Easy money?

For anyone under the impression that fruit picking is a bit of easy money whilst backpacking, I'd like to set the record straight. Temping doing data entry is easy money. Fruit picking is not.

The working day runs roughly 7am - 5.30pm. You can take as many breaks as you want for as long as you want, but as you're paid by the 'bin-full', time really is money. The bins have to be good too: the apples have to be red enough, with minimal bruising or other damage and defects. Considering that even too much finger pressure while picking an apple can bruise it, the picking is not just a case of yanking the things off the trees. Nope, it involves a particular, careful technique, combined with patience with trees that attack you, and a head for heights when up a ladder in gale force winds and, if you're really lucky, driving rain.

The ladder, one of the major bains of the apple picker's life. Once you've got the darn thing into a suitable position - quite an undertaking in itself - you haul yourself and your picking bucket, which holds 15kg of apples when full, up to the top only to discover that a mere two of the 25 pieces of fruit - that looked great from below - are not too small, red enough, out of reach , bruised or sunburnt (yes, apples get sunburn).

I'm keeping myself convinced that I'd rather be working outside than in an office temp job (which on an hourly rate with shorter working days and a shorter working week would probably earn me more). At least I'm developing new transferable skills and the shoulders of a rugby player.

Hm.