John Woodrow Cox (0:00)

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Sally Jenkins (0:35)

Today.

John Woodrow Cox (0:36)

I'm handing the mic over to my colleague John Woodrow Cox. John is an enterprise reporter for the Post and he wrote this story as part of our occasional Deep Read series which features the best of the Post's narrative reporting.

Sally Jenkins (0:50)

Here's John so really what this story is about is commitment. The entire farming industry, farming in America is built on commitment. It is the commitment of farmers to take on an unreasonable, extraordinary amount of uncertainty every moment of every day, all of which could prove fatal to their businesses and has We've lost hundreds of thousands of farms over the past decade, and yet they get up every day and they farm. And that's because they've made a commitment to do it. On the other side of that is a government that in exchange for those farmers, commitment has agreed to sustain them. A farmer who takes that notion very seriously is a man in eastern Colorado named J.J. ficken. He's a corn farmer. He's 37 years old. He grew up in a town of 61 people. And in 2023, along came what he thought was a life changing opportunity. It was a grant program through the USDA that said if you're willing to provide really good working conditions to either a domestic worker or to a migrant laborer, we will cover the cost of that worker over the course of two years. For him, it absolutely aligned with his worldview too, right? He believed in this. He at any time could have gone out and hired an undocumented laborer for $14 an hour, but he refused to do that. He had paid instead a premium to a local guy who grew up in the community. And he'd done that for years. But here came this opportunity that he viewed as something that would transform his farm's future, his family's future. So he signs up, he's awarded the grant, $200,000 is what he was promised from the federal government, and he starts making investments in that. He finds a rental home for this guy to use. He goes out and hires A recruiting agency, to go find candidates in Latin America. He hires a guy, a guy from Guatemala named otto Vargas, who's 24 years old. He's the youngest candidate JJ interviewed, but he sounded really eager. And then President Trump takes office, and on his very first day, he signs executive orders targeting legislation that President Biden had passed and targeting dei, the concept of dei, trying to basically undo any links to dei. And as a result of those executive orders, thousands of contracts to the USDA are frozen. One of the things that's targeted is this grant that JJ's a part of. Suddenly, the money's frozen. And that's when I really enter JJ's story. He's at this moment of enormous tension where all these commitments, right, all these commitments that he had counted on are at risk. He doesn't know if Otto will even make it from Guatemala. He doesn't know if Otto will work out when he gets there. He doesn't know if the government will come through, in his mind, if Trump will come through with this money. So I really wanted to see this play out on the ground. I wanted to see it unfold as it happened. The day that I arrived in Colorado was the same day that his local guy, the local laborer, he quit just a few hours before my plane landed. So I spent nearly two weeks over the course of two trips watching him process the stress, his very complicated feelings about the president that I saw evolve in real time. And I saw him interact with other farmers who, like jj, believed that the government did waste a lot of money, was overspending. It was partly the reason that JJ and all these other guys voted for the president. But then suddenly, he's dealing with it in a very real way. And he totally rejected the notion that this grant, which in his mind represented doing things the right way. He rejected the idea that this was a waste. And meanwhile, my colleague Sarah Blasky was reporting on all the upheaval behind the scenes that's unfolding inside the usda, hundreds and hundreds of miles away in Washington, dc. Okay, here is JJ and Otto's story. There was a saying he'd heard about how every farmer rooted for all the other farmers to do well, too, until one of those others started farming next door. So J.J. ficken didn't talk much about the grant money with other farmers, but his bills had mounted and his ambitions had unraveled. And in Kirk, a town of 61, it was easy to feel alone. Now. On that afternoon in mid April, JJ, who was 37 years old, unstrapped the bags of seed corn on his trailer for a customer. How are you? JJ said, extending his hand to a man he'd known all his life. They played ball together, shared in family trips. So JJ decided to tell him. The federal government had promised JJ a $200,000 grant spread across two years to cover the cost of a seasonal farmhand from Latin America. In a place where local legal help was nearly impossible to keep. The extra worker would give him the freedom to handle more jobs and invest in his own equipment. It was an opportunity that could transform his family's future. But, JJ explained to his friend President Donald Trump had frozen the money. Good, the man said, grinning. Too much spending here and there. I'm okay With a little hurt, JJ took a breath. It needed to be done, JJ said softly, because he was also a Republican who, like nearly every farmer he knew, thought the country wasted too much money. But not all of it, JJ Said, because he rejected the notion that his grant was a waste. I guess, J.J. said, because he didn't want to argue. Hurt was something JJ already understood. It had been part of the landscape long before Trump took office. JJ was an American farmer, perpetually subject to weather, labor loans, overhead markets, health, politics. None of it was predictable, and all of it was a threat. The industry's survival has long depended on the deals made between millions of Americans willing to brave all that uncertainty and a federal government willing to sustain them through grants, subsidies, insurance financing payouts, and disaster relief. But then Trump, in the earliest days of his second term, threatened to break tens of thousands of those deals, suspending billions in agriculture funding and decimating the staffs that managed it. Swept up in the freeze was JJ and the $50 million grant program he'd signed up for, along with 140 other farmers across the country. All of them had agreed to hire and in many cases house domestic workers or lawful immigrants willing to take jobs that Americans would not. But with the reimbursements in doubt, farmers worried they'd miss payrolls, default on loans, or face bankruptcy. Many feared the checks would never come. I tried to do things right, J.J. said, because he could have taken on an undocumented laborer at any time for $14 an hour, as many of his neighbors had. But he didn't believe in supporting illegal immigration. Almost nothing mattered more to him than his word, and he'd kept it to the US Government. He committed to buy a plane ticket for for a 24 year old from Guatemala named Otto Vargas. He'd rented him a single wide. He'd bought him an old pickup to use. He'd spent tens of thousands of dollars to do what the grant required, covering most of it with a line of credit at 8 and a half percent interest. Now he didn't know if Otto would ever get here, or if the government would ever pay him back. JJ had joined 81% of Yuma County's voters in supporting Trump, whom he considered the better of two bad options. He wanted to believe that the president would honor his many pledges to do right by people like him. Trump had posted to Truth Social that very day, the USA will, in all caps, protect our farmers. JJ Needed that to be true as he climbed into his Dodge, turned onto a gravel road and drove toward the horizon, where eastern Colorado's parched brown canvas converged with the cloudless sky. Nothing else was within view. No people, no cows, no homes or barns, pickups or tractors. Out here, it was just JJ in the dirt. It was the fall of 2023, and an ad urging farmers to apply for the grant program had been playing for months on the radio when J.J. s wife finally brought it up. Why not? Cassidy asked. Larger farms paid specialists to handle the paperwork, but Cassidy, who was 36 years old, believed they could take on the applications themselves. And they did, slogging through 40 hours of maddening federal bureaucracy. Each night they put their two kids to bed and sifted through hundreds of pages of guides and forms. In JJ's basement office, taped to his walls were bits of motivation and financial advice. A line at the top, bolded and underlined, read Stay the course. JJ was a fourth generation farmer but had been handed no wealth, land or expensive equipment from his parents, who divorced when he was about 6. To make a living, he had baled hay and helped raise neighbors wheat, soybeans, pinto beans, Great Northern beans and alfalfa. Now he rented and farmed his mom's two circles of corn, each about 125 acres, and partnered with his dad to sell seed corn. He and Cassidy, a dental hygienist, married in 2012 and slipped into debt in their early 20s. They dug themselves out with advice from Dave Ramsey's books, save for big purchases and live below your means. The couple paid off their home early, opened investment accounts, bought a small rental house. They'd avoided serious debt since, but the promise of a grant and another worker inspired JJ to make a bigger bet on himself. In the months after applying, he bought a 2012 combine, a 2013 planter, a 2013 cornheader, a 2000 Dodge pickup meant for Otto, and a second haystacker, the only new piece of equipment he'd ever owned. JJ paid cash as much as he could, but still owed more than $380,000 at the time. It didn't scare him because with Otto, the grant money, the farmhand he already had, and the extra margin he'd pocket from owning his machinery, JJ figured he could pay it all off in three years. His investment spoke to the value that even one dependable worker can bring to today's farms, where more than 40% of the workforce is undocumented. To address the critical shortage of labor and stem the flow of undocumented immigrants, the U.S. agriculture Department unveiled the Farm Labor Stabilization and Protection pilot program in 2023. With the grant, farms could bring on foreign workers through the H2A visa program and in exchange provide good working conditions. Tracy vins was assured $400,000 for her organic farm in Wisconsin. She said. I've employed Americans, and they quit after a few days. They quit after a few hours. Mitch Lawson is a Georgia produce farmer who lost nearly two dozen American employees before he qualified for $200,000. He said, I've had a couple who didn't even last a whole day. In Trump's first term, he gave farmers $23 billion to cover the losses from his trade war with China. And he expanded support programs through a new farm bill, an achievement President Joe Biden's administration would fail to match. Trump, sitting before a pair of John Deere tractors, told a crowd in Pennsylvania this past, nobody has done for farmers what I've done. Then, four months later, he halted the grant payments. On January 20, his first day in office, Trump signed executive orders intended to block funding from Biden era climate legislation and purge links to diversity, equity and inclusion, known as dei. Baffled staffers at the Agriculture Department told the Washington Post they struggled to interpret vague directions dictating who should and shouldn't be paid. The process is changing more than once a day, tricia Kovacs, a deputy administrator, told managers. According to a record of the meeting, staff abandoned their normal work to defend programs that appeared to have nothing to do with dei. Many were snagged in a broad search for keywords branded problematic among the misfires was the widespread flagging of bonus biodiversity. JJ's grant was frozen in late January as top administrators considered whether to cancel it. Over the next two months, more than 20 farmers requested $4 million owed to them, according to documents reviewed by the Post. None were paid. Dozens of farmers in the program met in a virtual call to share updates and commiserate, later starting a chat group JJ joined, some considered filing lawsuits. Jason Harris, a Trump Voter offered a $400,000 grant for his farm in Mississippi, wrote Republican senators in early April. Why are you ignoring a military veteran? He said later. The longer these funds are not released, it is starting to make me think that you do not care for people like me. Citing litigation, an Agriculture Department spokesperson declined to answer questions, including whether the agency intended to cancel the program. But the White House defended Trump, spokesperson Anna Kelly wrote in a statement. Farmers helped propel President Trump to victory in November because they knew he would negotiate better trade deals, cut red tape and boost American exports. They were right. Since January, President Trump has delivered a historic deal with the UK with more deals on the way and eliminated bureaucracy and bloat at usda, which is why farmer sentiment has improved across the country. End quote. She cited a survey from April that showed farmers were increasingly optimistic about their future. As that poll was conducted, farmers in Tennessee, Texas, Michigan, Minnesota, California and Georgia who'd signed up for the grant program told the Post they'd drained their savings or taken on debt. In Oregon, a pear farmer had to cash out her children's life insurance policies. In West Virginia, a farmer who'd risked raising a dozen new fruits and vegetables feared she'd have to close if the money never came. In Maine, a broccoli farmer already contemplating bankruptcy doubted he'd last another year without it. Otto was the youngest candidate JJ interviewed, but he sounded eager. Through an interpreter, Otto told him he wanted to learn English, and JJ told Otto he wanted to learn Spanish. The language barrier didn't concern JJ when he offered him the job, he already had Another worker, a 21 year old named Riggan Williams, who had grown up in the community. As long as he had Riggan, jj, JJ wouldn't have to ask Otto to deal with customers or operate the most technical equipment. Then one morning in mid April, Riggan quit. He had found a job with regular hours and didn't want to spend another season bailing hay. He gave JJ two weeks notice and told him he hoped the new guy worked out. But the new guy was still in Guatemala, waiting for a visa. JJ couldn't even apply for the first installment of his grant money until Otto arrived, which should have happened weeks earlier. He'd heard from a recruiter that the administration's attempt to make the government more efficient had slowed the visa process throughout Central America. JJ tried not to panic, but suddenly, for him to operate, Otto had to make it to Colorado. And if he did, he had to work out. The stakes were still on JJ's mind that afternoon when a neighbor stopped by his shop. And as, as it often did, the conversation turned to Trump's overhaul of the federal government. Eric Smith had grown up in Yuma county, joined the Navy, and returned to Kirk to raise his two daughters and work the family land. He said. There will be some growing pains. There will be some caught in the fray that, you know, maybe shouldn't have been caught. JJ handed cans of Michelob Ultra to Eric and Riggan, who was patching a tire. JJ had voted for Trump in part because of the president's promises to cut spending, but he never imagined the cuts would target a core Trump constituency. It made no sense to jj, who said he didn't even know what DEI stood for, much less what it had come to represent. He didn't hire Otto to promote an agenda, and he didn't think the government owed him a handout. The Agriculture Department had sought out JJ and the other farmers, promoting an opportunity intended to lift the whole country. JJ considered what Trump was doing and how he fit into it. I'd like to think a year from now, what's being done, now we see the benefits from it. I would hope. He didn't care much for politics, preferring parenting and self help books to partisan podcasts. The fervor Trump inspired unsettled him. He'd hated trying to explain the Biden flag outside town to his daughter, but JJ found elements of the president's rhetoric appealing. He, too, resented that the country sent billions of dollars abroad when so many people here needed support. Eric understood why JJ had signed up for the grant program. Eric, who was 47 years old, had taken on more than $800,000 in debt to manage his hay fields and buy equipment. And he flew commercial airliners to cover the bills. Eric said, so you're bringing over help? Mm, JJ replied, explaining that, like all businesses in the H2A program, he'd first been required to advertise the job to US citizens. None applied. People don't want to work, Eric said. Reagan sipped his beer. The conversation was not about him, but that didn't make it less awkward. He had originally committed to two more years, prompting JJ to buy the second haystacker. But Riggan changed his mind. In the new job as a field tech working on phone lines, he'd earn more money, get health insurance, and make it home for dinner. Eric, meanwhile, wondered what working in Kirk would feel like for an outsider. F ing winds blowing all the time. It's every shade of brown, he said. It's hard. You can't get people to do it. JJ took another swig. He hoped that wasn't true. In Guatemala, Otto was pleading with God. From his rural hometown of Aldea Chispan, he prayed that he'd get a job interview. And when he did, he prayed he'd do well. And when he did, he prayed he'd receive an offer. And when he did, he prayed the United States would let him come. Otto had made the six hour round trip drive to interview for his visa on April 15, the same day Reagan quit. Now he waited, worrying he would be denied or J.J. would back out. The two men had spoken during their video interview. For just 17 minutes each week, Otto missed because of the delay cost him at least $700 in lost wages. And all of it mattered to Otto. His family's 40 acre farm, he said, had struggled in recent years. Bad winters killed crops. A lost onion harvest squandered five months of work. He had told JJ that nothing mattered more between a worker and a boss than trust. But he wasn't certain he had the experience to earn that trust. He'd learned on his dad's old tractors, nothing like what he expected to face in Colorado. His earliest memories were on the farm, fetching his dad's tools. His father would dig a little hole, and Otto would press fertilizer into the soil by hand. In the flatlands east of the mountains, he'd learned to tolerate temperatures that topped 110 degrees. During planting season, he and his dad would rest in the shade of their lemon trees, sweating and laughing and sharing his mother's empanadas. Now his dad was 64, and Otto dreaded leaving him. He relied on Otto to manage the land, but But Otto also leaned on his dad, who had tried to prepare him for the United States, a place he'd never visited in the months since Trump took office. Otto said he'd seen videos on Facebook of immigrants being harassed and arrested. He said in Spanish, you get to thinking about all the people who are here for a better future for their family. It's very difficult. His dad insisted that if an officer confronted him, he should do what he was told. Never argue. So Otto made a plan. He would hurry to type a message into the translation app on his phone, asking if he could use it to communicate. He would offer documentation that proved he was legal. He would ask to call his boss, who he hoped could explain that everything was ok. JJ loaded his kids in their lunch boxes into the backseat of the pickup. And now, just after 8am on April 17, a Thursday, he pulled a trailer to his father's place and made a list of the work ahead. Deliver £7,000 of seed corn to a farmer an hour away. Prep his ripper for a neighbor who asked to rent it. Bring his corn header inside in case of rain, fix a sprinkler and mow the lawn and finish installing the water heater. Then JJ remembered. He glanced in the rearview mirror. Vivi, what's your sugar at? In October, Vivian, who is seven years old, had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. The whole family changed diets, even her four year old brother, Henry. She needed constant monitoring and frequent insulin shots and regular appointments two hours west in Denver. So the couple decided to homeschool both kids in the pickup. Vivian reached for her phone linked through Bluetooth with a monitor on her arm. She said, it's at 1:27. See? She passed the phone up to her dad. She needed insulin. He sped up. At his father's shop, JJ figured out the dosage on her phone and a bottle cap sized pump on her leg. Injected the medication? He asked, did you hear it go beep beep on you? JJ had accepted that farm work would shape their life at home, and he made certain the reverse was true, too. The kid slowed him down, scaling stacks of corn bags and pretending the trailer was a pirate ship. But he still took them along. He'd come to think of himself as the sum of his commitments. First to the kids and Cassidy and God. Then to his customers, whom he owed fair prices and honest answers to the country, whose flag he'd pasted along both sides of his grain cart. To the land so it might survive another generation. To Riggan until he collected his last paycheck. And now to Otto, a stranger from a faraway place. JJ sometimes faltered, but when he did, he tried to make it right. He expected the same of others, and that included the president, who he'd never believe in again if the grant didn't come through. No way in hell, JJ said. After two hernia surgeries and hundreds of fitful nights, JJ hoped his children found a different path. He and Cassidy had already started saving for their college. The couple suspected Vivian would prefer city life. He said, she loves the city light. But Henry was just like him now. As JJ fired up the forklift, his son hurried over to sit beside him, legs straddling the lovers. Henry had dressed to match his dad in blue jeans, work boots, and a hoodie. At home in his bedroom, he carefully organized a collection of toy harvesters, grain bins, hay bales, and seed boxes. Jj, who had dropped out of college before attending an automotive technology program, had rehearsed what he might someday pitch to Henry. Why don't you go be an architect and then own you a farm? A hobby farm? Do it a different way. Do this for a tax write off, not to feed your kids. JJ And Cassidy had been a year apart at the only high school in their community. She graduated in a class of eight. J.J. a class of five. Opportunities were scant. The couple had once imagined the grant might allow JJ More time with the kids, freeing Cassidy to earn her master's degree. She'd worked for years as a dental hygienist in rural offices that turned away people on Medicaid. She and a partner had started their own office and turned away no one. But Cassidy needed an advanced degree to provide treatments their poorest patients couldn't afford elsewhere, she told her husband, maybe next year. One night in their kitchen, Cassidy prepared a meatloaf as she considered the relentless uncertainty their family navigated. How would the couple, who had no health insurance, pay for their daughter's care if the administration and Congress gutted Medicaid? JJ Never stopped accounting for the farming costs that would not quit climbing and the eastern Colorado drought that would not end. And now came the tariffs that could spike the price of equipment and the attacks on subsidies that protect commodity farmers when markets collapse. Cassidy said, there are so many variables in farming that things get turned upside down all the time. Every part of it is a gamble. From 2017 to 2022, according to the latest census of agriculture, the country lost 141,000 farms and 20 million acres of farmland, an area about the size of Maine. At dinner, Henry sat at the head of the table beside J.J. vivian, in a bunny ears headband, crunched on a cherry tomato and opened a small box that read Talking point Cards. What do you think it means to be? Vivian read from one, pausing to spell out the last word. Cassidy helped her sound it out. Suc cessful. Vivian asked if making her bed counted. Cassidy said, successful people do make their beds, JJ Added. All of them. His definition had evolved. Money would once have been the measure. Today, he said, it was the family in front of him. Cassidy, back in the kitchen baking sugar free chocolate chip cookies, mulled the question for another minute. I don't know, she said. Success can mean just making it through the day. I already have laundry supposed. Otto's alarm sounded at midnight, 13 hours before the flight he hoped would change his life. But first he had to make it to the airport, nearly 100 miles away. It was April 28 a week since his visa had been approved and a national strike was expected to shut down major highways, Otto had slept only an hour or so. He'd worked late into the evening on his father's farm, picking LaRocco, an edible flower bud. Now he loaded two bags into his 2005 Honda CRV and met a man who, for the equivalent of about $150, shuttled people to the airport. It could be dangerous to travel at that hour. If he reached Colorado, the money would make a difference, and not just for his father's farm. Otto had applied for residency in the United States in 2023, the same year he married a neighbor from Guatemala who now lives legally in Rhode Island. They hope to someday move in together and have children. I don't ever consider trying to work in the United States illegally, he said. He knew the abuses other undocumented immigrants endured and hated the idea of living under threat of deportation. He had tried to do things right. He hoped it would be worth it. Otto reached La Aurora International Airport before dawn, but the government official with his approved passport had yet to arrive in the mountains of Guatemala City. It was chilly, so Otto sat in his car. Every hour he walked back to ask for an update. Without the passport, Otto couldn't board his flight. 1900 miles north, JJ sat at his dining room table that afternoon and studied an instruction manual for a pair of $430 earbuds that translated other languages in real time. They had just arrived. This might just save my life, he said. Six hours before Otto's plane was scheduled to reach Denver, he read, quote, first use earbuds in charging case. Henry, lugging an old drill, checked on his father's progress. He asked, are we going to need the tape measure, dad? You never know, bud, JJ Said. There's not much we do without a tape measure. It was 1pm and he didn't even know whether Otto had left Guatemala. Jj, who had no social media accounts, had tried and failed to connect with Otto and WhatsApp, which he'd never used before. He and Cassidy had fretted over whether Otto would settle into their community. Hispanics accounted for 30% of Yuma County's population, but there was no easy way to make friends. It was 104 times the size of Manhattan but had 0.6% of its population 4 people per square mile. Kirk had a lunchtime food truck, the filling station, but no restaurants or bars. The local grocery store Supers closed at 6:30pm Otto loved soccer, so JJ, who knew nothing about the game, had Googled how to take him to a Colorado Rapids match in Denver. At 5pm JJ left for the airport, still with no idea where Otto was. An hour into the drive, JJ got a call from a Rhode island number. The man asked for Jack, so JJ hung up. Then came two more calls. Hello, a woman said, her accent thick and the connection spotty. She continued. I talk with from Guatemala? JJ asked Otto. From Guatemala? Yes, because he lost. He lost the flight, she said, and for a moment JJ felt sick. He pulled onto the shoulder of the one lane road. Another relative called to explain that Otto missed a connection and would arrive late to Denver. The man said he'd connect JJ to Otto on WhatsApp, and a few minutes later a photo appeared along with a message. Hi, Jase, it read, referencing JJ's full name. I am Otto, JJ wrote back. Hey, guy, I don't have great service to load your picture, but we'll be there to pick you up. He stopped at a Mexican restaurant outside the city to eat a long, nervous fajita dinner and sip a margarita. I am scared to death, he said. It was just easy with Riggan. Two hours later, JJ pulled into the parking garage and considered what this experience might mean to Otto. By federal mandate, JJ would pay $17.84 an hour, and to get the grant, he'd agreed to offer overtime after 40, JJ intended to give him as much work as he could handle. Sitting in the darkness, JJ tried to Google the minimum wage in Guatemala. He saw 33 quote quetzals, a word he couldn't pronounce. Just more than $4 an hour. He shook his head. Besides the rental, the truck, and the $1,134 flight, JJ would cover Otto's gas, Internet, phone, household items, and workers compensation. By then, the grant had technically been unfrozen because of a court order two weeks earlier, on April 15. But an administrator from the Agriculture Department later told the judge it faced a massive backlog. More than 42,000 contracts had been stalled. On April 23, a national group of nonprofits suing the Agriculture Department accused it of largely ignoring the order and rushing to cancel grants rather than unfreeze them. Government attorneys said that wasn't true, but according to documents and farmers in the chat group, no one in JJ's program had been paid. Inside the airport, JJ lingered by baggage claim, checking his phone, scanning faces. At 10:13pm he waved Otto, in jeans and a T shirt, grabbed his bag and walked over, grinning. They shook hands. In the suv. JJ handed him an earbud. JJ said it can Translate. Oh, okay, otto said, nodding. After a few seconds, the words came through. So Otto detailed his flight trouble. Eager to explain why he was late. They talked about his wife, a hairdresser, and the protests back home and the and how there was lots of traffic in Guatemala, but none where they were going. At McDonald's, Otto, who hoped to one day become a US citizen, asked for fries, Coke and a Big Mac. Otto asked, according to the translation in JJ's ear, do you have more workers on your farm? I had one full time guy, JJ said, and he just quit. Okay, Otto said, eyebrows raised. JJ Pointed at Otto, then himself. Just you and me. Otto speaks Spanish. You guys, JJ Told his kids. Strapped in the back seat of the Silverado, Otto had made it to Kirk, 29 days late. Now, at 10am the next morning, JJ was headed back to the rented mobile home to pick him up. Henry asked, so he's going to be saying like comprendo and stuff to say. Okay. In Spanish you say comprendo. So JJ practiced, comprendo, comprendo. By then, Otto said he'd already been up for hours. He understood that thousands of people from his home country would have taken this job, and he wanted to prove to JJ on this first day that he'd made the right choice. He took a shower and cleaned the glass with the squeegee. He got dressed, slipped on his sneakers, combed his hair, passed the sign on the wall that read Dream the impossible. He made the bed. As JJ pulled up, Otto walked outside. How are you? JJ asked and Otto nodded and smiled. That afternoon they went to JJ's house to plant a row of young Rocky Mountain junipers. It was a laborious, low pressure task, a good way to ease Otto in. JJ Ran a line of twine on stakes to keep the row straight. Otto raked sticks into piles. Henry lugged them to a trailer. They had just unfurled a black weed tarp when J.J. s phone rang. It was a woman from Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, a national organization that provides seasonal workers in the grant program with a quote, know your rights and resources training. Until Otto attended a session, JJ Couldn't request the first half of his money. He dropped his shovel. How are you, ma'? Am? He said. It would take time for Alianza to arrange a training near Kirk for just one worker, but the woman said Otto could join a session north of Denver, 165 miles away. What day? He asked. Tuesday, she said. Ah, Rosa, I can't do Tuesday, he told her, aware that Cassidy had to work that day. He said. I've got the kids. But he would do Tuesday because he would do whatever it took, even a six hour round trip drive with Otto and the kids. He'd already accepted that he needed to ask for an extension on the $46,000 haystacker payment due the next month. JJ leaned against the hood of his pickup and bowed his head. He didn't know it then, but in early May a few people in his grant program who'd waited since winter for installments would finally receive them. That did little to calm the fear that political appointees running the agency would kill the program. Already, they had canceled the research component of the grant, which was intended to show whether the program helped farmers or curbed illegal immigration. Officials called it dei. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins would announce a Make Agriculture Great again initiative on May 19 that proposed her department address the labor shortage in the same way as JJ's pilot program already did, by working with other government agencies and relying on the H2A visa process. A month later, at least three farmers yet to receive installments would say they'd soon be unable to make payroll. Jj, who'd send eight emails to the Agriculture Department pleading for answers, would still be waiting for his check. Now in Kirk. The tree line had been set and the sticks cleared, and JJ was trying to say in Spanish, but they would stop in 45 minutes at 5pm he figured Otto must be exhausted from the day before. So we'll work till, he said, pausing to count. Cinco de la noche, otto corrected him. Letarde. They both laughed. We're all still pretty tired, jj said. He picked up a post hole digger and spiked it into the hard, dry earth, and when he was done, Otto planted the first tree. Vivian listed all the words she knew in Spanish. She said, the trees are verdae. Otto, now digging the holes, pointed to his jeans. What is the color? He asked her. Azul, she said. JJ knelt to plant the next tree. He looked up at his daughter. This is going to be good for us, Viv, he said. About 4:45pm A white pickup sped past on their dirt road. It was Riggan who honked and waved. He was finished for the day. Headed home, JJ waved back. Ten minutes later he picked up the tape measure and dropped it into the toolbox. He told Otto they could finish later. I'm beat, jj said. Otto asked how many more trees they needed to plant. Probably 20, JJ answered. Otto reached for the post hole digger. No problem, he said. So JJ grabbed another sapling and followed him back to this story was written and read by me, John Woodrow Cox. My colleague Sarah Blasky co authored the story, David Ovalier contributed to the report, and Bishop sand produced audio for this story.