Crops/Commodities: Farm Work: cabbage, greens, peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, broccoli, sweet corn, squash, zucchini, herbs, blackberries, and pecans.
Primary duties (performed the majority of workdays): Perform manual labor to plant, cultivate, harvest, grade, and pack cabbage, greens, peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, broccoli, sweet corn, squash, zucchini, herbs, blackberries, and pecans.
Pre-harvest duties include tilling soil, planting, re-planting, cultivating, weeding, using shears, knives and other cultivation tools. Use hand tools such as shovels, tampers, pruning hooks, machetes, hoes and knives. Pull weeds or hoe weeds in the field. Install irrigation equipment, including laying and connecting pipes and hoses. Dig and maintain irrigation ditches, field roads and right-of-ways. Install or remove items required in plasticulture. Install or remove stakes, wire, netting or string using hammers, wire clippers and other tools. Remove or clean plant debris or vines from ground or trellises. Train vines or plants on strings or trellises. Harvest product using tools such as knives, clippers and shears. Operate agricultural equipment to plow, harrow, plant, cultivate, or harvest crops. Detassel corn by walking through corn fields, reaching to pull off the tassel of the corn plant and throwing it to the ground by hand. Walk throughout fields, pollinating, bending down to pull rogue plants, weeds and volunteer corn plants.
Walk through assigned row while bending and reaching to pick ripe blueberries and blackberries by hand without bruising or damaging the fruit or bush. Workers must use care to pick bushes clean of all berries of the correct color and size, as instructed by their supervisor. Green and red berries must not be picked. Berries for fresh fruit markets must not be picked when wet. Defective and low quality fruit will not be accepted and must be discarded. Workers will not break skin, damage, drop or bruise produce, or leave any appropriate product on the plant during harvest. Workers must complete their own assigned rows as instructed by supervisor. Berries will be graded and packed into clamshell containers in flat trays according to supervisor's instructions ensuring that there are no leaks. Once flat trays of clamshells are full, workers will carry two or three trays at one time to trailers located in the fields at the end of the rows where fruit is inspected for quality and weight. Berries may also be harvested into buckets which are then carried to the end of the rows for inspection and dumping.
Grade, sort, wash, select, count, check, load, unload, label or pack harvested products. Ice greens. Crops may be harvested and field packed or packed in the shed. Stack boxes onto pallets, transport vehicles or trailers. Assemble cartons, crates and containers using hand tools. Grade and sort products according to specified factors and discard defective, inferior and/or foreign matter. Place acceptable products in specified containers according to grade. Apply pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and other crop protectants. Apply fertilizers, plant growth chemicals, conditioners, and other plant related treatments at the correct times depending on plant type, growth, climate and crop conditions. Clean and maintain materials, containers, packing facility, fields, work areas, grounds, and equipment. Operate, repair, and maintain farm vehicles and agricultural equipment. Clean fields when harvest activities are complete. Prune berry bushes. Workers will walk down rows, bending to prune and remove floricanes that are done producing fruit and tipping runners using hand pruners. Primocanes will be left unharmed by the removal process. Pruned canes will be piled in row middles. Workers must have a general understanding of how pruning affects competition with fruiting canes as instructed by supervisor. Improper pruning can cause problems with fruit load, fruit size, disease severity, and overall production.
Employment period: Oct 5, 2026 – Jan 25, 2027
