Strawberry picking 2

It felt really satisfying and the sunwarmed berries were astonishingly good. However, my main thought was that fruit pickers are SO not paid enough for their work. little did we know...

B. took her bucket back to the scale/cash box area where the guy in charge was not napping and as they weighed berries and I took pictures, B. struck up a conversation. Turns out that his fruit pickers worked today from 6AM to 3PM - without a lunch break by choice - picking strawberries at .20 a pound or $2 a bucket. These pickers can pick 7 buckets an hour.

7. buckets. an. hour.

9 hours straight of bending over, raking aside strawberry leaves, pawing through mulch, assessing the ripeness of berries and filling up buckets. Every day. And of course they don't want to take lunch breaks, that's lost money. It's very impressive fortitude.

For my part I had red fingers and some great berries and a immense gratitude that my job could be accomplished sitting in a chair instead of bent over for 9 hours. We amateur pickers got 20lb of strawberries in less than an hour. Whoo hoo!

When we got home C. made us little homemade liquors to take the edge off the day - apple mint muddled into vodka and then frozen. Delicious!