Farmworkers And Laborers

Job description

Workers will perform manual labor related to agricultural production of baby leaf lettuces including baby spinach, baby wild arugula, baby red oak, red leaf, red tango, red frisée, baby green oak, leaf, frisée tango, kale, mizuna and tatsoi as well as cover crops.

Under the direction of supervisors or field crew leaders, they will perform different manual tasks that will include among others:

Logistics. Unload and load, pack and unpack, assemble, and disassemble agricultural equipment and supplies arriving from another farm or departing for use at a different farm during the summer months.

Seeding. Assist in the seeding processes, loading, and unloading of bags of seeds, checking seed delivery and amounts of seeds planted and depth of seed placement. After planting walk the fields and verify number of plants emerged.

Irrigation. The worker will unload and load from trucks irrigation materials including pipes, valves, hoses, and other connections. Work crews will later connect the sprinklers to the pipes, manually load them onto wagons to take them to the fields, connect the pipes to valves and hoses in the process of assembling the whole irrigation system. Other irrigation tasks include installing and maintaining irrigation pumps, opening and closing valves. moving pipes within the fields and from field to field. All workers then verify correct functioning of sprinklers and fix leaks as well as other irrigation related work.

Trenching. With hand tools including shovels, remove dirt from ditches as needed for pipe installation and field drainage.

Weeding. The workers will walk the length of the planted beds removing weeds and damaged plants by hand. This is very labor-intensive process. The worker must distinguish between the different types of baby lettuces and the weeds, as well as identify the damaged plants or plants with diseases. Work crews perform this task several times in the same fields.

Frog netting. This task involves the placing of a frog protection netting around each field. This process involves a tractor that has an attachment, like a plow, that opens a trench. The tractor is driven by an equipment operator. Workers performing work within this job description manually place a large roll of netting on this attachment. The netting is unrolled as the tractor moves forward. The netting is manually guided to the bottom of the trench that is then filled with dirt by hand by workers within this job description, burying the bottom part of the net. The net is held up by metal rods that are driven into the ground by hand with a hammer by workers within this job description. Along the top end of the metal rods, a metal wire or cable is stretched and tied. The net is then manually tied to the metal rods and the cable. The net is then stretched between the metal rods forming a fence. This process requires a team of workers that assists in the installation of the netting, as well as the reverse process where the nets, rods and cable are removed from the fields after harvesting is complete. Frog nets are installed around the perimeter of the fields at the beginning of the season and removed at the end of the season.

Special Requirements

Three (3) months of harvesting experience is required.