Do the work

Photo courtesy of Legacy Labor

Jan Nielsen, the director of operations at Garden State Growers, says a "significant" challenge for the business was bringing in qualified labor. At two facilities — one in Pittsville, New Jersey and one in Pineville, Pennsylvania — the company produces annuals and perennials for big-box retailers. At the New Jersey facility alone, the company has 600 acres of growing space.

"We need people," Nielsen says. "Around COVID, we had a real shortage of temporary labor." He says they tried their own hand at H-2A in the fall of 2021.

Enter Legacy Labor. In 2022, Garden State decided to work with a Farm Labor Contractor (FLC) and ultimately hired Legacy.

"We really struggled before we did [H-2A]," Nielsen says. "Labor was completely dried up. We are in kind of a remote spot, so we have to draw in labor from at least an hour away a lot of the time. People have to travel, so not many people were willing to do that if they could find work closer to home. So we had a really, really difficult time finding people."

Where Legacy has stepped in, Nielsen says, "is being really in-tune with what we are looking for, really hands on and really responsive." He notes that they were able to communicate directly with co-CEO David Judah and get insight from the entire Legacy team.

"It felt like the perfect fit for us, dealing with somebody that was willing to do whatever they needed to do for us," Nielsen says. "... Working out everything with Legacy was really simple."

In the first year, Garden State brought in around 45 H-2A workers via Legacy. This year, in year two, they increased the number of workers to 48 with some coming during week 13 and a second batch coming three weeks later in week 16.

Nielsen says that the benefit of getting the labor they need has a "huge positive change."

"Just year over year, it's been huge for us," he says. "The first year, we saved well over 80,000 man hours. We had someone reliable, someone here every day who was willing to work hard because that's why they are here. They want the hours. With the labor in-house, we knew we’d be able to finish whatever we needed to get done on any given day by having people like that who are willing to put in the work and get the job done."