LOUDON, N.H. (AP) – Hard-pressed to find locals to work their fields and harvest their summer crops, some New Hampshire farms are hiring hard-working Cambodians.

At Pleasant View Gardens in Loudon, Henry Huntington couldn’t find enough workers for difficult, low-wage, seasonal work about six years ago. Immigrants living in Manchester took some of the jobs, but with his company’s growing needs, he eventually turned to temporary agencies in Lowell, Mass.

The workers he needed were among the city’s Southeast Asian immigrants, many of them Cambodians who have returned year after year.

Pleasant View employs between 20 and 140 Cambodians at a time, depending on the season.

“They are very good workers. They take pride in what they do. We appreciate having them,” Huntington told the Sunday Monitor.

Some farmers use agricultural visas to bring in people from countries like Jamaica and Mexico. But many companies with no housing, or no idea exactly how long they’ll need the workers, have turned to Lowell, with a sizable Southeast Asian population.

There is no firm information on the number of Cambodian workers in New Hampshire, but several companies have them on the payroll.

Green Thumb Acres, a small farm in Canterbury employs a handful of Cambodian workers. The Nesenkeag Cooperative Farm in Litchfield employs at least 40 and the Peterborough Basket Company has about 60.

Almost a dozen temp agencies have sprung up in Lowell to help people find work. They call manufacturers and farmers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, sometimes even Maine, to place workers.

Green Thumb owner John Hubron has hired Cambodian workers to help him harvest his corn for the last three years, through EKReach Temps of Lowell.

More and more of Pleasant View Gardens’ workers are temporary workers the company finds through EKReach, Huntington said.

EKReach is one of the bigger agencies in Lowell, says the agency’s owner, Dave Khon. At any given time, Khon has about 100 clients working in New Hampshire.

Thien Long took a job working at Green Thumb Acres after he was laid off four weeks ago as a computer technician. He gets up at 5 a.m. to make it to Canterbury by 7. The farm pays EKReach $10 an hour for Long’s work, of which Long makes $8.

Long said he doesn’t mind the drive, or the work. Sitting in the sun on a lunch break last week, he said it was a beautiful day to work outside. “My wife complains every day, but I’m tired of computers right now. I want to sweat, get healthy,” he said.

At Pleasant View Gardens last week, Dora Soy, 33, pressed cuttings into little pots of soil to take root. Before she started working in the greenhouse last November, she’d worked at a factory in Massachusetts, assembling baby gates.

She said she likes her new job better. The flowers smell sweet, there’s nothing heavy to lift and her co-workers don’t fight.

But Soy, 33, worries about the day her job will end. She tries to put money away, but can’t afford to save much.

“When you got no job, you have to worry because you have to pay the rent,” she said. “But I figure, when this is over, I’ll find another job.”

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Information from: Concord Monitor, http://www.cmonitor.com

AP-ES-07-04-04 1343EDT