It may be the dream of every American boy to play in the dirt all day, but Frank Male can tell you that when those boys grow up to be men, most don’t want to work in it.

Male, an owner of Lawrence Landscape, said his company had encountered problems finding enough laborers in the Lawrence area to meet his firm’s needs. So, he has turned to recruiting workers from Mexico.

Lawrence Landscape workers from left, Jorge Montes, Fermin Moraks and Rafael Contreras work at the company's tree farm. The men are part of a Labor Department program that allows Mexican workers to work in the United States for nine months out of the year.

With assistance from the U.S. Department of Labor, Lawrence Landscape has recruited 15 Mexican laborers to work nine months out of the year for the company. The company first began recruiting in Mexico last year and had so much success that it hired 15 workers this spring.

“We felt like we had to do it,” said Male, who estimated the 15 workers make up about half the company’s work force. “You could run ads all day, every day, and people just weren’t interested in doing the work that we do.”

Much of the work is best described as hard labor, ranging from digging holes for plants and trees to hours of mowing in the sun. Male said he suspected the nature of the work made it tough to find good employees in Lawrence.

“I guess the way to say it is: Around here we live in more of a white-collar world than a blue-collar world,” Male said.

Male and other Lawrence Landscape officials said they hadn’t had problems finding Mexican laborers willing to do the work.

“It’s been a real good deal,” said Tony Jurado, a former Mexico resident who now is a supervisor for the company. “You tell them what to do and they do it. They are used to the hard work. They’ve been working hard all their lives.”

Jurado said the Mexican workers told him that the arrangement was a good one for them.

“Most of them are already asking if they can come back next year,” Jurado said. “They tell me they want to do this for a lot of years.”

He estimates the workers would make anywhere from $50 to $90 a week doing similar work in Mexico.

Male, for competitive reasons, declined to release his workers’ wages, but said it was well above minimum wage and was competitive with other laborer jobs in the community.

“Compared to what they are making in Mexico, they are making a lot more here,” Male said. “Lots of them are able to live on $50 a week up here, and they’ll send the rest of their wages, usually several hundred dollars, back to their families.

“They see this as their chance to improve their families’ finances.”

The program does create some challenges. Male said the company had only two employees who spoke fluent Spanish. Male and other supervisors are learning how to communicate with the Mexican workers.

“We took a class up at Washburn last year that basically was Spanish for supervisors,” Male said. “We learned how to say things like ‘shovel,’ ‘wheelbarrow,’ and ‘let’s break for lunch.'”

Finding living arrangements for the workers also can be a challenge. Since their work visas are for nine months, finding an apartment lease to suit their needs can be challenging.

Male said the company had purchased several houses near its North Lawrence offices. The company then deducts rent payments from the employees’ checks. The company also has supervisors who take the workers to grocery stores and other places around town to conduct basic business, since the workers don’t have their own vehicles.

Male said using a Mexican work force was becoming popular with landscape companies across the nation, but said the trend was just catching on in Kansas and Lawrence. But he expected to see more Mexican workers in coming years.

“I don’t think some companies, especially if they’re real labor intensive, are going to have much choice but to go this route,” Male said.