There are really very few skills required to pick cherries. The first is having a work visa and tax number, which I would not consider skills, the other is being able to stand on a three legged ladder with a gallon bucket in a harness around your neck, that is all the skills you need. I was hired by a local orchid, although the owner and myself did not seem very encouraged by me sticking out the job, it was worth a shot, especially since they only ask for a 2 hour notice for quitting rather than 2 weeks. They said I could have a trial day, so I showed up at the orchard at 6:45am with the other new people. Fruit picking is very popular among the foreign workers, since speaking English is not a requirement. They put us straight to work on an incredibly tough area of the orchard. What I learned that day about cherries is that when it rains they split open, which means they are bad, and that means they get thrown on the ground and not into your bucket. My job that day was to pick every cherry off of the tree, through away all the split ones, and walk away with 21 buckets by 3pm. They have quality control people who walk around checking to make sure you aren’t picking split cherries, so there is no cheating allowed. After about an hour into this work, the new hired French couple behind me came up and gave me their bucket, because they were quitting. One bucket to my advantage. They put a nice German girl with me on my tree and we picked our hearts out. By lunch I had 7 buckets of cherries and no hopes of obtaining my 21, but I was determined to make it through my first day. By 3:30 pm I only had a total of 10.5 buckets, as clearly my motivation had waned after my jelly sandwich (since I forgot Tony had eaten all the peanut butter). Even though they asked me to come back another day on an easier row of trees, I turned in my bucket, harness, and horrible tripod ladder and made my way home. It was not with a feeling of defeat, but one of survival in the cherry orchard for at least making it the whole day unlike the French couple.
Another week of scrubbing toilets at the campground and no other jobs to be found. That is when I decided that I would give rousing a try at the shearing place with Tony. So this is how the shearing thing works: there are the shearers, which obviously shear the sheep, then the sheepos put the sheep into pins, and the rousey’s sweep and sort the wool (which is usually the girls jobs). They also have two tea breaks and a lunch break, which includes a box of all the cookies I can eat (which is not a good thing). Since we live on site, we eat breakfast and dinner at the barracks and lunch at the sheering shed of the day and all the tea you can handle. Hot tea is the beverage of choice at all times, tea is also what they call dinner, this can get confusing when they say “what’s for tea?” My immediate response is usually a blank stare until I understand they mean the evenings main meal. I find it somewhat hilarious when I see a bunch of twenty something year old guys drinking tea all day long, directly before they start binge drinking beer for the evening. This is another thing about shearers, they have a bad reputation for partying, and with good reason. This crew works incredibly hard and parties just as hard. I thought that the winter staff of Yellowstone new how to have some good old fashion fun, but even they could learn a thing or two from the shearing folk of NZ.
As far as the food goes, we are still in a dilemma. I thought that Tony and his southern family new how to eat some butter, but I have been shown a whole new level in this country. Butter is on toast of course, on each piece of bread in sandwiches, on hamburger buns, and with any kind of vegetable. They are all stunned when I announce that I have never had a tomato and butter sandwich. All the beef is grass fed, which I actually like, but Tony can’t stand, not that he even eats beef all that much. Breakfast at the barracks consist of toast with butter covered with either baked beans or canned spaghetti on top and eggs on the side. The spaghetti and toast is not as bad as it sounds.
Everyday is a new day in NZ, especially when we are constantly unsure of having a day off or not, just living for the moment the best we can. Tony has been unable to find the perfect fishing spot just yet, so homesickness is hitting him pretty hard for the time being. Let’s hope that he can get his hands on a trout soon before he falls to pieces completely. Tony and I have had some pretty interesting experiences since our time together, from living in a dorm room, building a cottage, living in an RV, living in a cabin with elk in the yard, traveling in a van and sleeping in a tent, to the smallest form of a cabin imaginable, all with over 20,000+ miles of road trips in between. Now if he can survive the difficult fishing, strange food, friendly people, and the extreme cost of living, we might just make this trip one of the best in the books. Let every moment be the best one yet is what I say.
