Earl Edwards was a Jamaican farmer who in the winter grew ginger, garlic and other crops on his tropical island nation homeland in the Caribbean. For the past decade, he would head north each year for seasonal work at the Gebbers Farms in Washington’s arid Okanogan County. This year, he did so amid a global coronavirus pandemic that sickened him and – on July 31 – took his life.

His death is now part of an ongoing state investigation into conditions at Gebbers Farms labor camps.

The 63-year-old spent his final days in an isolation camp, talking several times a day to his wife…