FORT LUPTON, Colo.—Before the sun is up, another day begins for Cesar Garcia Huerta Jr. and his family. The 19-month-old sits on a chair by the window staring out into the dark as his extended family prepares for another day of harvesting cabbage and corn.
As the adults readied themselves, the toddler waited impatiently with a bottle and fuzzy blue blanket in hand for the van that will take him and three cousins to the Migrant & Seasonal Head Start center in Frederick.
“At this time of year, we start to get more children because the crops are ready to harvest,” said Linda Archuleta, Frederick site director for the Family Educational Network of Weld County’s Migrant & Seasonal Head Start program.
“This is a preschool program; it’s not just a day care. If they’ve never held a pair of scissors before, we teach them how to cut. We teach them how to draw, how to write their name and how to interact with other children.”
Porfirio “Pilo” Saucedo, 25, has three of his five children enrolled in the Frederick program. A migrant worker, he follows the crops from region to region. Earlier this summer, he spent a month repacking vegetables in Phoenix. Before that, he was picking peanuts in San Antonio.
His sister Marisa Cazares, 35, worked in a local nursery. Her boyfriend, Cesar Garcia Sr., 32, worked in New Mexico picking chilies, onions and pecans.
Now, they all are working the fields of Sakata Farms, based in Brighton.
Cazares remembers watching Saucedo when he was a baby while their parents—Olga and Porfirio Saucedo, who have 25-year careers with Sakata Farms—worked the fields.
“It was really hot. And when we got old enough, we started to work in along with our parents,” Cazares said.
Olga Saucedo said her daughter Marisa “cried the first time she got paid” because most of her $300 paycheck went to pay a baby sitter to watch her two daughters, Lezandra and Angela, at the time. Now 10 and 7, the two girls remain at home with older relatives.
“She had only enough to buy Pampers, milk and soap to wash the clothes after,” Olga Saucedo recalled of Marisa’s earliest paychecks as a seasonal worker.
Now, “we work, and I know the kids are safe,” she said.
“Day care is expensive,” Pilo Saucedo said. “It’s $35 for one day, and I make like $80 to $90 a day working after taxes. With five kids, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the cost of day care.”
Marisa said her son, Cesar Jr., loves the Head Start program and often waits by the window to watch for the Head Start van.
“You can tell (Cesar Jr.) likes it,” she said. “He likes when they come to pick him up, and when he comes out of the bus, he’s happy. He has his blanket, his bottle. He’s ready.”
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Weld County Human Services:
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Information from: Daily Times-Call,
