Hands that Feed Us: Devon Augustine
The Hands that Feed Us is a series of Eating Niagara. It’s a monthly profile of a seasonal agricultural worker in Niagara. This is Part 4 of a nine-part series.
Devon Augustine had never seen an apple tree until he came to work on a Beamsville fruit farm 14 years ago.
Sure, he could get apples back home in Grenada, but they weren’t grown there. They had to be imported from the U.S. and weren’t all that good. They certainly didn’t taste like the proverbial doctor repellent that grew on the trees he would prune and later harvest when he first arrived in Niagara so many years ago.
The first three seasons Augustine worked for apple grower Torrie Warner, he would feast with his colleagues, eating more than two dozen apples a day and building up what should be enough credit to keep doctors away for years.
“We would sit and eat apples all day,” Augustine, 46, recalled with a smile. “Apples here are really fresh, much more fresh than what you get in my country.”
Back home in his country, population 107,837, farmers grow different crops that would undoubtedly be a revelation for us to see. Grenada is dubbed the Spice Isle for all its nutmeg plantations. Cinnamon, cloves, cocoa, bananas and coffee are also as common as peaches, pears and cherries are here.
In fact, Augustine’s family grew many of those very crops in a country that’s one of several Caribbean nations, including Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, to participate in Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program.
Every year, more than 2,800 men and women come to Niagara from the Caribbean and Mexico to do the work in local orchards, vineyards and greenhouses that just as many Canadians don’t want to do themselves.
Augustine stays between five and seven months of the year, depending on the season. He clocks between eight and 10 hours a day tending orchards and Warner’s farm stand; more come August and September when those apples and other fruit are ripe for picking.
“If you work longer, it pays off much better,” Augustine noted about the years that keep him in Niagara and away from his wife and five children longer than usual.
Truth is, it’s not critical for Augustine to come to Canada each year to earn a paycheque. The gentle giant of a man, with fleshy mitts that seem perfectly suited to carefully plucking apples from a branch, is a tailor by trade. He runs a successful shop in his hometown of St. Andrews, making clothes for the people living there. Augustine does repairs, too, patching, darning and hemming.
“It’s a bit of pride to see something you made, and see someone wear it,” he said. “It feels good to see my clothes out there.”
While he’s tending to orchards in Beamsville, Augustine has two employees back home keeping his sewing machines humming their staccato tune in his absence.
That, however, is something he couldn’t have achieved if he didn’t come to Canada. His work here enabled him to buy equipment for his shop, expand his payroll and, ultimately, grow Grenada’s economy.
If it weren’t for a Canadian boss he speaks of so highly, Augustine also couldn’t have built a home large enough to comfortably shelter the family he supports with each suit he cuts and bushel he harvests. Paying for his children’s college education would also be more difficult.
“If I were tailoring alone, I wouldn’t be as far along as I am when I come here,” Augustine said.
“We are not poor,” he added. “People (here) think we come here because we are poor. We are not poor.”
Tailoring is his passion, though. He gets his fix here using the sewing machine in his quarters to repair the wear and tear on his colleague’s work garments.
It was a calling he discovered at his parent’s behest.
“I wasn’t doing too well in school and … my parents wanted me to learn a trade so they sent me to the tailor shop in the village,” Augustine recalled. “I loved it. It’s been 28 years. You’ve got to have lots of patience. I’ve learned a lot of patience.”
That’s a skill that helps him through his time in Niagara, away from his family.
“I’ve grown to love this job,” he said. But like so many of his coworkers, coming here is never easy, despite the financial benefits.
He’s nearly reduced to tears when he talks about not being able to see his children advance from schools whose tuition was covered by his work abroad. “Missing graduation is hard,” Augustine said, shaking his head in disappointment. “Missing graduation is so hard.”
He dreams of coconut trees and the beach five minutes from his home in St. Andrews a lot. But there’s a rhythm to life here — his second home — after 14 growing seasons. It’s one filled with moments he looks forward to experiencing, like harvest.
Gorging on fresh apples aside, he’s as proud of all the fruit he helps Warner grow as he is seeing a fellow Grenadian wearing the clothing he’s made.
“Especially in August when the peaches are red and fresh,” Augustine says. “Or the apricots. Picking fruit is the best.”