITF

Fernando, 11, and other community garners break up the dirt in old plant beds at the Painted Turtle Farm in Gettysburg.

Espinoza said she got her first shot of the Moderna vaccine through Keystone Health’s Agricultural Worker program, largely in part because she has diabetes.

Gov. Tom Wolf announced earlier this month the state will prioritize farm workers starting in April. Wolf hinted that may change to meet President Joe Biden’s target of to open eligibility to all adults by May 1st.

But as the phase plan stands now, it means Latino and immigrant workers in Adams County and many other agriculture hubs around the state will likely benefit. Kay Hollabaugh is a co-owner of Hollabaugh Brothers, Inc., a 400-acre farm and market in Biglerville. She said immigrants are essential to her business.

“Oh my, you say integral? Incredibly,” Hollabaugh said of immigrants’ importance to her farm. “I just want to make it very clear, there are not people lined up to do the jobs our Latino and our Haitian crews are doing for us.”

Immigrants make up 75 percent of the more than 61,000 hired agricultural laborers in Pennsylvania, according to the USDA’s most recent Census of Agriculture figures.

When compared to Whites, Latinos are three times more likely to be hospitalized and two times more likely to die from coronavirus. Black people, which many Haitians are, are similarly at-risk.

Anthony Orozco / WITF

Community gardeners at the Painted Turtle Farm at Gettysburg College cut wood for new plant bed frames.

Many of the gardeners at the Painted Turtle Farm  say most of their co-workers and family have stayed safe during the pandemic, even if the nature of fruit packing and picking may put workers close together or workers may remove their masks.

Victor Valencia works in maintenance at a golf course, but has been employed seasonally as a farm worker.

His wife had coronavirus in December and while she did not develop serious symptoms, he said the illness made for the darkest holiday his family has ever had.

“It was a very sad Christmas…one of the saddest ever,” Valencia said.

Valencia is familiar with the different types of vaccines available. While he is not among those next in line to have access to the vaccines, he says he hopes others protect themselves.

Manuela Cardona hails from Guatemala and works in fruit packaging at the same orchard as Oscar and Sandra.

Anthony Orozco / WITF

Manuela Cardona removes part of an old wooden plant bed frame out of the Painted Turtle Farm in Gettysburg.

It is her first season at the garden, so she spent a Saturday morning taking apart old pant beds — using a power drill to take out screws from the beds’ aging wooden frames. She said she likes how the garden gives her an opportunity to learn new things from new friends.

Cardona too is ready for her shot, when it’s available to her, because she said the vaccines appear to be the most effective way to stop the spread.

“I think it’s good for us to get a shot to prevent infecting one another,” Cardona said. Like most people, the gardeners at the Painted Turtle Farm are ready to get back to life as they knew it before 2020. And the vaccines to them, appears to be the best option.

They look forward to taking off their masks to see each other’s smiles as they build a garden and build community.


Anthony Orozco is part of  the “Report for America” program — a national service effort that places journalists in newsrooms across the country to report on under-covered topics and communities.

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