those fools

Sabrina and I left Nelson around 7 am to go to Motueka, 57km north, to find apple thinning work. The orchards and packhouses advertise employment on the roadside the same way motels & b&bs do, with a removable cover for the ‘NO’ in front of ‘vacancies.’ The first company we found advertising employment was Birdhurst Ltd, and we stopped in to apply. The HR manager took one look at us, and said insinuatingly, “You do know it’s hard work, right? We don’t get many Americans.” We decided to ignore him, and filled out the forms for contract (per-tree rates) apple thinning work and were on our way to the orchard following his rather vague directions as we heard a couple people sitting outside the warehouse laugh and say, “Those fools just got contract work!”

Great.

Anyway, we drove through town to stop at Warehouse and pick up some sunhats and granola bars for lunch, and then tried to find the orchard. We drove far past it the first time, and didn’t end up getting there until 10 am, so the guy who was supposed to be waiting for us had already left and we had to wait a while until he came back.

Steve, one of our new bosses, found us eventually and we followed him out into the fields where we were issues special apple-thinning ladders and given instructions. We’re to remove all apples smaller than 26mm and thin any remaining clumps of larger apples down to three or four apples depending on size. We’re also told to be very careful to throw the apples into the center of the rows so that they don’t bruise the others on the way down – if we’re caught just dropping them, we get docked $1-2 depending on the price of the tree. We’re starting out on an hourly rate, but once we’re on contract we’ll be making anywhere from $2.50 to $5.50 per tree. Sabrina and I will be working together so it’s less boring, but that means we have to remember to divide the proceeds-per-tree by two when we’re counting how many we’ve done.

We wanted to get started right away on work, so we didn’t check into a hostel beforehand. I asked our bosses if they had any ideas on accommodation, and they mentioned that we might be able to get a ‘bach’ (generally a vacation home, but I guess maybe it means anything you wouldn’t want to live in 365 days a year…) on the orchard. The only one they could come up with was horribly dirty, but it’s very cheap ($35 each per week) and since we’re here to make money before Christmas it’ll do. We spent a good four hours scrubbing the walls, floors and stove before we felt like it was clean enough to sleep & cook in, and we have a lot more to do tomorrow.