POST MILLS — On a typical Wednesday in August, the crew at Crossroad Farm would be busy harvesting pounds of beans, corn and melons, among other crops, on the property on West Fairlee Road.
But this week, the staff took Wednesday afternoon off to celebrate Jamaican Independence Day with the three farm workers who are lending a hand this season.
The event is an “easy way to do something special for these workers,” Phil Mason, the farm’s owner, said in an interview at the celebration.
The holiday marks Jamaica’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1962, following over 300 years of colonization.
In Jamaica, Independence Day is a nationwide celebration with music and dancing on the beach, and a spread of food including Mannish Water, a traditional goat soup, said seasonal farm worker Desmond Richards.
At noon, some 40 people congregated around about a dozen picnic tables that had been arranged in the grassy yard near the white farmhouse.
The bucket of a red tractor had been filled with ice, cans of soda and sparkling water.
Next to the tractor, under the boughs of a wide tree, a pot of Mannish Water bubbled and steamed over a small firepit.
The soup, which includes the throat, head and tripe of a goat along with spices and vegetables such as carrots, yams and pumpkin, is a traditional dish at Jamaican celebrations like Independence Day, said Crossroad farm worker Sedley Williams, who is from St. Thomas, Jamaica.
Mason sourced the goat from a farm in Randolph, which the Jamaican crew slaughtered and processed the day before the festivities.
Mason organized the first Jamaica Day celebration on the farm three years ago, the same year he started hiring Jamaican seasonal workers to pad the farm staff during the spring and autumn months when college and high school staff were still in class.
“It struck me how much these workers sacrifice in leaving their families and their homes to provide such a critical contribution to our workforce,” he said.
In Vermont there are roughly 500 seasonal farmworkers, the majority of whom are from Jamaica, using an H-2A visa, the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets said in a report published this year.
The program allows farms to hire foreign nationals to perform seasonal work such as planting and harvesting crops, particularly when domestic workers are in short supply.
As more farmers reach retirement age and younger generations choose careers in other industries, the decline in domestic workers in the agricultural sector has continued to grow in Vermont, according to the same report from the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets.
Workers typically arrive at Crossroad in June and stay through October. They’re provided with free accommodation at the farmhouse and work about 50 hours a week at $18.83 per hour in accordance with state regulations regarding minimum wage for H-2A visa holders.
Crossroad employee Tamar Miller, 42, said the money he makes at the farm accounts for roughly 80% of his yearly income, which goes toward supporting his family in Jamaica, which includes his son, partner, parents and grandparents.
Hailing from Montego Bay, a city on the northern side of Jamaica, he spends the other half of the year working as a tiler.
This season marks Miller’s third year working at Crossroad.
“This is my next home,” he said, adding that the farm crew feels “like a family.”
Shortly after 12 p.m. East Lost Angeles band Las Cafeteras launched into their set from under the shade of a sturdy tree as onlookers clapped their hands to the music.
The performance was organized with the help of Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center, which collaborated with Crossroad on the event this year.
The group’s music weaves together rhythms from Afro-Mexican, hip-hop and funk traditions and their songs speak of racial justice and immigrant rights.
Last year the Jamaican workers spent most of the day preparing goat curry, red snapper, jerk chicken, coleslaw and Mannish Water for the celebration. But this year, the Hop provided catering from The Karibbean, a Haitian and Jamaican restaurant with locations in Lebanon and West Lebanon, and the three men got to take the day off and focus on making the Mannish Water.
The celebration also grew in size this year. In previous years, it was a casual gathering among Crossroad employees and friends from neighboring farms. But this year Dartmouth students, including those from Matt Garcia’s Food History class, which he teaches through the college’s Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies and History Departments, were in attendance as well. Guest workers from neighboring farms were also invited.
“A lot of students never leave Hanover and don’t know how people eat up here,” Garcia said. He added that he hopes attending the celebration will prompt students to think about where their food comes from and “how dependent our nation is on guest workers.”
Soon people began to line up to fill their plates with jerk chicken, rice and beans, slaw and curried goat.
A handful of Garcia’s students ate their fill at one of the many picnic tables.
Computer Science student Benjamin Huh, of Seattle, noted that gatherings like the Jamaica Day celebration at Crossroad “push back against rhetoric in media” that emphasizes an “us versus them” narrative among different groups of people.
“It’s a good way to connect with community,” he said.
