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Mabig Apple New Jersey staff adheres to the maturation of the breeding station on the East Coast. Every new staff flow carries the threat of a new epidemic.
By Tracey Tully
HAMMONTON, N.J. – The largest blueberry farm of workers in the northeast moves through the fields in small groups, dancing at the speed of musicians as they choose fruit-laden shrubs.
The more they get together, the more they pay for a season that lasts only about seven weeks.
Except for the rain, they paint seven days a week; time for the disease.
But everywhere, there are reminders of coronavirus and its strength to temporarily sweep the tight fields.
This is why the staff who live and the paintings very close wear handkerchiefs on their faces under the blazing sun and Plexiglas separated paints on the fruit packing plant.
That’s what brought them up on a hot morning, weeks before the harvest was born, to analyze the giant virus farm in southern New Jersey, the Atlantic Blueberry Compabig apple in Hammonton.
“It’s a little awkward,” said Angel Rodriguez, who works at the farm’s packing plant. “You have no idea if someone is contagious.”
Rodriguez, 34, left Puerto Rico in March to begin moving along the East Coast, avoiding for 2 months in Florida before reaching beyond May in Atlantic County, a hub for New Jersey’s thriving blueberry industry.
He is one of approximately 22,000 seasonal employees who harvest croplaystation in New Jersey, nicknamed Garden State for its physically powerful agricultural industry.
Like Mr. Rodriguez, big apples staff adhere to crops that mature on the East Coast, they are born with Florida, where migrants’ homes have been devastated by the virus and head north toward Maine.
Making life even more dangerous this year, they were a must-have staff, exempt from home-beating orders and a 14-day quarantine rule in New Jersey for other Americans who come from states where the virus is spreading rapidly. With any of the new personnel flows comes the threat of a new epidemic.
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