Nursery Workers

Job description

The nursery worker position includes duties associated with nursery crops. It includes adherence to instruction given in regard to proper procedures and techniques. This work requires adherence to important food safety and quality standard operating procedures and the ability to work quickly and consistently alongside fellow workers with a positive, professional, team-based attitude and a consideration for the safety and health of fellow workers and the consumers who will purchase and consume the fresh produce grown, harvested, packed and shipped from the farm. Workers will be required to follow all food safety guidelines.

Crops Contained in Request: Annuals, Perennials, Tree/Shrubs, Hops, Field Stock (Bare Root), Corn, Soybeans, Hay, Greens, Strawberries

Workers may perform the following job duties on any of the commodities listed above and various points during the duration of the contract.

Manual tasks related to the growing of nursery stock will include some combination of the following: preparing fields by clearing cull stock, brush, and debris; planting seedlings by hand, digging, loading, unloading, or transplanting bare-root nursery stock, straightening, tying, pruning, and shearing tree and shrubs, cutting, pulling or removing and mowing of weeds and grass. Workers will be involved in planting, tagging, labeling, applying container components such as hangers and handles, placing pots in trays to be filled. Workers will be setting down planted material, weeding all crops, building racks and pallets, and cleaning production area.

Workers will weed the organic corn and soybeans crop by hand as to not introduce any pesticides, herbicides or fungicides to the crop. Workers may weed/clean field stock and field grown crops, cover greenhouses with poly, perform general maintenance on equipment and buildings, load crops.

Hay: Moving and stacking hay. Worker must make sure that the surface of the cut fodder has dried. Using a side-delivery rake, the worker will then turn the windrows over allowing the hay to dry completely. The worker will inspect the hay for no other foliage. Dried hay may be stored in stacks or in bales. A truck or trailer will be driven between the windrows, and will be used to gather the fodder for stacking. The workers will fork the hay onto the trailer. Ropes should be laid on the trailer bed before any hay is loaded, in order to unload the hay quickly.

Greens (Collards, Turnip, Mustard): Workers will be assigned a row or series of rows and required to monitor the crop according to criteria outlined and demonstrated by managers such as size, coloring, and ripeness. They will be responsible for in-field grading and discarding of poor quality, rotting, and/or over-ripened produce. Workers will remove weeds manually either by hand or with a hoe. Workers will be required to stay on their assigned row. Workers must take care not to damage surrounding plants.

Strawberries: Workers will help install black plastic and drip irrigation on rows in the field being careful to cover all of the exposed edges of plastic cover with soil and being careful not to tear or punch holes in plastic. Workers may be asked to utilize implements associated with the installation of the plastic row covers incidental to performing required tasks on the ground. Workers will plant strawberry plants in pre-punched holes on the plastic covered rows being careful to place the strawberry plants at the same depth in the soil as they grew in the nursery. Workers will remove weeds from around the plants and from the row middles.

When the work noted above is not being performed, workers may clean break-rooms, lunch area, bathrooms, office space, property maintenance with weeding, mowing and trimming.

Special Requirements

The employer may conduct drug/alcohol testing post-employment and at the employer's expense.

The employer may conduct criminal background checks post-employment and at the employer's expense.