Sonoma County vineyard workers burn toward a better future

Years ago, Anayeli Rodríguez left the hills around Oaxaca, Mexico for the vineyards of Sonoma County. But however far she has traveled, the memory of her grandfather’s ritual before the sowing on his farm comes with her, undimmed. Each year, he would pour a shot of tequila into the soil and ask the earth to bless the coming corn or sugarcane. The plants grew and were harvested, and then the stubble was burned to prepare the fields for the next season. And so time passed — growing and burning, season after season.

“We burned so we could sow,” Rodríguez recalls in Spanish.