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Published: June 28th 2003
Today is Saturday 28th June. We have been here for 18 days now, and boy oh boy has it been the hardest 18 days of our lives!!!
So, a day in the life of a strawberry picker goes like this...
Wake up at 5am! Get up, have something to eat. Put on funny little yellow overalls to protect our clothes from strawberry stains. Walk 5 minutes in the lovely yellow suit to the strawberry field ... the song gets kinda tedious after 10 straight days of this!;o)
As we arrive at the field somebody lets a big fart rip and the field explodes with a sea of black birds flying away, the little feckers love strawberries!!!
Grab the picking equipment, which consists of a bucket to hold the picking box, then the picking box and then 10 punnets to put the strawberries in and also a little bucket to put damaged straberries in.
Grab yourself a line of plants and start picking....
Imagine being bent over at the waist(touching your toes pretty much!) and searching through 'cold' and 'wet' strawberry plants at 6am!
Well, you get used to it after a while and you don't really notice the cold and wet, pah! who said that, certainly wasn't me!
It takes about 30 minutes to fill up a box of 10 punnets, but if the strawberries are a bit thin then it can take nearly an hour!
Imagine trying to fill up 10 punnets with little strawberries no bigger than a ten pence piece, it can get a bit disheartening after a few hours!!
We take a break at about 9:30 for about 20 minutes, then it's straight back on with it.
If the strawberries are in a bit of short supply then we stop mid morning, in which case most people go back to bed for a few hours, otherwise we continue until midday.
As it gets towards midday, your body starts to give you signs that it has had enough for the day.
You back is stiff and aches loads when you stand up straight. Your knees start to feel bruised from when you kneel down and kneel on a rock or something! Your hands are nearly numb from the nettle and thistle stings(which you get used to after a few days, trust me, you do!!:o) And your face is covered in hand prints from where you have slapped yourself in the face trying to swat all the little bugs, and there are some strange little things that live around strawberry plants, strange things indeed! ... theres this one little bug which lives under the strawberry leafs. You can notice it by the sign of what looks like spit on the strawberry leaves! If you lift up the spit covered leaf you will see this little creature which looks a little like a very small frog, except that it hasn't got the big back legs. Most times I just put the strawberry in the punnet, but other times I have been nosey and looked at the creature, which then crawls on my hand and because it is quite sticky, takes me a few minutes to get the bugger off!!
So, anway, once we've finished at noon we take our days tokens to the wage book. As we pick crates we get given coloured tokens which act like a currency, which you hand in at the end of the day and work out your days earnings.
A yellow token is for a crate and is equal to anything from 2 pounds 50 to 4 pounds. If it's a lovely sunny day then we get 2.50 per crate or if it's raining then we get 4 pounds, for cold days is usually about 3-3.50! Then we also get little grey tokens for each little bucket of damaged strawberries we collect, these are called seconds and are used for strawberry juice. We get 50 pence per bucket for these.
So, at the end of the day the average is usually 7 crates and 4 small buckets, which means you should earn 17.50 for the crates and 2 quid for the buckets, some people are really quick pickers and can get close to 12-14 crates which means that they are earning more or less the same money as our old office job, but you have to bust a gut doing it, and it's not possible to do it every day!! ... but then we are outside in the sun most days, which makes it all worth it!
We get paid at the end of the season or the day we leave. You can get subs throughout the season, which alot of people have, but we have not needed to as we brought enough money with us and we don't drink or smoke(cigarettes anyway;o) so our spending is quite low!
Once we have cashed in, everyone makes a bee line for the kitchen and bathroom.
OK, imagine this ... 50 people trying to share 3 showers and toilets, yes I said that right, threeeeeee!!!! ... it can be caos sometimes, then imagine 50 people trying to use 4 fridges and 2 cookers!!
This and one other thing are the only things we have been disappointed about. Everyone gets to use the facilities at some point throughout the day but you can wait for hours at a time, and when you want to go out it can get frustrating when someone who is only going to being hanging around the farm all day nicks the shower or cooker before you!!!
Anyway, once we've eaten and washed it is usually around 3pm, by which time it is soooo bloody hot that we can't sit in our tent, we can't go in doors to the barn as there are far too many people in it, so we usually go for walks etc. Which brings me onto the other thing that has disappointed us...
The lack of anything to do around here!!! We are in the middle of nowhere, 45 minutes walk from the nearest town, although there are buses which go there, it's only every hour or so, so we usually walk most times!
We are about 2 hours walk or so from the beach(which we are going too today, so we'll let you know what it's like another day!) and then their is nothing else to do. No other farms to go and see if they need any help, no where to volunteer to help with anything. We thought we had found the area where we were going before we left and saw that there were a few things to do including going to the beach, but when we arrived we realised that we were actually about 30 miles away from where we first thought!! haha, oooh the fun!
Atleast we are keeping fit by all this hard labour and walking everyday. We reckon we walk close to 25 miles a day, everyday, simply because one day we will be walking to relax or the next day walking to the shops to get some food.
So the day usually ends around 7-8pm, when we arrive back at the farm and have an evening meal, relax and mix with our fellow pickers. We have a good mix now, French, Spanish, English, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch, Kiwi's, and a patridge in a pear tree!:o) It can be fun at times trying to explain some of the English slang words to people, my latest exploit was to teach a French guy every imaginable word for a womans privates! To say we had some laughs that night would be a major understatement hahahaha!:o) I hate to imagine what his parents will say when he gets back home and ask what he learnt whilst away, hee hee!!
Bedtime is usually around 9.30-11pm, some people stay up later then that and then whinge the next day because they are tired, but if you smoke what most do, believe me, you have NO problem sleeping!;o)
And then it's up again the next morning at 5am, again!:o)
This is the way I have been explaining what we are doing to people...
We left jobs which paid us more for working less hours and living in better accomodation with heating and comforts for a job that pays us much less for working more hours(7 hours a day for 7 days a week! - 49 hours, compared to 35!) and living in accomodation that leaks when it pours down and is freezing cold at 3am!
Sounds like a good swap a!? ... but i then throw in the fact that life moves at a much slower pace, you get to live in the sun all day, with people from around the world, who are among the most friendliest and funniest people around(you tend to see the real side of people living with them 24 hours a day!!!) you don't have to care about what the government are doing(usually killing innocent people from somewhere in the world, be it with corporate exploitation or via mind numbing technological entertainment, take your pick, you are one of them too, you just don't realise it!!) or what movies or trends are in at the moment, or what food is supposed to be poison to you even though it has been around for millions of years and then trying to convince you that there manufactured, prepackaged shite is good for you, TOSH, BOLLOX and more TOSH!
Ahem! anyway got off track there ... We are soooo glad to be away from all that, all it is good for is distracting the human being from experience what life is really supposed to be about, and unfortunately too many people have fallen from it, they are now too scared to do anything different for fear of being different ... WHO GIVES A SHIT, if it doesn't harm or interfear with another person or species, JUST FECKING DO IT ... get of your ass and do something different for a change!
Ahem! ok thats my little release of pent up something for the day, i'm off to make some breakfast, it's now 7am and everyone is still asleep(i can't sleep past 6am now!!!) aaaaahhhh bliss! .. got the day off you see!:o)
One last thing ... Please remember us in the sun, taking it reeeeal easy when you get stuck in a que with your shopping! hee hee hee
Love ya all
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Stefi
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Urgent demand from stefi
Hello Silver, I would like to ask you, woul you be so kind and send me a contact on any farm in Danmark where did you worked...I am university student and I woul like to spend this summer in Danmark... Best, steffi