The Campesinos Garden in Apopka,
the newest of four in Florida, helps farmworkers feed their families nutritious food.
APOPKA — Flor Zarco bent over to pinch a few yellow leaves off a bushy Cuban oregano plant in the new garden she and other agriculture workers tend.
Zarco, 40, is one of many laborers who toil in Central Florida’s plant nurseries and farms.
While they nurture and harvest the fruits and vegetables that other people eat, they often can’t afford nutritious food for themselves and their families, farmworker organizers said.
That’s why the Florida Campesinos Gardens — including one on Hawthorne Avenue — were created by the Farmworker Association of Florida’s Agroecology Project. Campesinos means “rural people” in Spanish.
“I love the soil,” said Zarco, who lives and works in Lake County. “I love the plants. I love to eat fresh from the earth, not chemicals — and to learn from other people how to cook and eat vegetables from their country.”
The idea is to give rural, lowincome residents a chance to grow healthful food produced without chemical pesticides or fertilizers.
The gardens operate as a collective farm where everything is shared, not a community garden where each family has a plot. Any extra fruits and vegetables are given away.
Zarco, her husband and children are among the first seven families to join the Apopka Campesinos’ Garden, the newest of four in the state. Shortly after it was planted, most of the garden was wiped out by September’s Hurricane Irma.
But the campesinos were undeterred. With the help of volunteers, including students from Rollins and Valencia colleges and the University of Central Florida, they’re building the garden up again.
The plants include green peppers, pumpkins, tomatillos, cilantro, rosemary, papaya, banana, dragon fruit, aloe, tomatoes, broccoli, okra, radishes, avocados, bananas, carrots, cabbage, green beans, lettuce, an edible cactus called nopal and the culinary and medicinal plants rue and moringa, also known as the tree of life.
The campesinos choose the layout, materials and crops, so each of the four gardens is different. In Pierson in Volusia County, the group decided to plant 10 kinds of chili peppers,
said Pia Desangles, 25, an organizer with the Agroecology Project.
The garden is a place where they can bring their children to learn where their food comes from and appreciate its cultural aspects.
“There’s real pride in being a campesino, being in tune with the earth and the plants,” Desangles said. “It’s not always just a struggle. It’s beautiful, too, to help on the farm sometimes.”
Often, the members choose plants from their native lands, such as Mexico and Central and South America. They’re all in it together, said Iván Vázquez, 27, another organizer.
“It’s a way for them to empower themselves and be part of something bigger,” he said.
The first garden was planted in Fellsmere in Indian River County in 2010. The other garden is in Florida City in Miami-Dade County.
The movement is about politics as much as health, putting the environment and interests of the people who work the soil ahead of a corporate system of agriculture that it says exploits their labor, according to the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance and a coalition of Campesinos’ Gardens.
For example, the drip-irrigation system designed and installed in Apopka with the help of the U.S. Department of Agriculture uses reclaimed water and conserves the precious resource.
The first three gardens are on land owned by local governments. In Central Florida, Hope CommUnity Center, which advocates for immigrants and the working poor, lets the campesinos use a piece of property behind its office.
The families tend the garden every other Saturday. Last weekend, they turned a workday into a celebration of what they have accomplished, feasting on homemade tortillas, salsa, arroz con gandules (pigeon peas) and rice with black beans.
As they ate and chatted under a canopy of live oaks, they could see their handiwork, including bright acrylic artwork that adorns the trees and garden. The social aspect is an important component.
“It’s also a way for us to get to know each other and strengthen the community,” Vázquez said.