Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

From Bhutan to New York’s Dairy Heartland

WARSAW, N.Y. — Purna Gurung and Hem Gurung stood in dung-slopped boots and rubber gloves, the heady perfume of wet cow, raw milk and manure permeating the room. They washed down the dirty stalls in the rotary milking parlor at Noblehurst Farms in western New York, some 7,500 miles from their birthplace in Bhutan.

“Everything here looks good to me,” Purna Gurung, 52, said in Nepali, through an interpreter. “It’s hard work here, but I am more happy than being in the refugee camp. Now I have everything for my family.”

The men were once farmers, and then spent 20 years in refugee camps in Nepal, unable to hold legal jobs. Now they worked wordlessly alongside two other milkers, both Mexican immigrants, in practiced repetition.

The raw product would soon supply a cross-cultural dairy case: Siggi’s, an Icelandic-style yogurt; Norman’s kosher Greek yogurt; and eggnog for Pittsford Farms Dairy.

Hem and Purna Gurung (no relation) are among 23 Bhutanese refugees who have taken part in a state program, learning to be milkers at Alfred State College and then training on local farms.

Video
bars
0:00/1:05
-0:00

transcript

Learning to Milk Cows

A group of Bhutanese refugees are returning to their farm roots as part of a state-funded training program for milkers in Western New York.

na

Video player loading
A group of Bhutanese refugees are returning to their farm roots as part of a state-funded training program for milkers in Western New York.CreditCredit...Brendan Bannon for The New York Times

The Refugee Milker Training Program began in 2014 out of mutual need: Refugees in Rochester wanted familiar agrarian jobs, and farms needed labor to fuel the yogurt boom. Since then, it has evolved into a modest social experiment in the state’s dairy heartland.

“We need a stable work force; labor is our No. 1 issue,” said Sarah Noble-Moag, whose family has owned and operated Noblehurst Farms for seven generations.

Ms. Noble-Moag explained how several years ago agents for Immigration and Customs Enforcement would raid farms across the county to pick up the Mexican workers, many undocumented, who had become the anchor of the work force. Entire shifts would be lost in a day.

“We need to know that they are going to be here to milk cows,” she said. “And with the enforcement activity that comes and goes, we need to balance our work force.”

The raids have since decreased, Ms. Noble-Moag added, but the addition of the Bhutanese milkers, who work 12-hour shifts four days a week, has provided insurance.

The sparse break room at Noblehurst’s dairy in the town of York has a map of Mexico. “I’m going to get a map of Bhutan,” Ms. Noble-Moag promised.

Not long ago, she knew that Bhutan was a landlocked Himalayan nation tucked between China and India. But she had no idea about the refugee crisis that brought the milkers to her doorstep.

It is a cruel irony that Bhutan has become known as a country devoted to gross national happiness (as opposed to gross national product), considering that more than 100,000 people of Nepalese ancestry living in southern Bhutan were expelled by the king in the 1990s during a period of ethnic cleansing.

Since 2011, nearly 40,000 Bhutanese refugees have settled across the United States, in cities like Akron, Ohio; Houston; and Buffalo. In Rochester, the Bhutanese are the largest refugee group, numbering about 2,000, according to the resettlement agency there, Catholic Family Center.

Pat Standish, an indefatigable leader in the region, made the connection bridging the Bhutanese and farming communities.

Image
Manoj Rai with his son Salom at home in Warsaw, N.Y. He is one of 23 Bhutanese refugees in western New York who have taken part in a state program, learning to be milkers at Alfred State College and then getting jobs on local farms.Credit...Brendan Bannon for The New York Times

Twenty years ago, after her husband died, Ms. Standish founded the nonprofit group Community Action Angels to help residents contend with poverty, literacy and a lack of jobs. In late 2013, working with the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Wyoming County, she contacted the Catholic Family Center to enroll the first participants in the milker program, for which she obtained an initial grant. The state’s Office for New Americans provided $400,000 to help run the pilot program for two years.

The first person she hired was Manoj Rai, who had recently moved to Rochester after first landing in Richmond, Va., to stay with a brother. Mr. Rai, 41, would serve as an interpreter, mentor and liaison. He called himself a “guardian” of his people.

“I knew people would follow Manoj,” Ms. Standish, 69, said.

For the first two winters, Mr. Rai and the milkers made the treacherous hourlong drive from Rochester to the farms and back to work. The weather made moving to rural Wyoming County an easy sell. The refugees had lived in Bhutan’s tropical region, not the northern Himalayas. They had never owned cars, let alone driven in blinding snow squalls.

On a recent white-swirled ride through the farm roads, Mr. Rai pointed out the numerous spots where he had rescued fellow refugees from ditches in the first year.

He was the first to move, in September 2014, to a house off Liberty Street with a jungle gym in the yard. Five other families have followed him to the village of Warsaw, population 3,814. Most moved into homes owned by Action Angels. They cut their commute to 20 minutes.

Image
Pat Standish, the founder of the nonprofit Community Action Angels, driving between farms where she has helped find work for Bhutanese refugees.Credit...Brendan Bannon for The New York Times

Slowly, and with snow tires, the refugees are adapting to their new lives.

“I feel this is a wonderful place,” Mr. Rai said of Warsaw, which before their arrival was 97 percent white, according to census figures. Now, 27 Bhutanese immigrants live here, with 10 children attending the local schools.

Warsaw also provided the Bhutanese residents shelter from their anxious urban life. In the last three years, Rochester has seen an increase in crimes against immigrants, including robberies, assaults and a murder.

Kaji Rai, 35, who works at the farm Synergy, said moving closer had relaxed him, and not just because he drove fewer miles.

“In Rochester, it was no good for the children,” said Mr. Rai, no relation to Manoj. “There’s bad guys, too many there.”

The Action Angels, a division of Community Action for Wyoming County, has served as a secondary refugee agency for the Bhutanese, offering ESL classes, paying their first month’s rent and providing furniture.

Image
Bhakti Rai, Manoj Rai’s wife, working at American Classic Outfitters, where she sews uniforms in Perry, N.Y.Credit...Brendan Bannon for The New York Times

When Mr. Rai could not find a used trumpet for Binuphsa, his 10-year-old daughter, to take lessons, Ms. Standish assembled an entire band’s worth of donated instruments.

The pilot program expires in December, and if not renewed, Ms. Standish said she was determined to keep it running.

The industry’s fortune plays a role, too. When milk prices plummeted in 2015, the farms restricted their hiring. Currently, five Bhutanese are working at Noblehurst and Synergy farms. Another 12 Bhutanese who completed training are waiting for the market to recover.

Last spring, Ms. Standish found jobs for some of the farmworkers’ wives when American Classic Outfitters, a local company that sews college football and baseball uniforms, called asking for workers. The employees were initially skeptical, worried that the Bhutanese were taking away jobs from American-born workers. But that was not the case, Lisa Carpenter, the company’s human resources administrator, said.

Then there were the cultural differences. The women from Bhutan wiped their noses on their sleeves and spit into trash cans. Mr. Rai gave them a lesson in American workplace etiquette, just as he had taught the farmers how to use forks and knives.

By Christmas, the divide started to dissolve when the Bhutanese women were sharing food in a potluck holiday lunch and taking part in the American tradition of Secret Santa.

Back in Nepal, Kamali Gurung used to sew pink saris in the refugee camp.

On this day she was sewing seams on gold football pants. It was for the most American of uniforms, the Navy Midshipmen. On the waist, the letters embroidered in-house read: “Don’t Give Up the Ship.”

Follow The New York Times’s Metro coverage on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for the New York Today newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 21 of the New York edition with the headline: From Bhutan to New York’s Dairy Heartland. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT