(lighthearted soft-rock music) - Hello, and welcome to "Prairie Pulse."

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll meet Glyndon, Minnesota artist, Mandy Groom.

But first, joining me now is our guest, Martha Castanon.

Martha, thanks for joining us today.

- Thank you for having me.

- Now, Martha, you're with the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota in Moorhead.

But you're here today to talk about a new documentary that we have at Prairie Public, "Esta Es Mi Casa - This Is My Home."

But before we do that, we always ask, tell the folks a little bit about yourself and your background.

- Well, I am what they call, I call myself Minnesota homegrown because the question that I got asked a lot as a child was, where are you from?

And it was hard for others to comprehend, especially when I was going to school, that I was actually born in Moorhead, raised in the Moorhead, Clay County area, went to school in Sabin, lived off and on as a child in Texas, but pretty much from around here.

My parents were farmworkers.

And we worked in the beet fields every summer.

We worked in the onion and spinach fields down in Texas when we were in Texas, and traveled to Wisconsin for about three or four years to pick cucumbers.

- Mm-hmm.

Well, with that said, obviously, then what was it like working in those fields?

- It was hard work.

You had to get up early, get ready for the field.

Since I was the oldest in my family, as soon as I smelled the coffee being brewed, it was time for me to get up and make tortillas for our lunch.

And we would make tacos to take for lunch.

We'd be out there all day in the sun or dealing with the elements of the weather.

Sometimes we would be caught in a rainstorm.

It would get very hot, sometimes very windy, also dealing with the elements of the mosquitoes and the flies.

Picking cucumbers was very hard work because you would be there on your knees, dragging a bucket in front of you, picking cucumbers, or you'd be bent over.

And those cucumber leaves, if you've seen cucumber plants, they're extremely big.

So when you had to flip over the leaves or the plant, you would often get wet from the dew.

It was the same thing working in the sugar beets when we were doing what we called the second round or the weeding.

Our legs would get wet like up to our knees because of the dew, so it was very hard work.

And one never forgets it, so.

- Mm, well, you know, you started at a young age.

What age did you start doing this?

- I would say I was about maybe 10 years old when I went to work with my parents in the spinach and onion fields in Texas.

When we came up in the summer of 1970, we worked for a different farmer out by Wolverton.

I can't remember his name.

But I remember our dad taking us to the fields.

And at that time, out by Wolverton, there was no migrant schools.

So all of us, we would go to the fields.

And it was usually me, and my mom, and dad, my sister, and my brother that'd be working with our parents out in the fields.

- Well, did farmers and law enforcement, were they basically looking the other way with child labor?

Or what were the situation back then?

- I think at that time, you had to be either 13 or 14 years old to work in the fields, in the sugar beet fields, in the state of Minnesota.

I think, for the most part, law enforcement didn't enforce it.

As far as I know, I never remember law enforcement stopping by and telling my father that we couldn't work.

There was a farmer that we worked for for many, many years who was, his name was Douglas Sellers, and he was also a local state legislator.

So he was very much, he was really strict about us working in the fields, and pretty much told my dad, "You can't let Martha be working in the fields "until she's of age."

So I remember then when I was 13, and maybe the age was 14, was 13, excuse me, I remember working in the fields when I was 13.

But when I was like 12, I remember staying at home with my little sister, taking care of her.

So it kind of depended on the farmer.

Some will look the other way.

Some were very, this is the law and you can't let your kids.

So that is the reason, part of the reason, why the migrant schools came in because it was kind of dangerous for kids to be staying at home.

It was also dangerous for them to be out in the fields working with their parents, so.

- Hmm, sure.

Well, I do wanna remind the folks watching, "Esta Es Mi Casa - This Is My Home" broadcast premiere is on January 28th at 9:00 p.m.

But we wanna continue talking with you.

What about the housing situation when you traveled around, whether in Texas, or especially in the Red River Valley, as you were doing this field work?

- In Texas, my parents had their own home.

So in Texas, we lived in an area called the Winter Garden area where there were a lot of vegetables being grown.

Most of the families that went to work had their own homes in Crystal City.

Some had good housing, some had bad housing.

Our housing, it wasn't the fanciest, but it wasn't the worst either, so it was kind of in between.

Up here in Minnesota, the farmer that we worked for always made sure we had decent housing.

Now in Wisconsin, that was a different story.

We went to a camp and they looked like barracks.

They might've been former barracks that soldiers were at or something.

But they had no running water.

We had to go to like a main, this other part of the camp, to get water in pails.

They had outhouses.

I remember they had communal showers.

The water boilers to heat up the water were very small, so they were constantly running out of warm water.

So yeah, I remember, I remember the stove, there wasn't a regular stove.

It was just like the kinds that they use at campsites.

There were two burners.

And I remember the first year we went to Wisconsin to pick cucumbers.

My dad was very traditional.

He had to have his tortillas, and his beans, and maybe a side dish with meat in it.

Us kids, we were hungry.

So my mom would get a ride back to the camp with us kids.

And my dad would stay at the fields, picking up the sacks of cucumbers.

And they had to get sorted at the sorting place for cucumbers.

And I remember these nuns coming to the camp with a box full of DINTY MOORE beef stew and Van Camp's pork and beans, and my mom would heat that up for us to eat.

And to this day, I cannot eat that stuff because it brings back that memory.

- [John] Oh.

- And then she would start making supper for my dad.

But it was hard.

The rooms, they didn't have a bedroom for everyone.

Sometimes we all shared one bedroom, some of us sleeping on the floor.

Some of these houses had like bunk beds on them.

So it was hard.

It was really, really hard.

- I know, I understand in the documentary, you talk about a framed work permit you have in your office.

Why do you still have that?

- That work permit, my dad was a hoarder of papers, and when he passed away, he had like this little red toolbox full of papers of us when we were kids.

And it was such a treasure to find all these documents.

But I found that work permit, and I thought, oh, my God, my dad had to sign for me to work.

Because I believe the legal age was 13 in Wisconsin.

And my birthday's in September.

And so, usually, the cucumber season is in August, so my dad had to sign for me to work.

And when I found that, it was just like, wow, my dad had that after all these years.

And to me, I took it to my office and I framed it.

But it's a constant reminder to me of how far I've come, that that little girl who was 12 years old at the time, at that time, she never dreamed that she would grow up to become a legal assistant with the Immigrant Law Center or when I worked with Migrant Legal Services.

And that's why it always keeps me kind of rooted to where I come from and not to forget those those days.

- So a constant reminder?

- Yeah.

- Mm-hmm.

Why did your family decide maybe to stop that nomadic lifestyle, I guess, and make a home in Minnesota?

- Well, that's kind of interesting that you say that.

My parents met and married by Comstock, Minnesota, and actually married at St. Francis Church in Moorhead.

That year that they married, they decided to stay here all year round.

And so there would be like one year, we lived here all year round, and the following year, we'd go down for the winter.

And we did that up to 1974.

In 1974, my father became sick.

And we were living here all year round.

And according to my mom, that was the last year we were gonna live here year round.

She wanted us kids to graduate from school in Texas and not in Moorhead.

But I guess God had another plan for us.

And my father got sick.

It turned out that both his kidneys failed.

And so at that time, the only dialysis clinic was Dakota Clinic here in Fargo.

And since we lived close by, it was easy for my dad to come for the three times a week for the treatments.

Down in Texas, it would've been very, very different.

And that's the reason why we never ended up going back to Texas.

All of us kids graduated from Moorhead High School.

We worked in the beet fields every season.

And that's why we never went back.

And then I ended up getting married and just got a job at Migrant Legal Services as a secretary, then went on to become a paralegal, and I just ended up staying here.

But my parents, when they learned that there was a dialysis clinic opening up in Eagle Pass, Texas, my dad got on the list, and then they started going back every winter.

- Mm.

Well, so do you still have relatives in Texas?

And do you still visit?

- Oh, yeah.

Yes, yes.

My brother lives in Eagle Pass.

And I have a lot of family in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, some in Austin, some in San Antonio.

But I have a lot of cousins that came up here to work in the beet fields.

And we often talk about those times when we worked in the beet fields.

And we always say, "You know, those were the best of times."

And I say, "Yeah, they were," even though it was hard work.

- Yeah.

And you're talking about a time, I guess, in the '70s, at least, that's what you've mentioned so far.

But did you ever experience discrimination in the schools?

- Yeah, it was subtle, but it was there.

It was there.

Sometimes I would hear the remarks about, "Oh, those darn Mexicans, they come up every summer, and they're freeloaders," and all that kinda stuff.

And usually, it was those that didn't know any better about the lifestyle of the migrant workers, not realizing that when they come up, they also pay taxes on different things.

I remember in junior high, a teacher kept me after school because I chewed gum in class.

But yet there were other students that would chew gum and she never had them stay after school.

So there was some bias.

- Mm-hmm.

How did the farmers treat you and your family?

- For the most part, I was a child back then and I was a kid, so I guess I didn't pay attention to those things.

But the farmers were always good to my mom and dad.

My mom and dad had a very good work ethic.

I remember Douglas Sellers always saying, "No one can hold sugar beets like Armandina does.

She does it so well."

And my mom and dad always taught us that no matter how hard the work is, do it well.

Don't do a sloppy job.

Do it well.

So that's how we were taught to always do our job well.

- Well, you've mentioned your job two or three times today.

Can you talk a little more about it and how you got into it?

- Okay.

I'm now with the Immigrant Law Center.

Prior to that, I was with Migrant Legal Services, which is a legal aid program for migrant farmworkers, and I was there for a long time.

While during my time there, we started doing some immigration casework like renewing green cards and filing for citizenship.

And I really developed a passion for that.

So when I learned that the Immigrant Law Center was opening up an office in Moorhead, and they're based out of St. Paul, they were looking either for an immigration attorney or a paralegal to work that, and I decided to apply, and that's what I do now.

And it's very satisfying to see my clients become citizens and for them to take the oath, later on, going and voting.

So, yeah, I really like that work.

- Mm.

I know that during this documentary, you and your partner went out to the fields and did some recreations for us, I guess.

And what was it like being out there?

Did it bring back some memories?

- It brought back a lot of memories.

It brought back memories of...

It was very windy that day.

So dealing with the wind and the hat blowing off all the time was something that we dealt with a lot.

Trying to walk in those rows of fields and chopping the weeds, that movement that you have, that going like this, you just never forget it.

So it just came back automatically.

But I remember the memories that we have is that we worked together as a family, so we were all together.

We would have conversations, laughter.

Eating our lunch out in the field was sometimes hard because sometimes there'd be no shade, so we'd be sitting in the sun.

Our lunch would get cold.

Sometimes a vehicle would drive by, and there'd be dust in our food, and we ate it anyways.

We'd brush it off and eat anyways.

So it brought back a lot of memories like that.

- Mm-hmm.

Can you talk some about sorta the generational shift from your parents to you to your children?

- I think for my parents, because of their lack of English skills, they knew that's what they had to do, and they did it well.

When we were growing up, it was never... We never thought about not helping our parents, and we just went.

For us to wake up one morning, and say, oh, dad, I don't wanna go to work today, that thought didn't even cross our mind.

We just went.

But I know that my mom always told us, "You need to finish school 'cause this is something you don't wanna be doing for the rest of your life, okay?"

Working in the fields taught us some lifelong lessons about hard work and being grateful for what we have now.

And as for today's generation, a lot of them don't know what it's like to work in the fields.

And I think they may hear it from their parents or grandparents, but until they have done one day's of work in the field, then they will understand and maybe appreciate all the sacrifices that their parents and grandparents did for them at that time.

- Sure, absolutely.

Well, what would you hope people might take away from this documentary that we're gonna have about migrant workers in the Red River Valley?

And what it means to you and what you hope people do get from this?

- What I hope that people get out of the viewers is a better understanding of the migrant farmworkers, some of the history because there were many migrant farmworkers that came up for decades up in this area.

Little was known about them.

I remember a comment my mom said, "They just want us to work and then they want us to leave."

And that's how I think some of the general community felt that way.

Oh, the migrant workers are here.

They're only here for two months, and then they leave.

But that we also made an impact in this area.

The sugar beet industry, I mean, it was huge at that time.

I want people to have their kids watch this show, and say, yeah, this is part of the history of the Red River Valley.

Because a lot of the little kids that are in school right now, they have no idea what a migrant farmworker is.

They have no idea that, years ago, there were people working out in the fields.

And I think it's a history that needs to be learned in school of this area.

- Do you ever wish you'd had different childhood or not?

- I never thought about it.

I never thought about it.

I just know that I couldn't relate to some of my classmates that would talk about going to the lakes every weekend, and I was working in the beet fields, you know?

I couldn't relate to that.

And I'm sure they couldn't relate to what I was going through.

- Well, I hope they do take away some of that.

- [Martha] Yeah.

- Just a reminder that the broadcast premiere of "Esta Es Mi Casa - This Is My Home" about migrant workers in the Red River Valley will be broadcast on January the 28th at 9:00 p.m. Stay tuned for more.

(lighthearted soft-rock music) Mandy Groom of Glyndon, Minnesota has found her passion in alcohol ink.

Armed with her tools and positivity, she lets her emotions flow on the paper and creates colorful works of art.

(gentle koto music) - I'd like to think that I just pour my soul into everything that I do.

And I think it shows.

(gentle koto music continues) When I discovered alcohol ink, I was working on my PhD.

I was stressed to the max holding down a full-time job and I needed something that was going to be my release, and I've always turned to art and creativity for that.

And when I discovered this medium, it was like opening up the gates and allowing me to really release everything that I was holding in and bottling up onto paper.

And then I just kept doing it and doing it, and never had the intention of turning it into a job or anything like that.

Alcohol ink is a highly pigmented ink.

It's essentially what is used to make markers, but it's just in the liquid form.

And so I use it on glossy surfaces, mostly synthetic paper.

You can use it on canvas and other surfaces like ceramic, glass, metal.

I love working with alcohol ink because it's very fluid.

You can mix colors together and it just moves on paper, and there's something very whimsical and freeing about it.

(mellow new-age music) My process really starts with how I'm feeling that day.

Emotions really dictate kind of how the piece is going to come together.

I really use nature as inspiration for my color palette.

I take those natural palettes and I make them more whimsical.

And so I might intensify the color or kind of think about it a little differently than what you're actually seeing.

I start with adding ink usually, as like a small pool of ink first, and then add metallics.

The metallic goes into the ink, and then I add isopropyl alcohol to it.

And then that allows for it to move across the paper and it becomes very fluid.

A lot of the movement and what I'm doing on the paper requires forced air because you need to force it kind of around whatever surface you're working with.

I use that air blaster bulb to kind of blast the air around and also a hairdryer to move it.

And I use silicone brushes.

I use those to kinda help move the inks around because normal paint brushes will kinda soak up that ink.

It's very fast-drying.

The alcohol is what really helps to kinda keep it more fluid.

So the more alcohol you add to the ink, then the longer kinda you have for the dry time.

I think inks can be very intimidating because there isn't a lot of control.

I think the most challenging part is not knowing, essentially, what it's going to look like when the colors start to merge.

I have swatches, which are behind me.

But those swatches allow for me to see what some of the undertones are.

Those undertones will then mix, and so you have to be very careful to think about how those colors mix.

It's part of why I love working with alcohol ink is it allows me to use kind of like that analytical side of my brain that really starts to dig into, okay, how are these colors gonna mix?

What is that gonna look like?

Is it gonna create something that is really intense and beautiful?

Or could it end up muddy and not really what I was hoping for?

(mellow rock music) I don't know if a piece is ever really finished.

As an artist, I think there's always something that you look at it, and you're like, oh, I could maybe do something here or touch it up here.

When you add more ink to what's already on the paper, it's going to shift and move that ink as well.

So sometimes it can really disrupt a painting if you add too much or not add enough.

And so usually, I go based off of feeling.

Everything is about feeling for me.

If it feels right, then the painting's done for me.

(mellow rock music continues) I love to teach one-on-one sessions.

I had someone reach out.

They were just kind of curious to know a little bit more about my process and really just interested in the medium and wanted to give it a try.

So I said, "Well, I could meet with you one-on-one over any type of connection that we could make," and teach that individual how I do my process.

And it just kind of dawned on me, like maybe other people wanna learn.

And I was surprised by people's interest in wanting to meet with me and learn from me.

I show them how I paint, and then I give them an opportunity to show me how they're working, and then I provide feedback as they're doing it.

They're a lot of fun.

(mellow rock music continues) What I want people to feel from my art is emotion, have a response, something that just triggers something for them, whether it's happiness, joy, frustration, whatever it might be, but I want it to spark something in them, something that maybe draws them back to a memory, or a thought, or something that makes them feel.

I love to bring joy to the world and positivity.

And I think that I'm able to do that through teaching and just inspiring others to keep doing what they're doing and finding ways to relieve stress.

And bringing more of that positivity into their life is rewarding for me.

I like to see people happy.

(mellow rock music continues) - Well, that's all we have for "Prairie Pulse" this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(lighthearted soft-rock music) - [Narrator] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.