Apple orchard owners demand a high degree of responsibility from the workers they hire. The workers pick the apples, wash them, and pack them in a short amount of time to prevent the apples from rotting. Entirely responsible for the orchard owner's salary, the migrants try to maximize their boss' profits so that they can benefit as well. According to Marilyn Basham, a former director of the Migrant HeadStart program, the different camps provide varying standards of living and working conditions, but the workers overcome the situation by placing an importance on survival. Regardless of the conditions, they earn a salary, however minimal, to support their families and fulfill obligations such as food, rent, and taxes.
Many workers even return to the same camps year after year for work.
The transition to non-migrant begins when a worker becomes employed year round by the orchard to care for the trees and prepare them for the next harvest because the worker makes the first move to change his family's standard of living. Harvey Orchards, one of the better kept orchards in the county, even provides housing for the families and a small plot of land for a vegetable garden. Slowly the worker in the family, usually the husband, relocates to the horse farms or the lumber yards in Fluvanna and Louisa counties which provide higher incomes and easier work. With more income, the family settles into the community and purchases a home, a car, and the children attend the same school for more than a semester. Instead of being a hindrance to the community, the former migrant families add to its racial diversity and become assets to the Charlottesville and Albemarle county areas.