(PD) - Long hours spent hunched over, installing countless drippers on a vineyard irrigation system, did a number on Jose Luis Apolinar’s back.

His wife, Rosa, knows what to do next. After dinner, she takes a pair of scissors and goes into the backyard of their southeast Santa Rosa home, snipping off several leafy sprigs from a potted rue plant. The pungent herb, mixed with 16 ounces of rubbing alcohol in a warm bath, is the key ingredient to an age-old remedy Rosa learned from her mother, who she described as an indigenous woman from Michoacán, Mexico.

“But once he gets out of the tub, he has to wrap himself up and it’s straight to bed,” said Rosa, coming out of the bathroom, drying her hands after stirring the concoction. “By tomorrow, he’ll be really strong.”

Strong enough for another day in Sonoma County’s vineyards. The labor is hard, but Jose Apolinar, 54, doesn’t complain. It’s full-time, year-round work that — along with an occasional catering gig cooking carnitas — pays the rent and bills. Rosa is a vineyard worker as well, though only part-time during the harvest and a couple of months leading up to it.

Jose and Rosa Apolinar are among 4,000 to 6,000 farmworkers who live in the county year-round and form the backbone of the local agriculture sector. Nearly all work in the wine industry, where they tend and harvest the county’s $600 million grape crop.

Twenty years ago, a greater share of that work was done by migrant farmworkers, young men who passed through the North Coast, especially during the harvest season.

But now, most of that work is done by farmworkers who have sunk roots in the local community. They rent local apartments and homes. Their children attend local schools. While the vast majority are men, more women are joining their ranks, according to those familiar with the industry. And they are among the county’s most impoverished residents.

The presence of a local workforce rooted in the community and struggling to survive is among the key findings in a new county survey that seeks to document the health and well-being of the county’s agriculture workforce.