This image is part of the ‘Ojos’ bi-weekly series. Ojos is a photo-letter that honors people, their merits, the environment and connects our human experience to community with the use of a camera—here in the Bay Area.
Elena Castanon has a passion for working the land, it is part of her Guatemalan roots that followed her all the way up north as she trekked by foot to the U.S. border. This was more than two decades ago, and the Bay Area has been her home ever since. Castanon’s first job in the U.S. was housekeeping at a hotel, where she’d eventually become a janitor at an airport. But none of those jobs had a purpose, she says. Castanon eventually found employment as a farmworker—a profession that gave her the opportunity to be outdoors and work the land, just as she remembered, from growing up as a child in Guatemala. For the past two decades, Castanon has helped grow some of the produce for a local fruit stand just off San Mateo Road in Half Moon Bay, about 30 miles south of San Francisco. It is operated by her partner who has been leasing the one-acre patch of land for almost 25 years now. “The fresh air, planting, gardening—I love the farm,” Castanon said, backdropped by boxes of fruit. “But it is also hard being a small farm without the support of the government, and having that language barrier makes it difficult to get educated on the necessary information needed, like growing successful produce consistently.”