On 2014-10-12 1:00 PM, Janet wrote:

>
> In my teens I lived in a big fruit-picking area and picked for pay in
> summer. I remember one farmer where the pickers all lived in (sleeping
> bags in barn) to pick his strawberries. On the first day he said "These
> are the best strawberries you will ever taste; eat as many as you
> like".. we pigged out all day long. That night he came to the barn
> with.. a giant market tray of strawberries to go with our supper. And
> the next night.
> By day three nobody wanted to eat another strawberries for a vey long
> time.....


Pay? Yeah, right. It is more like slave labour. I lasted about 5 hours
picking strawberries. I worked like made and it worked out to about 40
cents per hour. It might have been 50 cents per hour if I had not eaten
so many. It was years before I ate strawberries again.

I tried fruit picking again a few years later.... pears. We started off
well, but then the farmer came along and wanted us to go back and pick
the trees bare. That meant having to move the ladder and climb up to
get one lonely pear, then climb down, move the ladder and climb back up
for another. I would not have minded so much if I had been paid by the
hour, but we were getting paid by the bushel, and it takes a long time
to fill a bushel basket at that rate.