FEBRUARY 2023
CELEBRATING 144 YEARS AS CANADA’S PREMIER HORTICULTURAL PUBLICATION
THEGROWER.ORG
BETTER HOMES
Spacious quarters improve lives of temporary foreign workers
Un café, por favor. Fruit growers Elly Hoff, (L) and her brother Fred Meyers are happy to oblige, serving coffee to their Mexican workers Eduardo Bautista and Victor Lugo. In January 2023, the workers moved into one of the five new units that Meyers Fruit Farms built to accommodate 40 temporary foreign workers near Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Photos by Marcella DiLonardo. KAREN DAVIDSON Heated floors. Airy living room with big-screen TV. Stainless steel kitchen. These are a few of the favourite things that Victor Lugo and Eduardo Bautista are enjoying in new living quarters. They are temporary foreign workers (TFWs), part of the two-year AgStream program, who took up residence the first week of January 2023 at Meyers Fruit Farms, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. “I feel like a master chef in this kitchen,” says a grinning Victor Lugo whose favourite dish is chilaquiles – a Mexican tortilla stuffed with green or red salsa, pulled chicken, cheese, refried beans and scrambled eggs. “I love all the tools here and the stainless steel kitchen is easy to clean.” For Eduardo Bautista, he enjoys the big windows that
look out onto peach groves. The two Mexicans are part of a vanguard of workers who are tending the 25 acres of floral greenhouses or pruning 350 acres of peach trees and vineyards of Meyers Fruits Farms. So far, 2023 has been a go-ahead year after the pandemic revealed that housing needed to properly space a peak number of 80 workers. “We had to cut back our number of workers by about 15 per cent in 2022 to accommodate spacing needs,” says Aron Hoff, vice-president of production, Meyers. Fruit Farms. We house workers at a number of different facilities on different farms. But the challenge for us has been the expense of rental space while our needs for labour are growing.” To meet these needs, Meyers Fruit Farms contracted a local building company, Smart Homes Niagara, to construct five 1,904-square-foot houses a year ago. The ambitious goal was to finish by August 2022, but delays in
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material arrivals pushed the schedule to early 2023. The results are worth the wait. Steel structural insulated panels provide affordable, comfortable, and energyefficient housing units for year-round living. They include a combined mudroom/laundry room upon entry at the back of the unit. A long hall, with bedrooms and bathrooms to left and right, leads to the brightly lit kitchen and living area. Stainless steel cupboards and countertops sparkle alongside two of all the major appliances: stoves, microwaves, refrigerators and sinks. These doubles accommodate cooking by eight people. “The main challenge in building these houses was to limit the number of people per house so that the 10,000litre limit was not exceeded in the septic system,” says Hoff. “This was valued advice from other farmers in the area.” Continued on page 3
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