Fruit picking

[malumbu]

As a kid we used to go fruit picking. Lousy pay, and only worked because us kiddiwinks would accept this.

The I discovered peas, on a more industrial, where although it was peace (peas) work, I could earn something more akin to today's minimum wage. Bought me a few nights out, books and other preparations for going to university.

Thinking back some had probably done this all their working lives (casual farm labouring). I expect that mechanization replaced much of this need but still wonder why there is so little labour sourced locally. It wasn't that bad a job and ideal for a 17 year old before going to higher education.

I suppose this is like asking my late mother if she went hop picking before the war. Oh no, we weren't that poor.

[Jenny1]

Mechanisation has certainly revolutionised agriculture over the decades. But agricultural work has always been mainly seasonal, certainly since the enclosures. That's why it was so hard to support a family on a labourer's wages during my father and grandfather's lifetimes. And that's why you read about grinding rural poverty in so many memoirs of the twentieth century. 'Stone picking hungry' as they used to say in Norfolk - a reference to harsh winters when you could keep body and soul together by earning a few bob for picking flints out of the fields.

[Jenny1]

malumbu Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> ideal for a 17 year old before going to higher

> education.

>

>

Agree with this though. But to get the numbers of workers necessary students would have to be shipped in and live in temporary accomodation for the duration of the work. There simply wouldn't be enough labour locally to do the work.

[TE44]

Berry picking was a way of life over summer, in the early 80's Thatcher sent fraud officers onto the fields to nick anyone claiming benefits, same with a lot of the field work. Children grew up picking for there clothes and maybe get an ice cream a couple of times through the picking weeks. The singing could be heard all over the fields. Loved it.

[JohnL]

I remember Pick Your Own - brilliant idea to get the consumer to do the work but they must have realised.

[TE44]

It was more fun than potato picking, children got a half bit, or three of you on one bit ( a bit measured by steps) if you were really young. If the kids held the digger up, the adult they came with had to pick there bit too. A fire was always burning which encouraged you to pick quick so you would be able to warm yourself.

[malumbu]

Phew, fortunately I was picking in 79 before the snatch squads came in. Most of us were signing on.... and cash in hand.

Allegedly

[TE44]

Yeah me to malumba, I picked from a toddler, my mum used to say "pick the low ones so I don't get a sore back" when I was tired she'd put a blanket in an empty crate and i'd fall asleep hearing alsorts of voices chattering and singing. Once we got a bit older we were expected to pick, I was an nabbler, we did not keep the money we made, we knew there were things to buy and happily handed it over. And it felt like a holiday.