Harvest Work - Apricots
I picked apricots for two afternoons, and we got fired because we were picking all the wrong colours. It was truly a crap job, mostly because it was very disorganized, and because we were picking all together as a massive group of 30 people. This meant that the farmer paid with one massive cheque. The guy in charge then just divided it among all of us equally so people who slacked off and people who worked hard got the same pay. I doubt you'll ever encounter this type of payment system anywhere on a legit farm, so be wary if you ever come across a system like this. Apricot trees are reasonably sized, but can be awkward and you might have to climb up the branches middle of the tree to get to some of the fruit. You can grab a few fruit at a time in one hand, but my favourite technique was to run your hands down a branch, sending the fruit flying, some of it going into your basket... but most of it falling to the ground. Hey, I never claimed to be good at it!