Farm Laborer

Job description

Perform manual labor to plant, cultivate, harvest, grade and pack the following crops: strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, sweet corn, tomatoes (round, plum), peppers (bell, jalapeno, long hot, cherry), eggplant, peaches, and sweet potatoes.

GENERAL DUTIES / PROCEDURES:
Lay and/or remove plastic. Clean plastic of debris. Set and/or remove stakes. Manually pull weeds. Tie, prune, sucker, and thin crops as instructed by supervisor. Remove and/or clean plant debris and/or vines from ground or trellises. Workers must select harvestable produce based on supervisor’s instructions for correct size, maturity and quality. Workers will not break skin, damage, drop or bruise produce or leave any appropriate product on the plant during harvest. Workers must clean, grade, sort, label and package produce as per supervisor’s instructions. Workers must package harvested crops into bins, bags, boxes, plastic containers and crates and load boxes onto pallets and transport vehicles as per supervisor’s instructions, at all times following Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) policies. This job requires extensive walking, standing, bending, stooping, pushing, pulling, twisting, and lifting and carrying of up to 70 lbs. Work may be in inclement weather including extreme heat, cold and/or rain for extensive periods of time.

Workers must have three months of verifiable commercial vegetable, fruit or berry farm experience with comparable operations, within the previous ten years. Experience should include knowledge of proper techniques of pruning, staking, suckering, and tying tomatoes, eggplant and peppers, as well as harvesting sweet potatoes.

Blueberry hand harvest of ripe fruit, free from foreign material as well as cleaned of any red or green fruit. The harvest container will be a “full blueberry lug” to hold approximately 12 lbs of fruit. Full means above the ribs of container filling all venting holes but not so much as to crush fruit while stacking.

Workers should also have experience with high tunnel blackberry production including: assisting in the covering, removal and venting of plastic covering of high tunnels. Training, tying, tipping/pruning of blackberry vines. Harvesting of blackberries directly into final packaging by field grading, sorting and classifying by size, weight, color, and condition. Culling of bad fruit and clean harvest of all good berries are integral to this work.

Special Requirements

See addendum C