When they were young, Janssen Hang and his sister Pakou would pick agricultural products in the heat. When their little hands are working in the field, they will listen to the aunts exchanging stories, and join when their siblings sing, until sunset.

Janssen doesn't appreciate those long days, especially when he learns how his friends spend their summers.

"They were like,'We traveled to the north. What did you do?'" he recalled. "Oh, we were on the farm under the scorching sun. We stabbed our hands while picking cucumbers, and we wore rubber gloves on our forearms!"

But decades later, the Hang family’s brothers and sisters said that maintaining the family business’s manual labor taught them the dignity of work. Now they are about to realize the vision they have shared since they united to speak for the Miao farmers.

Last week, the Hmong American Farmers Association (HAFA), a non-profit organization they co-founded with other families in 2011, raised the final funds to purchase 155 acres of Dakota County farms that the association had leased for the past few years. The association plans Continue to sublet smaller land to Miao farmers to provide stable and safe opportunities for the descendants of the family.

"We are ecstatic," said Jason, executive director of HAFA. "This is indeed a historic moment. Achieving this goal is a milestone for us, not only for HAFA, but also for the Hmong farmers and our community."

Hmong growers are an important engine for the local food movement in Minnesota. They account for more than half of the suppliers in the farmers market in the Shuangcheng area, producing and selling locally grown peppers, tomatoes, and cabbage that the rest of us like.

"If we care about local food, we must care about Hmong farmers," Jansen told me.

However, many farmers have barely managed to make ends meet for many years. Field visits are usually carried out on other people’s property and on other people’s terms, making people doubt whether they can continue to obtain affordable farmland.

Some farmers still lack access to funds and credit, which means they cannot purchase machines that can improve operational efficiency. Without long-term land leases, they cannot look to the future and devote themselves to innovative business models to help them build and pass on wealth.

HAFA and its bilingual staff have begun to fill these gaps, providing farmers with training in everything from sustainable agricultural technology to crop insurance. The organization contracts farmers with schools and restaurants to help them expand the market.

In 2013, an anonymous benefactor on the west coast (not even HAFA knew her identity) purchased the 155 acres of land in Vermillion Township, about 20 miles south of São Paulo. The association began to lease the land and sublet it to individual farmers, with a view to buying it one day. Last year, the State Assembly allocated US$2 million, and HAFA pledged to raise another US$500,000 to complete the purchase.

By the end of this year, the so-called "HAFA farm" seems to truly belong to itself. This makes the Hang brothers and sisters more grateful for this year.

This week, their family will celebrate Thanksgiving and the Hmong New Year, according to agricultural traditions, starting after the harvest. Potatoes, kale and bitter gourd grown by their parents will be on the table. When they enter another pandemic year, the family will burn their spiritual money and pray to their ancestors for blessing and protection.

The drought has reduced this year's output, and now the parents of Hangs, who are in their 60s and 70s, hope to reduce their business next season-making the holidays full of bittersweet nostalgia.

Paku, who stepped down as the executive director of HAFA two years ago, said that she was motivated to start this non-profit organization because she wanted to know what would become of the first generation of American Hmong farmers after they quit field work.

This has bothered her since she was an undergraduate at Yale University. She remembers having dinner with Leonard Lauder, Estée Lauder's son. He told the students that when he was young, he would accompany his mother, and she called the salon selling homemade cosmetics. Of course, Lauder would later become a billionaire, philanthropist, and CEO of a company founded by his parents.

It suddenly occurred to Paku that the failure of imagination hindered her generation.

"I was thinking,'Our dream is not big enough,'" she said. "Many Hmong farmer families think this is a chore. They just want to get rid of it. We never dreamed that one day we would become a Fortune 500 company, S&P 500 or Nasdaq. This is the meaning of success. I am: able to provide such a big dream space for the Miao agricultural family."

Pakou is now the chief program officer of Vote Run Lead, a training program for women running for public office. However, she still pays close attention to the lives of more than 100 members of the farm organization.

When she recalled the death of an old friend, her voice became excited—his family ran a farmer’s market stall next to her parents. He passed away last winter.

"His children wrote in his obituary that his proudest effort is that he is a farmer-he is a member of the Sao Paulo Farmers' Market, where he has been selling produce for 25 years," she said. "Before HAFA, this was not a story we would tell. Revealing Miao farmers and Miao families, which makes it a thing that people can be proud of."

Laura Yuen is a columnist for Star Tribune. She explores parenting, gender, family, and interpersonal relationships, with a special focus on women and underrepresented communities. She focuses on the human story in every news report, evokes a deeper resonance of a story, humanizes it, and makes it universal. She likes the opportunity to expand the meaning of people of color in Minnesota.

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