Storm's wake means long days for agriculture community.

Publication: The Miami Herald (Miami, Florida) (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News)

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COPYRIGHT 2005 The Miami Herald

Byline: Tere Figueras Negrete

Aug. 28--Steadying herself with a mop, Angelica Rubio leaned out of her back door to chide her three kids as they strayed too far into the waist-high lake that was once a dusty backyard. She nervously eyed the flooded tree farm barely visible across the street.

"There's no way anybody's going to be able to go in there and work," said Rubio, who lives in a small community of migrant workers clustered in cinder block homes at the far edge of Homestead's Campbell Drive.

Since Hurricane Katrina soaked South Miami-Dade, Rubio -- whose husband works in the nurseries and packing houses -- has kept an anxious watch on the rows of palm trees, praying for the water to recede.

"Nobody knows what's going to happen," Rubio said. "Nobody knows, and we're worried."

As Miami-Dade's agricultural community reels, the farmers, growers and laborers who depend on the industry for their livelihood are tense with uncertainty.

Early estimates place...

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