Picking Peppers in Australia

By Nathanael Rubin on July 6, 2014

It’s cold, because the sun hasn’t peeked over the horizon yet, but you’ll have swamp-ass by lunch time. You suspect that your work pants already have swamp-ass somehow built in, and that it gradually thaws out throughout the morning. Maybe that’s the new style and you’re a trendsetter. Maybe they’ll name a brand of jeans after you—Swampies. You never know.

Everyone gives each other a morning nod, which kind of means hello, but really means, “I’m not ready to speak to anyone yet. I’m not even ready to acknowledge that I’m actually here right now.”

The rows of bell pepper bushes start to show through the morning mist. You try not to look at them until you have to. You look at the other workers as they put on their hats and gloves, most of them are either Japanese, German, or French. All of them are in Australia on a Working Holiday Visa, just like you. That’s the visa you applied for online, the one that from what you read on message boards you were guaranteed to get. You look down at the soil and zone out until you hear Sam’s god-awful voice say, “Alright guys, let’s get going” in a tone like someone had just died.

Most of you are barefoot because you know at some point you’ll have to stand in a deep puddle of mud to get to some of the peppers in your row. The damp soil is freezing against the soles of your feet.

Starting is the worst. To keep going is terrible, you know that well, but when you first start and you’re tired from not giving a shit the night before that you have to wake up early, it’s heck. You go slow when you first start, picking all the ones that are clearly ripe, and not bothering with any that aren’t. You’re bent over the bush at a ninety degree angle. Your back is still sore from the day before, but you’ve had enough time go by for it to stop throbbing.

Red and green bell peppers populate a seemingly endless row of green bushes. The landscape is flat, and identical for many acres. You put your headphones in, and listen to Eminem. The ridiculous content of his lyrics keeps you laughing to yourself throughout the day. You’re grateful you have an mp3 player.

You grab a pepper, twist it until the stem breaks, pull it off, and toss it into the bucket beside you. You repeat this process over and over all day, every day.

Grab, twist, pull, toss. When your bucket is full, you yell, “Bucket!” and a German guy comes and takes it and gives you an empty one. He dumps your bucket into a large white bin in the back of a tractor, and says your name to a man holding a note board and pen. The man adds a line to your tally, and that’s how they keep track of whether you’re slacking off or not.

You hesitantly step down into a cold puddle of mud, hoping it’s just the top layer that’s all mushy like that, but then you sink in another half a foot and feel gross and immersed in filth. You’re tired and grumpy, so the disgust angers you. You feel like your whole body had been tainted, so you say fuck it and start kicking mud chunks into the air in a tantrum. You think, I might as well jump up and down in it, and so you do. You figure the situation can’t screw you any worse if you just jump in yourself.

That’s your moment to say “fuck the world!” They’re the only moments in your life when you have complete power. It’s like you say to the world “okay, that was horrible, but look, I don’t give a shit anymore. I win.”

The sun starts to beat on you, so like many others, you cover your face with the hand towel from your pocket. Along with the hat, you all look like you’re going to rob a bank. Some load on the sunscreen, others do nothing. This is how you can tell what stage in their experience with farm work the people around you are in.

Level 1: You don’t bother with sunscreen or long sleeves, because you don’t know any better. You probably don’t even know that there is a huge hole in the Ozone right above Australia. You’ll soon find out the hard way.

Level 2: You still wear shorts and short sleeves, but now you bring sunscreen with you and extra water. Maybe you wear a hat sometimes.

Level 3: You wear long sleeves, a hat, a rag over your face and maybe even gloves. You bring more than enough water, and you bring extra food. This is the level you’re currently at.

Level 4: You have been doing farm work so long that you actually don’t use anything but a hat. Your skin looks like shit, but you don’t care. You’re officially a rough neck. All the farm managers and owners you’ve ever worked with are at this stage.

“What would you rather do,” Jason says to you in an Australian accent. “Eat all the peppers in this field, even the rotten ones, or cut off your pinky with an Exacto knife?”

This game of hypothetical scenarios he likes to play usually goes like this: Do option ‘A’ or amputate ‘B’. Suicide isn’t an option. You have to choose one in order to save the world. Don’t ask me why, but those are the rules.

“The peppers man, free food.” You say.

Jason is the only Australian that does picking. Sam, the supervisor, a middle-aged man missing several teeth, and the owner, who makes sporadic appearances once or twice a day, are the only two others. Rumor has it, the owner once fired a guy for sitting on top of his bucket while picking. Most of you still sit on your buckets when he’s not around, but you keep an eye out for a man riding a scooter over the bumpy terrain. Sometimes he looks like the wicked witch from the Wizard of Oz.

“What would you rather do, fuck Sam or cut off your arm?” he asks. You laugh, and start picking peppers and putting them in your bucket using only one hand. “All I need is one arm,” you say.

Lunchtime comes. You sprawl out on the ground next to your bag and feel your back start to throb. You open your eyes, and there is Sam standing over you, his dusty head and beard blocking the sun. He hands you an envelope, and you know what’s inside.

“Three more weeks until I leave for Thailand.” You say with a smile.

“Yeah, while the rest of us are stuck here,” he says. “Where you going after that?”

Japan, then back to Florida,” you say.

“Sounds like a hell of a trip, mate,” he says, and walks away.

You look over your pay stub happily. The minimum wage is $19.40 per hour in Queensland, almost three times as much as the minimum wage in Florida.

At the end of lunch, the owner drives up on his scooter as you begin working on your row, and makes an announcement to everyone.

“I’m looking at this tally, and you boys are not working hard enough. The slowest person at the end of the day today is not allowed to come back again. I’m sorry, but you’re just going to have to work faster.”

After a silent gripe of head shakes that the workers give each other, you double your pace. Both your arms are move rapidly, twisting peppers off violently, sometimes pulling off branches too. You notice the guy on the other side of your row is moving faster, and so you pick up your pace even more. You go as fast as you possibly can. Sweat drips off your chin underneath the towel over your face. The pain in your lower back pulses as you reach across and dig peppers out of the bush.

“Bucket!” Multiple people scream out. You start getting angry at the bucket boy for not coming fast enough. You fill up buckets more than twice as fast as usual. One of your fingernails is bloody from being stubbed into the steel wire that runs along the bushes. The adrenaline keeps you going. You have to keep moving as fast as possible, because you know Sam thinks you’re one of the slow ones.

Juba

You come across a pepper that was formed weirdly and kind of looks like a vagina. Normally you would stand up and show everyone, but today you just throw it in the bucket. You check the time, and realize three hours have gone by like nothing at this pace, and that you’re leaving in thirty minutes. For one final push you give it your all. You move constantly, arms grabbing and swinging in all directions. You’re covered in sweat. You don’t even stop to get your water bottle at the end of the row. You just haul ass until finally, you hear the whistle.

You rush over to Sam to see the tally. You were second fastest out of 19. You sigh in relief. The only one who was faster than you was Kazu, a Japanese guy who’d been there longer than anyone else.The owner comes back on his broomstick. He looks at the list while everyone waits in silence. Juba was the slowest one. He’s the newest picker, a young, brown-haired German guy that didn’t talk much.

The owner makes his announcement: “You all were much, much faster than you were this morning. You all did a good job. So long as you keep this up, you can all come back to work tomorrow, alright? Just keep up the good work.”

You realize that you’d been tricked, and that the owner never intended to fire anyone so long as everyone worked faster. You feel proud of how far you can push yourself when you have to, and of course, happy that you didn’t get fired. Exhausted and filthy, you go home, victorious.