Your Employer and Your Work

If you have been selected for a placement in agricultural work you will have received the farm amenities sheet for the place that you will be working.This may be useful to help you prepare for the type of work you will be expected to do and will also provide you with some more information about the area of the United Kingdom that you will be visiting.

Strawberry tunnels

These strawberries are grown in tunnels. As you can see this is physically demanding, like much of the work. It can get very hot in the tunnels in summer which makes the work even more challenging. Because of the heat it is quite common to have an early start to avoid the heat of the day - work might start at 6am and go through to 2 pm, and sometimes it might start again in the evening at about 5pm. Usually, this type of work will be paid on a piece-rate according to the number of trays you pick.

Packhouse

There are a number of opportunities to work in packhouses. There are strict health and safety rules in the UK - for this reason there are often strict dress codes for the packhouses, you may have to wear a hat and jewellery such as earrings, rings etc. should not be worn and you are not allowed to wear nail varnish. It is important that you obey these rules.

Some packhouses deal with fruit grown on other farms or overseas. Only EU participants can work on these farms, SAWS participants cannot work in packhouses that process food grown elsewhere.

There are sometimes opportunities for supervisory or quality control jobs in the packhouses.

Vegetables

Here you can see vegetables being picked at one of our farms. As you can see this is quite physical work because you have to pick and package them as you go down the rows. It would take about 2 weeks to get up to speed on this work. Much of the piece rate work would take a couple of weeks to learn and get up to a good speed on - so you should be prepared to be patient as this will affect your earnings for the first few weeks.

Again, strict health and safety rules apply on this farm. You can see that they are wearing gloves for health and safety reasons and hats to protect them from the sun. On wet days you will need to wear clothing to protect you from the rain.

Skilled Work

You can see there are tractor driving opportunities at this farm and many others. If you have the right experience there is often more skilled work on offer. This ranges from driving tractors to working in the farm shop but if you are interested in helping in this way you can speak to your agent when you apply. If you are doing a job in the UK which involves driving, then you must bring the right licence and paperwork with you that show you have the correct skills and qualifications.

Apple Orchard

You will see these apple orchards have quite low trees. Most apple orchards in the UK don't need ladders to harvest the fruit but in Northern Ireland using ladders is still very common. The important thing about picking apples and pears is not to bruise them.

 

Return at the end of the day

You will often be transported to and from your place of work by minibus. It is not usually possible to return to you accommodation at lunchtime so you may need to take a pack lunch to eat in the field. You therefore need to be organised enough to prepare this in the morning.

Here you can see a communal area with participants preparing their evening meals. Some farms have facilities such as table tennis, darts and internet access.