Anyone who knows me would tell you that I have the innate ability to talk for hours on end to anyone about anything. If you’d ask my parents, they’d confirm this to be true ever since I said my first word. However, my childhood chitter chatter held one minor detail: it wasn’t in English.
All four of my grandparents immigrated to America from the Azores Islands, which are Portuguese territories located in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Portugal. My mother’s parents raised their family on the island of São Jorge and moved their entire family to the United States when my mom was 17 years old. Immigrating from the same island, my father’s parents immigrated to the U.S. and began their life in San Jose, Calif.
I grew up speaking Portuguese, and it wasn’t until kindergarten that I began learning the English language. As I looked around me, I realized that my family definitely wasn’t the only one with Portuguese roots. Throughout California’s Central Valley, there are hundreds of Portuguese families that have set roots down in the dairy industry.
A majority of California’s Portuguese population immigrated from the Azorean islands and arrived to a state where familiar faces and friends have settled in. With native experience in dairy farming, Portuguese immigrants like my grandfather worked on dairy farms before gaining enough experience and financial stability to begin a farm of their own.
My grandfather, Joe Oliveira, began his life in the Azores Islands where he was only able to earn a fourth-grade level of education before working on a local dairy to support his family. He was fortunate enough to immigrate to the United States with my grandmother, and they began a life in the Bay Area before he earned a job and worked as a milker at a dairy farm in Gilroy, Calif. Due to his hard work, my grandfather received the opportunity to begin his own dairy farm, which he moved to Hilmar, Calif., in 1982. Ever since then, my family has been farming in California’s Central Valley, and that provided me the opportunity to grow up in an industry that I know and love.
Fast forward to the 21st century, and there are thousands of Portuguese Americans within California’s dairy industry, my family being some of them. My Portuguese culture has not only led me to where I am, but it also has created a community of families and individuals that share a similar story. Being a third-generation Portuguese dairy farmer is an integral part of who I am.
Stereotypically, Portuguese people are known for speaking loudly and frequently, and they often use their hands to emphasize their words; that description fits me perfectly. Although my chitter chatter might run long sometimes, it’s important to know that it’s just part of my roots.
Morgan Oliveira is the 2024 Hoard’s Dairyman editorial intern. She grew up working on her family’s dairy farm near Hilmar, Calif. As a student at Cal Poly University, Oliveira is majoring in agriculture communications.
