Farm Laborers

Job description

Workers will plant and harvest grapes. Duties also include thinning, leafing, weeding and general farm labor. This will be done under
extreme weather conditions. Heavy bending, stooping and lifting will be involved on a daily basis.

Shoot thinning: Pulling off young green shoots from the vines by hand, some use of pruning shears. No heavy lifting.
Tools: Pruning shears

Leaf pulling: Pulling leaves from plants. Light work. More use of pruning shears for this task than for shoot thinning but mostly hand work.
Tools: Pruning shears

Thinning the fruit: Using hand shears, sort of a partial harvest to make sure the fruit that remains has room to get air and light.
Tools: Hand shears

Applying bird netting over the rows: We use bread clips to close the nets together by hand. No special tools needed.

Harvest: Involves hand shears to get the grape clusters off the vines. We have the crews do this slowly and carefully to select for quality. One or two guys will be carrying 5-gallon buckets of the fruit from the pickers to the bins on a trailer, usually only about 20 feet away. The buckets weigh around 20-30lbs when full.
Tools: Hand shears

Tying shoots: This is just detail work to place the growing shoots where we want them in the trellis wires, tying some of the shoots to the wires with plastic tying tape.
Tools: Plastic tape

Taking weeds off: Hand tillage for weeds from time to time using hand hoes
Tools: Hand hoes

Minor adjustments: Throughout all these major tasks we will be doing some canopy adjustments by hand to the vines.

The employer will provide the tools necessary to perform the described job duties without charge to the worker. The employer will charge to the workers for reasonable costs related to the worker's refusal or negligent failure to return the tools or due to such worker's willful damage or destruction of the tools.

Special Requirements

Workers must adhere to all safety rules as instructed by the supervisor. Employer is a drug-free workplace.