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Published: March 22nd 2006
Who's a farmer???
So this is me and my tractor, second tto last day of apple picking...notice the ear to ear smileSo this is the longest time you've all waited for a blog. What can I do? Apple picking became my life for almost an entire month. You would think that this blog will blow you away, but I highly doubt it. Apple picking is not that entertaining, the only salvation for all of you...I've been getting up at 6:30 most of the past three weeks, so I once again feel the pain you all feel everyday. Well here goes, lets see how good I can make this blog...
At the moment I am sitting here in Hokitika a small town on the west coast of the south island, two days since getting back into travel mode and let me tell you I live a very random existence. This town is straight out of Montana. This entire part of the country was settled during a gold rush in the 1800's, mining still goes on here. The Internet cafe is a hunting store/Internet, really weird.
The decision about 10 days ago to quit apple picking and start traveling again has made both Bryan and I deliriously happy, we smile endlessly. Apple picking has provided a few positives, I appreciate how hard
Farmer Bryan...
Another 6 months on a farm and Bryan might actually pass for a farmer. it is to earn money and it reminded how happy I am with my decision to stop working and travel the world.
I ended the last blog with us finding new jobs. We started working for Rod Fry Ltd a day later. Now I know apple picking sounds like it would be a really cool job, nothing could be further from the truth. It's hard god dam work!!! Moving 500KG of apples takes forever, for that I got a whole $30NZD. Look at the pictures and notice how big those bins are, we estimate it takes around 3000 apples to fill a bin. Before we started this job we heard stories of people picking 8 bins a day. I've come to the conclusion that this is urban or maybe farmland legend. 4 bins is the most I ever did in an 8 hour day, and that was hard work, basically moving all day long. So let me give you a quick synopsis of my daily life, everything that being an apple picker entails and all the exciting things that happened while we were picking
So we started out our apple picking careers at 12 noon on a Tuesday,
Some of the boys...
So we all went apple crazy after a while. Damien from Ireland, Haki (spelling) from Finland, and Murray from Scotland. at $10.25 hr, thank god for hourly wages because I would have made zero that first day. Our boss Carl (head man in the orchard) and Glenn his understudy took Brian, Bryan, Me, Hake (Finland), Will (Kiwi), Anthony "Guber" (Kiwi), Max (Japan) for apple picking training. We were handed a copy of the seasonal worker contract, given our picking bags and taught to drive a tractor...yes they let us all drive our own tractors (one of the only highlights of the job). We then headed out into the orchard to learn how to be apple pickers. Here are the most important parts of apple picking.
- Proper color Selection
- The proper way to pull/pick the apple off the tree
- Using the ladder
- Emptying the picking bag into the bin without bruising the apples
Refer to the pictures below to understand proper color selection. Now the proper way to pick and apple is to cup the apple with your hand and roll over the top. Never, never, never grab the apple and just pull, this leads to finger bruises and finger nail punctures. And since the main goal of apple picking is to never ever bruise
In the orchard...
Out in the orchard after most of the apples were already picked. Those are kiwi fruit vines in the background. the apples, proper picking technique is crucial. Now as for the ladder, the most important thing is ladder placement, you should be able to "service" the tree from two ladder placements. The ladders are tripods so the idea is to take the single leg and wing it into the middle of the tree next to the trunk, once on the left side of the tree and then on the right side. Using the ladder is a skill that takes a few days to master, but by the end we were all masters of ladder placement. Like I said bruise avoidance is priority number one, so picture emptying a bag of 100 apples strapped to your chest over a 3 foot high wood fence, onto a wood surface. I've come to the conclusion that it is not possible to avoid bruising, luckily we were given a tolerance of 4 apples out of 20 before we were docked pay. Now that you understand the skills involved in picking, here is how it works.
You start at one end of a row, maybe 50 trees on each side, and are responsible for clearing all the apples ready for picking from those trees.
Sunrise on the farm
I was so tired but I just had to take a picture of this. Since I'm having flashbacks of apple picking as I sit here and type this I'll move on now to our daily life on the orchard.
We had our tents pitched in the kiwi vine rows, a really great spot, quiet, peaceful, shaded from the sun and great for looking at the stars. I would drag myself out of my sleeping bag around 6:45 after snoozing a few time, yep I got sucked right back by the evil snooze button. I would then stumble to the kitchen a few hundred feet away. On the way I would stop by the goon and pick up my picking bag. Then it was off to breakfast and most importantly...COFFEE!!! After eating and making a sandwich for lunch I would walk out into the orchard and spend from about 8 till 4 picking those 'little dollars signs' off the trees. Now repeat this for about three weeks. I hope this sounds as boring as it was. It's funny I was really exited for apple picking, something about it sounded appealing. I was wondering why all the local kiwi's looked at us like we were crazy when we expressed our exitement before we started
Color Selection #1
Now thats the color you want all your Royal Galas to be. picking. It wasn't all boring, annoying and bad, there were some highlights.
We really lucked out with the orchard that hired us. Our Boss Carl was a great guy and one of the only reasons we were able to deal with the job for three weeks was Carl. The people that were also picker's were a good group of guys. We all got along and had lots of fun, when we did finally get days off. At least I have some new friends from Ireland, Scotland and Japan to visit. Working out in the sunshine is a bit of a bonus, but I'm not sure it should be a highlight because it was hot!!! One of the more humerus things that happened was Bryan is not only a farmer, but a hunter. Carl would be the first one to tell you he's a hick, and I say that in the nicest way possible. He even called himself one while talking to Moskowitz one day with this great line.
"You know you're a hick when you can go out in the morning, take a piss on your front lawn and know that nobody is around for 1/2 km in
Color Selection #2
Borderline color...these go in the bin. anyone direction." This line still makes me laugh, I hope all of you appreciate this as much as I do.
So Carl's main hobby is Pig Hunting. One day at "Smoko" (coffee break for us Americans) Bryan asked Carl if he could go pig hunting, so Carl being the nice guy that he is invited whoever wanted to go to join him on a hunt one evening after work. So Murray, from Scotland, and Bryan took him up on his offer. Here is what I know about pig hunting...you hike up into the woods, release a bunch of hunting dogs with radio collars around their necks and begin to track where the dogs go with this big antenna. While doing all this you listen for the dogs and when you hear barking and squealing you race off through trees, bushes, thorns and whatever else stands in you way, which is lots of this from what I hear and try to track down the dogs while they wrestle and hold the pig waiting for you. Once you find the pig you wrestle it to the ground and hold it down while you stab it through the wind pipe and down
Color Selection #3
Too much Green...leave it on the tree, but not all the time otherwise it would take a lifetime to fill that dam bin. into the heart. Then you disembowel the pig and carry this 60+ KG pig out of the bush like a backpack by using it's front legs as the shoulder straps. Hopefully I haven't got anyone sick yet...if you are feeling a bit woozy I suggest you refrain from looking at the last pictures of the blog. For all you gore hungry readers all of these pictures are courtesy of Bryan "The Hunter".
Well a successful pig hunt leads to lots of free meat and when in NZ what better to do with free meat than have a Hangi (spelling), the traditional Maori feast in which you dig a large hole and cook your food underground. Our resident Maori Ed showed us all the way to make a proper Hangi.
*Go out and collect a huge pile of logs, you need at least 4 logs close to 6 ft long, for the corners.
*Collect 3 dozen large river rocks about the size of a soccerball.
*Dig a large hole, 4 ft x 3 ft x 3 ft deep.
*Make a massive bonfire and place all the rocks on the top of the fire.
*Let the fire burn for up
The batches...
This is what all the guys not in tents got to see in the morning. Nothing like waking up to the sound of a truck pulling up and the beep, beep, beep when the forklift backs up. to six hours, the wood burns away and all the rocks fall in with the ashes and get white hot.
*Dig all the red hot ashes and white hot rocks out of the hole, while your skin feels like it's melting off.
*Take all the rocks and cover the bottom of the hole.
*Get a metal basket and line it with leaves, fill the basket with "Pig", Chicken Wings, Kumara (white sweet potatoes), home grown potatoes, corn in the husk, and cabbage.
*Place the basket in the hole.
*Cover the basket with wet burlap, to protect the food from the dirt and then cover the entire thing back up with dirt...Most important, keep all the steam that is being created underground by constantly making sure none is escaping.
*Sit back for the next two and a half hours enjoying cold beers.
*Dig the entire hole out, careful to not get dirt on the food.
*Throw the basket on the table, find your twenty closest friends and dig in.
The Hangi was amazing, especially because we all took part in that laundry list of tasks that need to be done for it to be successful. Successful is an understatement,
Outside the packhouse
So this is where theyu pack the pears that they don't grow, while they ship the apples we pick to be packed someplace else...I know it's confusing. the meat was amazing, everything was perfect...it was a massive BBQ with everything cooked underground. Second time on the world journey that I've eaten food cooked in the ground, flashback to Christmas Lovo in Fiji.
Not sure if the next story is a highlight or just funny, but I find it very amusing. So as most of you now I can be argumentative and just a pain in the ass sometimes. I told you how nice Carl was, not sure if you noticed I left his understudy Glenn out of the compliments section. Had I written this blog during the first 10 days of apple picking Glenn would have got compliments as well. But here's a short story about a brief encounter I had with Glenn. It was Sunday morning, three days before we were supposed to finish work and after Bryan and I had already decided to move on. It was 8:05 in the morning in the kitchen, I was sitting there with my feet up, everyone else had already gone to work, except for Bryan who was conveniently in the bathroom. Didn't really want to work that day, when all of a sudden Glenn skids to a
Where all the fun happened
Thats Max, Muruka and me in the kitchen/tv room...you can just imagine the meals that were cheffed up in there. stop outside, barges into the kitchen and says..."Alan, do you know what time it is?" I say No, "It's 8:05, you're fucking late, you have ten minutes to be in the orchard or you're fucking done!" Mind you his eyes were about to pop out of his head and he looked like a hear attack might follow closely after. He then stormed out after I thing firing me. When I finally stopped laughing, told Bryan I think I just got fired, I walked out tot the Orchard to find Carl, who had just happened to be sitting outside the kitchen when Glenn had pulled up before. I calmly ask Carl what the deal is? Do I still have a job? Then explain to him that I don't appreciate being spoken to with a total lack of respect, the way Glenn had just spoken to me. Carl apologized to me, told me I obviously still had a job, said he'd talk to Glenn and told me to go out and "just cruise" a classic Carl phrase.
So I started picking, when Glenn comes over to apologize, I begin to explain to him that I don't appreciate being spoken to with
Tractor parking
This is where they park all the tractors...I told you I was on a farm. that lack of respect, I never disrespected him. He begins to lecture me on how showing up to work late is disrespectful. I kind of flip out and walk off the job. Before leaving the orchard I fill two more bags to get a half a bin and my $15. Glenn telling me that if I leave I'm done after I had told him I'd work until Wednesday if he'd like. Carl returns before I leave, tells me to take the day off and then asks me later if I'd still be willing to work until Wednesday. So in all I got fired twice in one day and then given my job back by the real boss twice the same day before 5. Quite a funny situation, I guess I've become a lot more relaxed but I still have the potential to be a pain in the ass.
So this is all the past now, I'm sitting in an Internet cafe in Fox Glacier village, a week after finishing work and basically as happy as a pig in shit. So far we've seen Poparoa National Park, where we saw pancake rocks, went on a hike to some caves where
Braeburn Apple rows
Never picked these apples, but apparently picking these is where the money is...I don't really believe that BS... we got to explore a bit of a cave (spelunking) and hiked along the beach to limestone formations that looked like amphitheaters carved out of the cliffs by the ocean. Yesterday we went on a glacier hike, put on crampons and scaled a quarter of the way up ice of the Fox Glacier, absolutely amazing. Got to walk through crevasses, ice caves and got to view unbelievable ice formations up close on one of the worlds only advancing/growing glaciers.
Not sure anyone has noticed but I haven't mentioned Moskowitz much in this blog. That's because unfortunately his allergies forced him to leave the farm after only a week of working. So at the moment it's just me, Bryan and Dani our friend from Germany who showed up last Friday Motueka and asked for a ride south. So I haven't seen my buddy in almost three weeks now, hopefully we'll meet up again soon cause I miss the little guy.
By the way I'll have pictures posted for the glacier and Poparoa soon. Hope you are all having lots of fun at home, speak to everyone soon...back on the move, lots to see running out of time here in
View from my tractor.
Those are friends the local cows, too bad pictures don't include the smell of cow shit!!! NZ.
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unca bob
non-member comment
work
no more work stories. am enjoying following the trip. hear you wracked up the tractor. nz is beautiful