Taylor Butler holds a nice head of lettuce harvested Tuesday at Haile Middle School, while David Barton checks for others in a hydroponic stack. JAMES A JONES JR/BRADENTON HERALD

Green leaf loose lettuce or red? Butterhead or Romaine?

How about all four?

“It makes a wonderful mixed salad,” said Karen Ciemniecki, agriscience teacher and FFA advisor at Haile Middle School.

Ciemniecki’s students are not only raising fresh produce from seed, but are harvesting it and finding markets for their crops, including bell peppers, eggplants and herbs.

Some of the crops are raised in Earth Boxes, and others in hydroponic towers behind the school at 9501 State Road 64 E.

The school purchased a Vertigrow hydroponic system, where plants are grown without soil and are fed a nutrient solution in water, using a grant received in March from West Coast Resource Conservation and Development Council.

The council also helped get water and electricity connected to the towers, Ciemniecki said.

O’Brien Farms helped get the new venture off to a strong start by giving students a tour of their hydroponic operation and helping students start their first seed crop of lettuce.

They farming success at Haile has sparked interest and enthusiasm among students, who are eager to show off their good-looking crops.

“It’s like an orchestra,” Ciemniecki said Tuesday as her students fanned out over the Haile farm, checking, cleaning and harvesting.

David Aviles wore knee-high black rubber boots as he inspected the tank to make sure it was full of solution to feed the hydroponic stacks, and that the system was working properly.

The hydroponic crops are grown in coconut fiber and are fed a solution of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous, explained classmate David Barton.

Taylor Butler moved through the rows of hydroponic stacks with a pair of clippers, “looking for the best of the best” of lettuce.

“This is a nice full one,” he said, collecting a head of lettuce.

The students learn the four C’s of getting their crop from farm to table: cleaning, chilling, cooking and checking for cross-contamination, Ciemniecki said.

The student-grown lettuce has been featured at Geraldson Community Farm, the Palmetto High School FFA banquet, and served at teacher appreciation events at Haile and Freedom Elementary School.

Some of the produce has also been sold to parents, staff, students and other community members, Ciemniecki said.

Next school year, the class would like to expand the types of produce it grows, she said.

“Today was a perfect day, not too hot. We don’t go outside everyday,” Ciemniecki said.

“Sadly,” said David Aviles, clearly enjoying the chance to get outside and work with the Haile crops.

Winter Park Dairy cheesemaker Leah Steele, 23, stirs the curds and whey before draining and hooping a batch of cheddar. Winter Park Dairy is a pioneer in producing 100 percent natural, raw milk artisan cheese. “We helped write state code, because it had never been done before,” says dairy owner David Green.

Leah Steele needed a place to board her horse, Fury. She found deluxe accommodations for her steed at a citrus-grove-turned-dairy, and in exchange, she volunteered around the farm.

Four years later, the 23-year-old University of Central Florida graduate is the cheesemaker for Winter Park Dairy near Orlando. She spends her days gently heating 570-liter vats of raw cow’s milk, adding cultures and vegetable-based rennet and stirring until the curds get rubbery and “popcorny.” She drains the vats of whey, scoops the curds into slatted plastic hoops, tends to them as they drain and solidify, brines them, then slides the 4-pound rounds onto ash boards in the cheese cave, where they spend 60 days before they emerge as blue cheese, cheddar, tomme or peppercorn blue.

Winter Park Dairy may have been a pioneer in producing natural, raw milk artisan cheeses in Florida, but it is not the state’s only cheese producer. The artisan cheese movement that started in this country in the early 1980s with big names like Maytag Dairy Farms and goat-cheese pioneer Laura Chenel has hit the Sunshine State with a vengeance in the past few years. We recently visited three cheese producers that represent different styles, different animals’ milk and very different agendas.

Winter Park Dairy

Winter Park Dairy cheesemaker Leah Steele uses her eyes to tell when the cheddar curds look perfect, “like popcorn,” and her hands to know when it just feels right, ready to be drained and hooped.

David Green is a fourth-generation citrus farmer. In the 1980s his orchards in Winter Park froze solid, requiring a serious Plan B. Boarding horses for Fury and friends didn’t make ends meet, so a trio of cows was purchased. This small herd eventually ballooned to 12 animals.

“Zoning said we could have a dairy on our 8 acres. The intention was to create the highest value dairy product that there is — that’s cheese. We helped write state code, because it had never been done before. We were first in the state to do raw milk cheese,” Green says.

He enrolled in a cheesemaking class at the University of Vermont and then hired master cheesemaker Peter Dixon to get him up and running quickly.

“We bought the learning curve on the cheese,” Green says wryly. But what kind to make?

“If you have raw milk, you can make any cheese. I saw blue cheese as the highest value commodity cheese used in food service.”

Green quickly learned that raising the cows, milking the cows and then making the cheese was more than he bargained for.

“Cheesemaking and cows are two different things. Making your own milk is really hard.”

These days he brings in 700 gallons of raw cow’s milk from Southeast Milk Cooperative each Monday in a huge sanitized disposable bag fitted into a stainless steel frame in a refrigerated truck. That milk gets pumped into two vats and made into one of four styles of cheese within 72 hours. Up to three tons of finished cheese is held at 55 degrees for 60 days in the on-site cheese cave.

But this is where Green’s background in business school meshes with his personality (as he describes it, “kind of a hermit, kind of a rebel”). You won’t find Winter Park Dairy cheeses on the shelves of Whole Foods or on the roster of American Cheese Society competitions. Green sells to high-end restaurants and hotels like the Gaylord Palms Orlando, the Amelia Island Ritz-Carlton or Tampa’s SideBern’s.

And no competitions, because as Green says, “The detriment of being judged No. 2 far outweighs the benefit of potentially being deemed No. 1.”

4501 Howell Branch Road, Winter Park; (407) 671-5888; winterparkdairy.com

Mail-order cheese, $18/pound, roughly $50/wheel

The Dancing Goat

In 1998, Pam Lunn’s family bought its first goat. Her daughter Carleigh, 8 at the time, wanted a show horse. But it was son Clinton, then 10, who ended up falling in love with showing goats.

“I hauled him over three states, doing eight to 10 shows a year,” Lunn says as she walks past pens of chickens and quail and goats on her 3-acre Dancing Goat farm near Race Track Road in Tampa. She describes what makes a successful show goat: straight legs, a feminine head and neck, udders that aren’t too long, and something about gopher ears versus elf ears. Most of the goats appear to be following along, except for one bedroom-eyed fellow named Barack and the very elderly Esmeralda (Clinton’s first goat, now 13).

When Clinton was in high school, Pam inherited her son’s hobby, a hobby that became a business when she lost her right-of-way services job after Sept. 11, 2001. A good goat can produce 2 gallons of milk per day (versus a cow, which produces between 9 and 14, but as Lunn says, “goats are more efficient eaters” so the feed-to-yield ratio isn’t bad).

Her goat’s milk business went official in 2007, the milk sold on its own ($12.50/gallon) or in the form of yogurt, kefir, chevre, feta ($10/half pound) or goat’s milk soap that she and husband Jim make together. Because the milk and cheese are raw milk products that are not aged (legally, a raw milk cheese must be aged 60 days), she sells Dancing Goat products at St. Petersburg’s Saturday Morning Market and Tampa’s Sweetwater Organic Farm’s Sunday market as “not for human consumption.”

“I am not so naive as to think that Fido is the benefactor of my cheese,” Lunn says while watching 15-year-old volunteer Andi Szikszay carefully hook up each goat to a milking machine, filling up what Lunn calls the “redneck chilling keg” with creamy fresh milk.

In the cheese room the Lunns heat the milk to 90 degrees, add the cultures and, a bit later (the finished chevre is creamier if you wait), the rennet. The resulting curds are hung in cheesecloth, and 48 hours later it has become delicious, fluffy goat cheese.

The Lunns’ goats are more pets than working animals, living comfortable lives on clean hay with their family members and a couple of cats for entertainment. But on our visit, none were dancing.

“Oh, the name? With goats you want all your babies to be girls because they produce the milk,” explains Pam. “There’s an old myth that if you dance naked, your babies will be girls. I did it one year and had two baby girls.”

12502 Maverick Court, Tampa; (813) 818-0305; thedancinggoat.net

Look for the booth at St. Petersburg’s Saturday Morning Market

BufaLatte

Richard and Jeff Isel and Chris Webb had a great idea for importing wines for a restaurant tap system. It ended up being too cumbersome, but along the way they heard about an Italian consortium that had just built a buffalo mozzarella factory in Mexico. The Mexican water buffalo didn’t produce as much milk as their Italian brethren, and the company couldn’t export the cheese to the United States because customs didn’t have a category for “buffalo,” but it got the team thinking.

The results are BufaLatte, an Italian-American partnership that started in Tampa last year and moved to a 10,000-square-foot factory in St. Petersburg in March. Curd from the milk of certified water buffalo (a different species from American bison) farms in Campania, Italy, is flown in, and a team of hygienically suited-up workers in St. Petersburg manipulates the curd and coaxes it through a Comat mozzarella forming machine (like a major-league taffy-puller, although Chris Webb says it is an “entry-level” model).

Most domestic mozzarella is made of cow’s milk, which is lower in nutrients like calcium and protein, and has a milder, blander flavor. A true Italian water buffalo mozzarella has a lush texture and a distinctive grassy/musky flavor. The problem with importing finished Italian buffalo mozzarella is the time it spends in transit. It may be several weeks between production and consumption, not an ideal situation for a fresh cheese.

With nearly 250 million pounds of buffalo mozzarella produced in thousands of Italian factories, a scant 3 to 4 percent of the real stuff makes its way to the United States. In small batches, BufaLatte is attempting something new: an imported product that is also locally made. Already the company’s 8-ounce balls and smaller bocconcini, water packed in plastic bags, have found their way into some of the area’s top restaurants and shops.

3201 44th Ave. N, St. Petersburg; (727) 485-8736; bufalatte.com

Look for their mozzarella at shops like Castellano & Pizzo or restaurants like Armani’s or Pane Rustica

Cheese culture

Cow, goat or buffalo; fresh or aged; stinky, tangy or rich — cheeses are as varied as the people who make them. And as with wine, cheeses reflect the “terroir” (the geography, climate and sense of place) of where they are made. For local-food advocates like Lunn, the growth of Florida-made products is imperative.

“Know your farmer, know their practices and take a look at their operation. In 10 years, if you don’t know a farmer, or grow some of your own food, you’re not going to eat.”

Ray Jones, founder of Manatee Rare Fruit Council, is shown with his Golden Lippens mango tree in his garden. PHOTO BY J. NIELSEN

With the longest growing season in the nation, Florida is a great place to plant a fruit-bearing tree.

On Sunday, knowledgeable growers will show and sell plants and also provide some free tips as the Manatee Rare Fruit Council hosts its annual Rare Fruit Tree Sale.

More than 3,000 plants available to suit any yard, even some grown in containers perfect for apartments and condominiums, will be available.

Each year, the sale grows in popularity; this year, the entire Manatee Convention Center will be used.

“Because of TV, such as cooking shows, exposing these plants to the public has fueled interest in growing your own,” Ray Jones, founder and past president of Manatee Rare Fruit Council, said.

While all trees require water and fertilizer, some are easier to care for than others. Some bear fruit soon after planting, and others can test a grower’s patience.

“It depends on the tree, some within two years, others seven to 10 years,” Jones said.

Offering tasty treats from the garden is a big plus, but there are other benefits of planting fruit trees. Jones said a tree can add $3,000 to the value of a home, and it helps the environment.

“If everybody planted one tree in their yard, it would help tremendously toward controlling pollution,” he said.

According to Jones, the easiest tree in terms of care plus providing a bountiful harvest is the carambola, or star fruit, tree, which requires only a little fertilizer.

Other trees easy to care for are sapodilla, which produces fruit that tastes like apple stewed in brown sugar and cinnamon, and the cactus pear, also known as dragon fruit.

For the latter, Jones said, “You stick it in the ground and stand back.”

Jones grows fruit for its taste.

“You can buy the best fruit, but commercial growers look for other things,” he said. “We don’t care what the color is; we want the best-tasting fruit.”

A cornucopia of tasty fruit grows in ones’ home garden. The canistel, for example, tastes like sweet potato while the Surinam cherry’s jet-black berries evoke grape juice. The Annona salzmannii fruit tastes likes custard apple.

Those not familiar with the exotics can also find some expert advice.

Jones gave a few tips: Fruit picked too early will never ripen. The Keitt mango is the largest commercially grown mango, but there are more than 400 types. And, what to do about aphids that cause white powdery mildew on the back of fruit leaves? Use a solution of oil, water and soap.

In addition to taste, home gardeners select a tree for its beauty or utility.

“Grumichama, great for landscaping,” Jones said. “It looks like a big, shiny green tree, yet produces fruit that taste like a northern bing cherry.”

With several varieties of orange trees falling victim to disease, there are other types of citrus that thrive. Since key limes are cold sensitive, it is better to go with Lakeland limequat.

“It looks and tastes exactly like a key lime fruit,” Jones said. “It bears fruit all year long, and it is cold-hearty.”

And for lemons, the Meyer lemon tree is loaded with fruit, and provides very large lemons.

The University of Florida Institute of Food and Agriculture Sciences has been instrumental bringing a variety of trees to the state. Certain types of fruit do not thrive in this region, so the focus has been on plums, peaches and nectarines.

After the frost two winters ago, Jones said, there is a trend toward trees that will survive extended winter cold snaps.

“There a lot of berry-type trees, out of Brazil, that are very cold-hearty,” he said.

BEE HERE NOW: Nora Knepp tends to a My Sweetest Honey beehive / COOPER LEVEY-BAKER

I begin regretting my decision to refuse protective gear at pretty much the exact moment Shaun Knepp lifts a wooden frame covered in fidgety bees out of its hive. Knepp had warned me that I might get stung, but neither he nor his wife, Nora Knepp, had put on a veil, and I — succumbing to my meager but vocal machismo — wasn’t about to be the only one wearing special protection.

Stupid.

Although the bees are in a relatively good mood today (helped along by the sunny, humid weather and the calming smoke Shaun and Nora just pumped into the hives), they’re still not happy about being disturbed, and start doing what bees do. They crawl all over each other, take flight and buzz any nearby humans.

That’s when I start flinching. I haven’t been stung by a bee since I was in elementary school, and I’m not really crazy about repeating the experience. For Shaun (34) and Nora (22), though, bee stings are just part of a hard day’s work — harvesting and bottling raw, unfiltered honey under the name My Sweetest Honey.

The couple started the company about two years ago, but Shaun has been around bees since childhood. His parents produced honey till Shaun turned 23; when they closed their business, he turned to construction work. That lasted till the industry hit the skids thanks to the recession. After that, he turned back to what he knew best: beekeeping.

Today, the Knepps own about 350 hives, spread out on a variety of properties, and bottle around 2,800 pounds of honey per month during season, selling their sweet stuff online and at almost two dozen local stores. Their main production facility is located on five acres of Knepp family land off Fruitville east of I-75. It’s here that they pump their three varieties — orange blossom, palmetto and Brazilian pepper — from massive barrels that look like oil drums into consumer-ready bottles. No heat is applied throughout the entire process, keeping things raw.

Although the claim has been disputed by scientific research, many think the pollen in raw honey helps alleviate allergy symptoms. Shaun is a believer. ”Half of our customers buy from us specifically for their allergies,” Shaun says. “We even cured our dog’s allergies with it.”

But it’s not just the pollen that brings in the customers. It’s also the flavor.

Nora pulls out a bottle to show me how the Knepps’ honey can crystalize, a sign that it hasn’t been processed like supermarket honey, which she dubs “sugar water.” Adding to the natural factor, you might even find a bee leg or wing in your bottle. Nora met Shaun in Costa Rica, but she’s originally from the hills of Nicaragua, where raw is just a fact of daily life. She remembers her father gathering honey from a beehive in a tree.

When you buy honey at a grocery store, Shaun says, “you’re basically buying a sweetener.” He says honey’s nutrients, vitamins and flavor nuances are “burned out” by corporate processing.

According to Shaun, My Sweetest Honey already has “more demand than supply,” but he’s wary of growing too much. He doesn’t want to lose the “romance” of the long hours outside with Nora, taking care of their bees. ”I want to get bigger,” he says, “but I don’t want employees.”

And if that means he’s the guy out there getting stung every day, well then, so be it.

For more information about the Knepps and My Sweetest Honey, visit them online at mysweetesthoney.com or email them at mysweetesthoneylivecom.

Safe in a motel room, LeRoy Smith talks of his flight from a labor camp in Hastings in 2010. Last month in federal court, Smith sued the man he says enslaved him there. Safe in a motel room, LeRoy Smith talks of his flight from a labor camp in Hastings in 2010. Last month in federal court, Smith sued the man he says enslaved him there. JOHN PENDYGRAFT, Times

LeRoy Smith thought he had hit rock bottom when he found himself trolling Atlanta’s gay district, looking to exchange sex acts for a hot hit off a crack pipe. Then he wound up on a Florida farm near the small town of Hastings, being bilked blind, he says, by a man with a fifth-grade education, sweating all day for a few dirty dollars, with no way to escape from the middle-of-nowhere camp.

He did not think slavery existed in modern America. He knows better now.

The recruiters had found LeRoy Smith playing chess in a park in Jacksonville on May 1, 2010. They pegged him for a black man with a back strong enough for farm work and an addiction strong enough to stick around and work for nothing. He was hooked on crack, but he had enough sense to recognize peonage when he saw it, and to slip away by night to safety.

And now he’s talking. He filed a lawsuit last month in federal court against the man he says enslaved him. And he’s talking to the Tampa Bay Times in hopes that publicity will cleanse Florida of indentured servitude.

The man he accuses says it’s all a lie. Confronted with the allegations, Ronald Uzzle dismissed them and told a reporter to get off his property.

There’s something going on in this small town and it might be hard to care because the victims are often homeless black men who live mostly in the shadows. Many have criminal records and sins in their past.

But many served in the armed forces and lived good lives before they dropped out of society and wound up in bondage.

Authorities have failed to stop a form of slavery that begins with indebtedness and sometimes doesn’t end until a worker is dead.

And it continues today.

• • •

LeRoy Smith drew the blinds closed in a room at the Comfort Inn near St. Augustine, a safe place arranged by a friend who had helped him escape the camp and promised him a Greyhound ticket out of town.

Smith was nervous when he was interviewed in June 2010, but he wanted to share his story. He wanted people to know what goes on in rural Florida, what happens to the men who pick your potatoes and cabbage.

An Air Force brat, he lived around the world. As a teen, he landed in Columbia, S.C., got an economics degree at Morris College. In the early ’80s he worked at a bank structuring 401(k)s.

He had met his biological father late in life. His father and his father’s family were “immersed in the drug culture” and so, to fit in, Smith partook. Cocaine quickly became his single pursuit. He had been married, played competitive tennis, bought a house in the historic district in Greenville, S.C. None of that mattered anymore. He lost his $50,000 a year job as a manager of a home finance company and began touring America via the best crack houses.

“I’ve gone from Betty Ford to living in a Ford,” he said.

He served time in prison for drug possession and had been out about a year when the white van pulled up at the park where Smith was playing chess. A friend lured him on board. He said he had heard the farm labor contractor in the driver’s seat was fair and ran a clean camp in Hastings, a small town not far away.

What Smith found when he got there: “Slavery. Abuse. Overwork. Deplorable, unsanitary conditions. Drugs,” he said. “The only reason there’s no shackles is because now they make the people submit to the cocaine. That’s what they use to basically control the people.”

Specifically, he found an overcrowded bunkhouse full of elderly, drug-addicted black men and one decrepit bathroom. Before he even arrived, the man in the driver’s seat had loaned each of the 15 recruits in the van $10 for a bite to eat, on the condition they pay him back with 100 percent interest.

At the bunkhouse, he said, the men formed three lines. One was for loans, also at 100 percent interest. One was to buy shots of Wild Irish Rose or grape “Mad Dog 20/20″ out of an ice chest. And one was to buy crack. By the end of the first night, penniless Smith already owed $50.

Over the course of the two months Smith was at the camp, he never received a paycheck. Though he mowed and scrubbed toilets and cleaned shower stalls, he ran up $210 in debt. The thought that he was being bilked, that there was no way out until he paid his debt, angered him.

“I had no idea where we were,” he said. “All there were was potato fields and asphalt roads. … You’re just stuck there. This is where you reside until the season is over or until you get out.”

He didn’t feel as if he could go to the police. He got the impression everybody in town was connected by blood or business.

The other workers seemed content to live in the system. They had easy access to drugs and alcohol, so it didn’t matter that they could never escape the debt, even if a paycheck for a 70-hour week of grading potatoes amounted to $40. Some had been there more than 10 years.

“There’s no recourse, because we live on the fringes of society,” he said. “I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t fathom it existing in modern day society.”

Smith’s story is corroborated by other men who have escaped. Bennie Cooks, a 57-year-old Army veteran, said he got stuck on a crew from April 2008 until he broke away in November 2009.

“They’d intimidate people,” Cooks told the Times seven months after he escaped. “If you owed them money, then one guy’d say, ‘You owe me money. You can’t leave.’ He’d threaten you.”

Cooks saw a crew boss knock out a man for drinking on the job.

Cooks was recruited from a homeless shelter in Savannah, Ga. The farm labor contractor promised him work, a nice place to live and plenty of food.

“I rolled down there expecting good things to happen, but they never did,” Cooks said. At a camp miles from the nearest highway, surrounded by fields, Cooks found living quarters crammed with five or six people in a small room, dirty mattresses and meals of hotdogs and grits.

“People come on these things expecting to make money,” said a man named Lonnie Smith, who snuck away in 2010 after three years working to pay off his debts to a farm labor contractor. “But you leave with nothing, and sometimes worse.”

Lonnie Smith, a trained chef who said he has worked at the University of North Florida and restaurants on South Beach, said he was addicted and desperate when a contractor recruited him at a mission in Jacksonville.

“It sounds pretty good when a man hasn’t got a job,” he said.

But he, too, was indebted before he even arrived in Hastings on a Friday night. By Monday morning, he was already $80 in the hole. Add on $75 for weekly food and rent, plus loans for snacks and alcohol during the week, plus paying a driver $5 for each ride to town to buy supplies, and a 40-hour workweek at minimum wage wasn’t enough to cover his first week’s costs.

“It’s hard to keep up with how it goes in a circle, but no money leaves that camp,” he said.

He worked three years before he made his break from what workers called “the Island.” He woke at 1 a.m. and hurried to the barn by the light of the moon. He hid his work clothes and split.

“Two thousand years and this s— ain’t changed,” he said, gray hair poking out from under his ball cap. “Ain’t a damn thing changed from yesterday. Ain’t no yesterday. Ain’t no tomorrow. Hastings set way back away from everything.”

• • •

On hot afternoons in Hastings, bent men slink into the shade of the carwash beside Taing’s convenience store and laundry on Church Street. They smoke generics and take quick pulls off bottles of Wild Turkey.

The traffic is light down Main Street, past boarded-up buildings and a few scattered churches and businesses.

In the Potato Capital of Florida, where 14 percent of the town’s families live under the poverty level, slavery is not new. Maps from the 1770s show a plantation on the banks of the St. Johns River where a former British parliamentarian used 200 African slaves to farm his vast swath of fertile land. After the Civil War, loggers recruited workers with the promise of steady pay. But once on the camp, black workers were stuck making as little as 8 cents for two weeks of work, after employers withdrew charges for room and board.

Logging gave way to other crops, but peonage never disappeared. In 2005, police raided the camp of well-known contractor Ron Evans and found more than 100 rocks of crack cocaine. Evans, of nearby East Palatka, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2007 for luring homeless laborers to his camp, giving them crack and alcohol from the company store and keeping them deep in debt. His wife, Jequita, was sentenced to 15 years for conspiracy to distribute crack and structuring cash transactions to avoid financial reporting requirements.

The stiff penalties were meant to send a message, but laborers say the remaining contractors learned from the case. Instead of selling drugs directly to workers, they invited relatives to distribute drugs and alcohol when they weren’t around, letting the contractors deny they knew what was going on.

For years, lawsuits, settlements and federal labor investigations have exposed the contractors in Putnam and St. Johns counties for holding back wages, selling drugs and flat-out refusing to pay workers. But the contractors often settle, paying plaintiffs minor amounts of back wages or small fines.

Greg Schell, a lawyer with Florida Legal Services who is representing LeRoy Smith and another man, Dennis Nash, in their suit against contractor Ronald Uzzle, said the practice is on its way out.

“It’s still there,” he said, “but it’s not as severe as it was with Ron Evans.”

It’s hard to estimate the extent of the problem, said Weeun Wang, a lawyer with Farmworker Justice in Washington, D.C., who is also representing Smith and Nash. Local farmworker advocates say there are between five and 10 families who use similar methods, and each employs as many as 50 workers during potato and cabbage season.

“I think it’s persistent because employers still want to drive their labor costs down,” Wang said. “This is a way to do it.”

Schell and Wang hope that targeting the farmers as well as the contractors will send a message.

“You’ve got to get the employers out of this mind-set and make it riskier for them to use this kind of labor,” Wang said. “The reason it’s hard to eradicate is because the workers don’t step forward. It’s very difficult to get them to do something for themselves.”

• • •

The farmer named in the recent lawsuit, Thomas R. Lee, who owns Bulls-Hit Ranch and Farm, could not be reached. A woman who answered the phone at Bulls-Hit said he has been ill for more than a year.

“We have no comment,” she said. She would not identify the lawyer representing Lee and Bulls-Hit.

A few miles away, Ronald Uzzle stood at his camp on May 4 and said he has never been subject to a lawsuit.

“First time,” he said.

Not true. He has been a defendant in three previous labor and racketeering lawsuits, in 2005, 2006 and 2007. Two were combined. All were eventually settled before trial, with defendants paying $17,000 in back wages in one case and $50,000 plus legal fees in another.

Uzzle has a long record of shoddy management. In 1993, he wrecked his van and three workers were killed. He has been the subject of several U.S. Department of Labor investigations. In 1997, Uzzle was cited for “willful violations” of the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act. He failed to disclose the terms of employment to workers, failed to post a sign listing workers’ rights, failed to keep employer records, failed to provide wage statements to workers and failed to ensure housing, health and safety.

In 1998, Uzzle called the sheriff’s office when one of his workers attacked another with a machete, splitting his head open. After the worker served prison time, Uzzle hired him again. In January 2003, the man stabbed another worker to death with a knife. A few years later, two former employees signed onto a lawsuit accusing Uzzle’s son and an accomplice of attacking them.

In a deposition in 2006, Uzzle, 59, said he inherited the operation from an uncle. He has led crews since the late 1980s. He acknowledged needing help with his bookkeeping because he has trouble reading and writing. But he denied he threatened workers or attacked them or loaned workers money.

“Nobody gets in debt with me,” he told the lawyer.

Uzzle laughed when he was told of the latest allegations.

“You can see the camp yourself,” he said. “Does this look bad? I ain’t got nothing to hide.”

He said the men are free to leave whenever they want. He does not keep them in debt. He charges $55 a week for a bunk and three squares a day. Uzzle said the bunkhouse has central heat and air. He said he doesn’t charge for rides to the store and doesn’t withhold paychecks.

What about the drugs?

“There’s no drugs sold on this camp,” he said. “I’m not going to tell you people don’t do drugs, but if people want to do drugs, they do it. I can’t stop them.”

He said the men are making it up.

Uzzle disappeared inside a trailer and brought out a worker. Edward Hardy, 64, said he has lived on Uzzle’s camp for years. Said anytime somebody wants to leave, Uzzle gives him money to buy the man a bus ticket. He said Uzzle treats the men fairly and he has never heard any threats or intimidation.

But Uzzle wouldn’t let a reporter look inside.

“I’m through with you,” he said. “You need to go.”

A few miles away, at Bulls-Hit Ranch and Farm, a group of men clustered around a potato grader in a warehouse. The season is under way, and tractors are pulling crops out of the fields. This is when the contractors fan out to homeless shelters to find new workers, those who don’t yet know what they’re getting into.

Katrina McCorkle and her daughter, Frehley Dee, 4, look at vegetable plants at the Bradenton Farmers Market. GRANT JEFFERIES/Bradenton Herald

A federal grant to the Florida Department of Children and Families may soon help more farmers’ markets accept Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards as payment.

A $78,749 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture is expected to help local farmers’ markets get the necessary wireless equipment to be able to process the electronic cards, a news release said.

In Florida there are 143 registered farmers’ market but only six of them accept EBT payments, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“Not only will this grant money help small businesses by giving them the opportunity for more customers, it will also allow our clients to have access to local, fresh, healthy food,” said Department of Children and Families Secretary David Wilkins in the news release. “This will benefit many children and families while also helping Florida’s economy.”

There are over 1,500 farmers’ markets in the country already accepting EBT cards, according to the release.

EBTs replaced what traditionally were known as “food stamps.”

Global Organic Specialty Source Inc., a wholesale distributor of organic produce, plans to combine its Miami and Manatee County operations in a larger facility in Sarasota County to accommodate the company’s growth.

The expansion is expected to result in 62 new jobs over the next five years, according to Mark Huey, president and CEO of the Economic Development Corp. of Sarasota County.

“This was a case of regional collaboration to keep a successful company and fine employer in the Sarasota-Manatee community,” Huey said. “Working with our colleagues at the Manatee Economic Development Corp., we were able to assist Global Organic Specialty Source in expediting the company’s expansion. Global Organic started in Sarasota County and outgrew the facility, then moved to Manatee County and outgrew another home, and is now returning to Sarasota County to continue growing.”

Global Organic Specialty Source is a wholesale distributor of certified organic produce, serving large supermarkets, retail stores, restaurants, resorts, and buying clubs/co-ops. The company will combine operations from a South Manatee County facility and a Miami location to 85,000 square feet in Meridian Center at 6284 McIntosh Road in Sarasota. Sarasota County government recently approved $124,000 in performance-based economic development incentives to expedite the company’s expansion. To receive incentive funds, the business must add 62 employees over five years.

“The organic industry has shown double-digit growth over the last year as people become more aware and concerned about their food sources and health,” said Mitch Blumenthal, president of Global Organic Specialty Source. “We also have a reputation for freshness and quality which has aided us in our growth. We currently serve the Southeastern U.S. and export to the outlying Caribbean islands. We’ve simply outgrown our current physical plant. The larger facility will allow us to move our Miami operations to Sarasota so that we will receive ocean containers in Sarasota for national distribution and oversee all of our operations under one roof.”

Members of the Believers’ Fellowship Word of Faith Church in Lakeland started a garden on the 6-acre church grounds two years ago, growing everything from zucchini to onions to watermelons. At first, they gave the food out for free. But when demand outpaced supply, they added inventory donated by other local growers, expanded the tent to the roadside and began taking optional donations. All proceeds — $500 in a typical week — go back into the garden for seeds, fertilizer and more.

“We still needed more,” Associate Pastor Jonathan Freidt told FoxNews.com. “It just kind of grew from there.”

The burgeoning food stand caught the eye of a city code enforcement officer, who informed Friedt that the church’s property zoning regulations prohibited such use. Friedt disagreed and refused to move it, prompting officials to cite the church in February for operating a produce stand in a residential zone.

City spokesman Kevin Cook said code officials checked up on the church three more times in March and April, and each time found the stand going strong. Now the city has scheduled a hearing on Friday to determine if the church is engaging in a commercial activity in a residential-zoned area.

“We are happy to have this faith-based ministry and others to serve the many varied needs of the citizens of Lakeland, including food ministries,” Cook wrote in an email to FoxNews.com. “This particular church operated a food distribution ministry previously that was NOT deemed to violate any code based on where it operated. That has changed recently with the roadside tent/produce stand that has been set up along the side of the road.”

City authorities have told church officials they can continue to operate the produce market, but need to take the operation indoors based on the zoning issue, Cook said. Freidt rejects the idea of moving it indoors or seeking a variance in the zoning ordinance.

“My church and the churches of the majority of those serving on the City Commission have food and other outreach ministries providing for those who need assistance and a helping hand,” Cook’s email continued. “The City is not opposed to their existence or operation.”

Friedt, however, says the church won’t be packing up the produce stand and its accompanying tents anytime soon.

“We will have to fight against this,” he said. “It’s our God-given right to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s our number one mission of the church. We feel it necessary to stand up for our right to minister outside our four walls.”

Friedt, who said the produce stand often serves free fruit and vegetables to the poor, think the issue is another example of “freedoms being diminished” in the United States.

“Something as basic as the right to food,” he said. “To try and squash those rights, at some point you’ve got to say: ‘We’ve rolled over enough. If we don’t stand up now, when will we?’”

Worden Farm offers an apprenticeship program but is selective in who is chosen to participate. Photo by Ann M. O'Phelan

One day they might be seeding cucumbers, the next day they may be driving a tractor and plowing a field, and the following day they could be harvesting citrus. If this sounds a bit like a typical day for a farmer, that’s because it is.

Thanks to the apprenticeship program at Worden Farm, apprentices experience all of this, along with much more, during a full winter vegetable season, from October through May.

Worden Farm is a family-owned, 85-acre certified organic farm in Punta Gorda that produces more than 50 varieties of certified organic vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers — such as arugula, eggplant, melons, strawberries, avocados, citrus, thyme and sunflowers — so there is a wide variety of crops and plants that apprentices learn about over the course of an apprenticeship.

Although the apprentices are assigned specific roles at the farm, the roles are rotated every week or so. “By rotating jobs and tasks, the apprentices learn many things and develop a variety of skills during their time as an apprentice,” said Eva Worden, who has owned the farm with her husband, Chris, since 2003.

In addition to gaining hands-on experience, the apprentices can earn undergraduate- and graduate-level college credit thorough an educational partnership between Worden Farm and the University of Florida. They also have access to the farm’s sustainable-agriculture reference library.

“Some apprentices go on to complete or further their studies, while others wind up working for plant nurseries or find jobs in community development or even the Peace Corps,” added Eva, who implemented the apprenticeship program in 2004 and has been farming with her husband since 1998.

Besides offering plenty of hands-on farming tasks like planting, transplant production, irrigation projects and crop maintenance, the apprenticeship includes informal farm skill demonstrations, exposure to farm management, such as organic certification protocols and farm record-keeping requirements, along with the experience of direct marketing through farmers markets and the CSA farm membership program offered by Worden Farm.

“The apprentices work on the farm and with the local community,” said Eva, who explained that they make friends and build connections during their apprenticeship.

Worden Farm is community-oriented, so it also conducts workshops such as cooking classes, hosts special events such as farm feasts, and offers farm tours to the general public and to schools, garden clubs and other community organizations.

Although dozens of apprentices apply for the program, only four or five are chosen per season. The apprentices live off-site and work 5½ days per week. When choosing an applicant, the Wordens give preference to full-season applicants with a professional interest in agriculture. The application requires a resume, along with several letters of recommendation.

An apprenticeship at Worden provides not only lessons in general farming, but also a chance to learn about organic farming, a fast-growing industry. According to the Organic Trade Association’s 2011 Organic Industry Survey, “U.S. sales of organic food and beverages have grown from $1 billion in 1990 to $26.7 billion in 2010..

The report also states that “the highest growth in sales during 2010 were organic fruits and vegetables, up 11.8 percent over 2009 sales.”

The USDA reports that there are approximately 30,000 organic farms and processing facilities around the world certified to USDA organic standards.

Having an organic certification allows a farm or processing facility to sell, label and represent its products as organic.

A few lucky people can now raise chickens in Orlando. Photo credit: Jim Ford

The Orlando City Council approved a pilot program on Monday afternoon that will allow residents to keep up to three backyard hens per household. The new program is the result of an organized push by homeowners who want to supply their families with fresh eggs.

Raising your own chickens for fresh eggs and meat is a growing trend toward organic and sustainable living. Families who want foods free of harmful antibiotics and animal hormones have few choices at the supermarket. Backyard chickens help fill that demand for healthier food.

The backyard chicken initiative in Orlando is not without controversy. City commissioners only approved a pilot program limited to 25 families, and three of the commissioners refused to allow chickens into their districts. Residents of districts 3, 4 and 5 will be able to participate in the program.

Because the initial two-year phase of the program is so limited, the chances of any one individual getting approved for chickens is extremely small. The Orlando Sentinel reports that 12 of the 25 openings were taken the first afternoon. If you’d like to try your luck, or hope that the program will be expanded, call your city commissioner.

The demand for healthier food is so high that many people are already raising chickens illegally within the city. If you want sustainably-raised meat or eggs without breaking the law, check out the Homegrown Local Food Co-op’s online market or visit their Farm Store located at 2310 North Orange Ave., Orlando. If you live in an part of Central Florida where chickens are allowed, you can start your flock by visiting the Sanford Farm Swap Meet on the second and fourth Saturdays of every month at Flea World.