Pepperwood Preserve, Sonoma County — Before she became a California farmworker, Guadalupe Rodriguez grew corn with her family on their land in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Each year they used fire to clear the ground and get it ready for planting.
After being evacuated three times because of raging wildfires in Sonoma County, Rodriguez is now learning how to use fire and other natural methods to make Sonoma’s hilly fields and woodlands more resilient to out-of-control infernos that have repeatedly forced her and thousands of others to flee.
Rodriguez and 40 other farmworkers are being trained in land restoration and climate mitigation techniques by North Bay Jobs with Justice, a coalition of more than 30 labor and community groups in Sonoma, Napa and Marin Counties. Trainees start by earning the basic certification for using a chainsaw and can build from there, including how to perform prescribed and cultural burns.
The training was funded by a $900,000 grant from the state’s Farmworkers Advancement Program as well as private funding from the Irvine Foundation and a state grant from Cal Fire that is administered by Resilience Force CA.
The Farmworkers Advancement Program is an initiative of the state Labor and Workforce Development Agency and the state Employment Development Department. It has distributed $9 million so far to help farmworkers adapt to the changing demands of agriculture and learn new skills that will command higher wages.
In November, EDD released a solicitation for proposals for the second $10 million round of funding. Applications are due Dec. 9. The Farmworkers Advancement Program is 100 percent funded by the U.S. Department of Labor.
On a crisp morning in mid-November, Rodriguez and her 20 classmates were learning how to use chainsaws to clear Douglas firs that were crowding out oak trees on the Pepperwood Preserve in the mountains above Calistoga and Santa Rosa. They stacked the branches in piles to be burned at a later date.
Max Bell Alper, executive director of North Bay Jobs with Justice, said non-profit conservation organizations 
like Pepperwood Ranch increasingly are looking to hire contractors to manage their land. So are individual landowners and parks. He added that demand is rising as climate change increases the threat of devastating fires.
For Rodriguez, the work feels like “taking care of Mother Earth.”
“I would love it if I could do this (for a living),” she said. “I love being in nature. I grew up in nature. I love that we’re clearing out some of these trees to make way for new growth.”