So, I work on a farm called, The Day Farms. It has grown to
be one of my favorite places. It is the most fun job I have ever had. It is an
experience that has definitely changed me in many ways. I usually start right
when school ends in April. I start out in the greenhouses. There are a total of
eleven greenhouses on the farm. Each greenhouse is filled with thousands of
flowers. By the end of my first year working I could name fifty different types
of flowers; from coleus to geraniums. One greenhouse is also full of tomato,
squash, and pepper plants.
Mr. and Mrs. Day have been going to the Waterford farmers
market for over thirty years. They go every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. We
have to load the truck up with racks of flowers the night before each market
day. We load almost twelve racks to go to market. Each rack has five shelfs.
Each shelf can hold ten, ten trays of flowers. That’s about 6,000 individual
flower’s we load up for market. On special holidays they decide we need to
bring another truck and that adds another six racks. Most of the greenhouse
days are spent cleaning flowers, carrying trays of flowers from the back
greenhouses to the front, and loading the racks. Some days it gets up to ninety
degrees in the greenhouses. Mrs. Day yells out types of flowers she wants us to
get and my fellow workers and I scramble around to load them. Once all the
racks are loaded the greenhouses are closed to the public and the older woman
go home. I stay and help load the trucks. I stand in the truck while Mr. Day
sets the racks in with a forklift. I then have to wheel the fully loaded, old,
creaky, racks into position in the truck. Once the trucks are loaded the
neighbor boy usually wonders over. He works their too. We then gather boxes to
go pick asparagus. Mr. Day puts a wooden pallet on the forklift forks and we
hop on and ride over to the asparagus patch. Once at the patch we lay down on
our tummies with our arms hanging off the end. Mr. Day drives over the
asparagus rows and we pick as we go. It is actually pretty fun. Once we picked
all the asparagus we head back and Mr. Day bunches it for market. After a
twelve hour day I go home and rest until I have to get up early for market.
During greenhouse season my feet ache. They are swollen and callused.
The market opens early so we have to leave the Day’s Farm at
three in the morning. Once at market we have to unload the trucks and set the
flowers on tables and on the ground in our assigned stall at the market. We
sell all day to hundreds of customers. At around three in the afternoon we load
up the trucks with any left-over flowers we didn’t sell. We usually arrive back
on the farm between four and five in the afternoon. Any flowers that we didn’t
sell have to be distributed[A1] back to
their designated positions in the main greenhouse. Once they are all put back
we can go home. I go home and it starts all over the next week.
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