HARRINGTON

Fernando Garciliano admits he comes to Maine for the money.

“I used to work for Lowe’s,” said the migrant worker who hails from Mississippi. “But I quit because they gave me only a fourhour day. … I make no money.”

Garciliano is one of about 200 migrant and temporary workers raking blueberries for Wyman’s of Maine, based in Milbridge, this year. He was part of a crew working a field along George’s Pond Road in Franklin on Aug. 5, when Wyman’s began harvesting this season.

Garciliano has been coming to Maine to rake blueberries for the past 10 years and has been with Wyman’s three years. Before that he worked for Cherryfield Foods, which no longer uses hand crews, he said.

Cherryfield spokesperson David Bell confirmed the company’s picking is all mechanized.

When blueberry season is over, Garciliano will go back to Mississippi to pick pecans. Sometimes he also fishes for shrimp and sells it.

“I clean fish and sell it, too. I’ll do everything,” he said.

Garciliano came to Maine with his wife, Sharon, and stepson, Garrian, 19, who also rake.

This fall, his stepson will be a sophomore at Mississippi State University, where he is studying engineering.

“He’s very smart in math,” Garciliano said. “He wanted to see where the money comes from to help him go to school.”

Garciliano and many of the workers out in the Wyman’s field said they do it in part because they make good money.

Wyman’s pays $2.50 a box and rakers can easily produce 100 or more boxes a day, said Homer Woodward, Wyman’s vice president of operations. On a good day, a raker can produce 300 to 350 boxes.

Garciliano said in previous years, he and his wife have made as much as $12,000 raking together over a period of four weeks.

“Every year we make more and more money,” Sharon Garciliano said. “Maybe I’m getting better at it,” she quipped.

In the beginning, she found the work to be really difficult and her body was sore. Now it’s much easier and the money made makes it worth the drive from Mississippi, she said.

Woodward explained the workers at Wyman’s are regular temporary employees, not contract laborers. Although they are paid by the box, Wyman’s has to guarantee they will at least make minimum wage.

Those who don’t rake enough to make minimum wage are usually let go after a few days, Woodward said.

“It’s not for everybody,” he said.

Wyman’s also hires temporary workers for the blueberry processing plants. A raker who doesn’t make it in the field might be able to find work there, Woodward said.

Rakers begin their day anywhere between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m., Woodward said. The ones who start later tend to be those from the southern states, who aren’t used to Maine’s cooler climate. Dressed in sweatshirts and long pants, they wait till the temperature climbs a lit- tle before they start.

Woodward said the day also may start later if there is a heavy dew because the wetness makes the leaves stick to the berries, adding to processing time.

The rakers’ day ends around 4:30 p.m. Four crew leaders, each of whom supervises up to 50 people, then have to get the picked fruit loaded on trucks to go to processing. Crew leaders, who are paid based on the amount of fruit gathered by their entire crew, may not get home until 8:30 p.m., Woodward said.

Some fruit is loaded and trucked to the processing plant during the day, he added.

Crew leaders are temporary employees and tend to be local people who own contract businesses. This year’s four crew leaders include a carpenter, an excavator, a roofer and a school bus driver, Woodward said.

Crew leaders also are responsible for breaking down fields into more manageable sections using twine. Rakers simply work within one twined-off area and then move on to the next, Woodward said.

Workers can take breaks for lunch or just to rest. But the time spent not working is time spent not earning.

Sometimes the berries get picked faster than they can be processed.

“At the height of the harvest, the fruit will actually come in faster than we can process and we’ll have to give (the rakers) a day off,” Woodward said. “They don’t like to have too many days like that. They’re here to make some money.”

When empty bins can be seen piled in the fields, workers know they have work ahead of them. When the pile disappears, they know they’re in for some time off, Woodward said.

Jorge Acero works with some of the more than 1,000 migrant and seasonal workers served each year by the Rakers’ Center. The temporary facility set up in Harrington and open through Aug. 18, is a collaboration among the Maine Department of Labor and other governmental and community service organizations. It provides migrant workers with access to resources such as legal and employment advice, medical care, education for children and guidance in applying for other services.

Acero said the Department of Labor has not kept statistics specifically on the number of migrant workers used each year in the blueberry industry, which contributes an estimated $90 million a year to the state’s economy. But he did an informal survey of the nine top employers last year and found they hired 1,522 rakers.

While he has not done surveys in previous years to compare, Acero said, “Anecdotally, I know the numbers (of migrant workers) have decreased. Most of it is due to mechanization.”

But the mechanical harvesters can’t be used over certain terrain, so rakers are still needed.

Acero also said most people assume migrant workers are Hispanic. However, he said that’s not actually the case. Migrant workers, defined as people who leave their permanent home for a certain amount of time to work out of necessity in agriculture, also include Canadians and Native Americans such as Passamaquoddys and Micmacs, he said.

“Many migrant workers are Maine residents, Maine born, that just travel from one city to another,” he said.

Josh Paul, 36, of Cherryfield, is one such migrant.

When blueberry season is over, he will head to New Hampshire to pick apples. Then he will return to Maine to make holiday wreaths. After that he will head to Texas and work up the coast planting trees. Paul also works on a seaweed boat for much of the summer.

He said he’d like to find a permanent job but, if he can’t, he will continue to go where the work is.

Paul, who has been picking berries since 2000, said the blueberry rakes have changed over the past 10 years. Now they have two longer handles on each side instead of one small handle in the middle.

“There’s no way I could go back to the single handle,” he said. “Bending over is hard.”

Woodward noted the transition to the longer handles has been a slow one that began with a few custom rakes about 10 years ago. The idea apparently caught on and now they are more readily available.

The single handle in the middle is intended for maneuverability and was necessary before the fields had good weed control, Woodward said.

Not all blueberry rakers are migrant workers. Dennis Krebs, 40, of Starks, who has his own business as a general contractor, takes time off specifically to rake blueberries.

“I’ve been with Wyman’s since 2000,” he said. “I was one of the young guys on the crew when I started.”

He rakes with his two children, Jonathan, 17, who is a senior in high school, and Kimberly, 19, who is a junior in college.

“It’s a great opportunity for them, some good, honest money,” he said. “It certainly beats most anything you can do in the course of a week.”

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