Harvesting the crops Jan 5

When you drive along highway 95 there are miles and miles of fields where vegetables are grown. The main crops are cauliflower, broccoli,, carrots and many kinds of lettuce. Each evening from just after dark until around 10 pm there are low flying planes landing and taking  of from a runway in the center of these farm plots.  They spray the crops buy flying very low with extremely bright lights.  

This entire field is broccoli

This will be ready to pick in about 2 weeks

A crew of Mexicans who cross the border every day thinning the rows

This field is about 16 acres, and there are 35 workers in this crew. They will take around 7 1/2 hours to weed and thin the field.

Three of the 6 rows have been thinned
This is the second time that a crew has cleaned and thinned the field.

A bit difficult to see but the workers walk along in front of this machine to pick and trim of the outside leaves. The first worker cuts the lettuce from the plant , hands it to the second who removed the outside leaved and then then drops it onto the conveyer.  When the lettuce  arrives in the center of the conveyer they are packed into the boxes and are now ready for shipping. We have been told that about 1000 trucks a day leave this area loaded with  vegetables.

6 days a week, 45000 workers almost all from Mexico work these fields.

All of this labor and machinery plus water from the Colorado river and a head of lettuce arrives in our stores for less than 2 dollars. Incredible!!