The bushes are skeletal and dark, with a thin sheet of snow dusted over them. The two stay in the car, peering over the fields, and strategize. Usually they patrol each row of bushes, checking the plants for damage. They need to pull up weeds and remove the dead parts of the bushes before February’s end to ensure that the plants survive Bellingham’s coldest weeks of the year. The 65-acre parcel they co-own is fairly small as far as berry farms go, and they can’t afford to lose any of their crop.

“If you have the money, you do the job in December and January,” Torres says. “It’s the most common and most recommended because of the snow, too.” This year, they didn’t have the funds to get extra help to do that until February; even so, Torres and Hernandez have to do a large part of the weeding on their own.

Torres has a few errands to run and Hernandez wonders if they should wait for the sun to come out and melt the snow. They decide to come back later.