Second-generation farmhand delivers grapes, workers, tortillas
By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor
Consider Tomas Moreno a matchmaker for Leelanau County’s migrant farmworkers.
The soft-spoken, good-natured Texas native and Leland Public School graduate with family roots in Mexico manages 54 vineyard acres north of Lake Leelanau for Bel Lago and French Valley wineries. He interprets for and leads a crew of Hispanic farm workers, indispensable to the harvest, some of whom arrive in northern Michigan on H-2A temporary work visas. Tomas, who turns 41 next month, also recently began making fresh tortillas with his wife Julieta to sell to the local Latino community.
For 25 years the Moreno family has worked for Bel Lago, planting, pruning, managing the canopy and harvesting the grapes that founder and winemaker Charles Edson have turned into 12 different delicious wines. Tomas’ father, the late Tomas Moreno, Sr., and his wife Juana, met in Matamoros, Mexico, and immigrated to Brownsville, Texas, where they had five children. In the late 1980s a friend invited them north to work the harvest season in Michigan and return south for the winter. After three years they decided to stay year-round in Leelanau County, where they worked for a cherry factory in Suttons Bay and for a variety of local farmers.
The family joined Bel Lago in 1998, and each of their children, as well as cousins, uncles and aunts, have worked part time in the vineyards. George, Gustavo, Bea, Lilia, and Tomas, the youngest, all enrolled at Leland Public School, and have interpreted for their parents to help integrate them into life in the United States. (George doesn’t mind being the only one with an Anglo name: the family shares the story that a young secretary in Texas who signed his birth certificate was an office intern who didn’t speak Spanish. So, Jorgebecame George.)
Tomas, Jr., graduated from Leland in 2001 and decided to help his family in the vineyards and interpret for the migrant worker team for one year before going to college. Instead, his detour turned into a fulltime job he has held for 21 years. Three years after starting at Bel Lago, he began to run the vineyard, though he strategically continued to ask for his father’s input and advice. Tomas doesn’t regret the career shift. The winter break between harvests allows him to travel south to Texas and Mexico to visit family. In 2012 he married Julieta, a native of San Luis Potosí, the same city in Mexico where his mother was born. Less than a year later, his father died.
Bel Lago may be the only local vineyard where the same migrant farmworker family has worked for a quarter century and across two generations. Tomas and Julieta now have three children, ages 7, 5 and 3. Sometimes they come to the farm and help him move lugs. Perhaps one of them will follow in his footsteps and manage the vineyard one day, too.
Fewer hands, wineries look to H-2A
The craft has changed in the 25 years since the Morenos began working at Bel Lago. What was once done entirely by hand is now partly mechanized. Workers use pre-pruners, hedgers and leaf-removal machines when they move down the rows of vines. “It’s getting easier and faster to do the job than it was back in the day,” said Tomas.
Finding workers was much easier in the late ‘90s. Bel Lago currently employs 6–8 farmhands in its vineyard, approximately the same number as in 1998. But the vineyard has grown, and now those workers cover 54 acres, not the original 28. The same number of hands cover twice as much land.
About a decade ago, Tomas said he began to notice fewer large Hispanic families migrating to northern Michigan to work. “The newer generation no longer comes north,” he said. Local families who have settled in Leelanau County—Hispanic and non-Hispanic, alike—are not as reliable to work long days in the fields and vineyards because they have children, Tomas added.
“Kids are in school, or they get sick. I understand it, but the job needs to get done,” he said.
Hiring temporary agricultural workers through the federal H-2A visa program, typically for stays of 6–8 months, has offered a solution, though an imperfect one. Most temporary farmworkers in northern Michigan come from Mexico, and those that Tomas manages are mostly single men between ages 18 and 28—in their prime to work hard.
Still, the employer is responsible for providing housing and transportation for those guest workers. That’s no easy task in affordable housing-challenged northern Michigan. “Finding housing in Leelanau County is like finding gold!” laughed Tomas. “It’s really hard.”
Tomas began working with H-2A workers six years ago. His crew of six at Bel Lago currently includes three domestic workers and three on temporary visas. One lives in a house the Moreno family owns in Omena; another one, who is a relative, lives at their house. This year he acquired his farm labor contractor license, which means he can bring H-2A workers from Mexico under his own name and lease them out to Bel Lago or other wineries in the county. Next year Tomas hopes to bring a total of five guest workers. Some have worked in Leelanau before and know the landscape and the jobs, others will be trained by his domestic workers.
Veraison, harvest, and tortillas
When I met Tomas at the Bel Lago vineyard on a warm and sun-kissed mid-August morning, he and his team were eagerly awaiting the veraison, the time of year when the grapes change color from pale green to deep red, which signals that they are absorbing more energy and developing a higher sugar content.
Their task for the day was canopy management—tucking, hedging, and opening the fruit zone, and preparing for the harvest in late September or early October. Bel Lago’s team waits as long as they can to pick the grapes in order to get the best flavor. The thinking is that the winemaker can always adjust the sugar level, but they can’t add flavor.
Tomas speaks as adeptly as a tasting room manager when he lists the 12 different wines Bel Lago offers. Award-winning varieties include Pinot Grigio, Blaufrankisch, Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc, Pinot Noir, Gewurztraimer, and Riesling. He works closely with Bel Lago founder and winemaker Charles Edson to deliver the best possible grapes to make wine.
“I’ve walked these rows many times. I know all the varietals,” said Tomas, who nevertheless calls himself primarily a beer drinker.
In addition to bringing H-2A workers to Leelanau County, Tomas and Julieta have launched another side hustle this year. “I told my wife when I turned 40 I needed to find some activity just for me.” They now make and sell fresh tortillas for local farmworkers and the greater Hispanic community.
Corn tortillas are a staple part of nearly every meal in Mexico and Central America. Hispanics in northern Michigan flock to authentic stores such as TC Latino in Traverse City to stock up on their native foods. (Non-fresh tortillas from the big box outlets “taste like cardboard,” said Tomas.) But why not offer a source in Leelanau County?
“One day last year we were having lunch in the break room, and I asked the H-2A workers, if my wife and I started making our own tortillas, would they buy from us?” said Tomas, who researched the plausibility of acquiring the materials. “Anything I say or put my mind into, I do,” he added.
Tomas found a company in his wife’s and mother’s hometown of San Luis Potosí that manufactures the tortilla press, the belt, and the oven. He made an appointment and toured the factory in January, and his family splurged and purchased a medium-sized tortilla machine for $11,000 as well as a blender for the maseca corn flour.
The Morenos currently sell their tortillas to local Hispanic farmworkers—particularly at large events and family gatherings since Tomas has to churn out 80-100 packages of tortillas to justify cranking up the machine. (They hope to sell to restaurants in the future.) A half kilogram of 22 tortillas costs about $2.50.
“My customers tell me on what day and what hour they want the tortillas. I’ll deliver them hot and wrapped to their location,” said Tomas, who has found another way to act as matchmaker for northern Michiganders.
