ADRIAN — When Pete Vargas put out a call for people to donate warm clothing for migrant farmworkers, his goal was to collect 300 hoodies and sweatshirts to distribute to the hundreds of people who work harvesting crops on Lenawee County farms every season.
The final tally was more than 1,000 — “enough to fill a whole storage unit,” Vargas said.
The effort started with a simple post on Facebook, and it didn’t take long for offers of help to start rolling in. Vince Inclan, owner of My Cousin Vinny’s Barbershop, offered his businesses in Adrian and Saline as dropoff locations. And people started donating — not just from Lenawee County, but from Saline, Ann Arbor, and as far as Detroit and Lansing.
Both men’s and women’s clothing was collected — Vargas said about a quarter of migrant farmworkers in Lenawee County are women — and in a variety of sizes.
In addition to the hoodies and sweatshirts, Vargas said, “we also got a lot of blankets donated, and some miscellaneous women’s clothing that will be distributed during the migrant health fair that happens in about a month.”
The workers are hired by area farms, which arrange for H-2A visas that allow them to come to the U.S. seasonally. Most of the workers come from warmer countries, and many don’t have warm enough clothing to be comfortable in Michigan — where, in addition to being chillier than they’re used to, “the weather changes every five minutes,” Vargas noted.
Vargas said the goal of this project is to provide comfort and dignity to the workers who play a vital role in our food system.
On April 13, volunteers gathered at Adrian Super Laundromat on South Winter Street to wash, dry and fold all of the donated clothes. People donated detergent, fabric softener, rolls of quarters — and, of course, time. It was just in time for some of the sweatshirts to go out that evening for a group of about 20 workers who had just arrived.
Was Vargas surprised to have exceeded the goal by so much?
“I was, but I wasn’t surprised that people from Lenawee County really showed up,” he said.
“It’s a beautiful thing,” he added. “I think in these times of uncertainty, the one thing we can be certain of is that when it counts, Lenawee County shows up for its community and this is an example of that.”
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