HURON, Calif. — The sun has just risen, and the air is crisp as about 30 workers start their nine-hour day digging holes to prepare the ground for vine plantings along furrows that stretch as far as the eye can see.

A second crew of 30 will join them later to work the fields of the Esajian Farming Co. The work is hard, but at $8.50 an hour in a tough economy, the jobs are in demand.

For Emisael Benitez, 18, who lives with his mother and six younger brothers in nearby Madera, this is his livelihood. He is happy to be working now. But the hundreds of acres of land that lay barren throughout Fresno County and the rest of the San Joaquin Valley are a constant reminder that his future — and those of many like him — may now be in jeopardy.

“I am afraid,” Benitez said.

With only about six weeks left until the rainy season ends, California farmers and their workers are bracing for the worse from a drought so severe that it could beat 500-year records. “This here will surpass anything I’ve had to deal with in my lifetime,” said Chuck Herrin, who runs Sunrise Farm Labor and provides workers and equipment for area farms. None of his contracts have been dropped so far, but “I know it’s coming,” he said.

The pinkish-white blossoms of almond trees blanket miles and miles along I-5, but this visual bounty is interrupted by stark stretches of fallow fields. Signs proclaiming “No water = no jobs” have become part of the pastoral scenery. Farmers, who just found out they will get no water from the federal Central Valley Project this year, are having a “Sophie’s Choice” moment: Do they hope for more water and risk planting seasonal crops? Or do they take a loss and leave the land fallow? Their decisions will affect thousands of farm laborers and hundreds of farm suppliers and contractors.

“We’re in survival mode,” said Todd Neves, who may leave a third of his 2,400-acre Golden Valley Farms fallow. That means laying off 10 of his 50 employees, including irrigation supervisors, field crews and — most painful of all — some workers who feel a little like family. One employee, a ranch assistant who has been with him seven years, should be cut and probably will be. “It is killing me,” Neves said. “I have not been able to let him go.”