Farmworkers And Laborers

Job description

The job requires a minimum of three months’ experience in tasks associated with farm experience.

The job requires extensive standing and walking. Workers are frequently required to use their hands and arms to handle, feel, reach, climb, or balance. Workers are occasionally required to stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl under trellis wires. Workers must be able to lift/carry up to 60 lbs. throughout the course of the day.

Workers will perform assigned duties as instructed by their supervisor. Duties may vary from time to time. Applicants must be 18 years or older. The job is cart/hand-harvesting asparagus. Cart harvesting will be done sitting on a motorized cart with 7 to 11 crew members that will sit on the cart harvesting spears between their legs (snapping at ground level and placing in lugs on the cart). One crew member will drive the cart (with foot controls) as well as harvesting the driver's row. Driving will be rotated to cart riders unless the workgroup determines another process.

Crewmembers will lift full lug(s) weighing 30-60 pounds, at row ends from the cart, stacking to shoulder height. Lugs will be stacked on pallets or trucks or dumped into 18 to 20-bushel bins for processing. Crew members may also hand harvest by snapping or cutting spears.

Asparagus hand harvesters will walk rows or walk behind carts stooping to snap/cut spears as directed and place them in a bucket strapped around the waist or carried. Hand harvest crewmembers may use hand tools such as knives. Crewmembers will be required to carry 25-pound buckets filled with asparagus out of the field. Asparagus snappers/cutters will be required to bend, stoop, kneel, stand, and walk for long periods.

Thinning: Thinning is a manual process used to control the size and quality of grown fruit. Workers must possess the ability to pick up and handle a 16-foot orchard ladder weighing 40 pounds. The use of a ladder will not be required for newly planted trees (small young trees) The worker removes the smallest fruit bloom, bud and/or identifiable fruit from within fruit cluster. The worker will identify and remove misshapen, damaged and/or other not quality fruit as directed by Employer. Workers will hand thin peach trees to ensure proper fruit load.

Pruning/Trimming: Workers must possess or acquire pruning/trimming skills to identify and remove stubs or broken branches, downward-growing branches, branches that rub against each other, shaded interior branches, deadwood, and shoots/suckers with hand pruning saws and clippers, mechanized equipment in pruning activities. While pruning; worker prunes, trains, and positions peach trees to trellis, including clipping and tying limbs and shoots to wire from the ground or up to 16-foot ladder or from motorized platform.

Planting: Worker will plant and replant asparagus and new orchards. These tasks will include repetitive and physically demanding shovel work, lifting, and placing of heavy 12 ft x 6 in. poles.

In order to perform this kind of work, the worker must be able to work outside for at least 6 hours a day in all kinds of weather and be in possession of the requisite physical strength and endurance to repeat the picking process rapidly, working quickly and skillfully with their hands. Proper work attire is required. Workers must wear long-sleeve shirts, long pants, no shorts, hard sole shoes, preferably boots, no tennis shoes.

Special Requirements

The employer may conduct a drug test post-hire at the employers expense upon reasonable suspicion after a worker has been involved in an accident while working. Workers must have three (3) months in tasks associated with farm experience. Applicants must be able to furnish job references establishing acceptable prior experience or a notarized statement describing the specific prior experience.