Job Duties:
This job requires hop and apple work. Crops/Commodities: Hops and apples. Primary duties (performed the majority of workdays): Perform ditching, shoveling, hauling, and other manual tasks. Bending, stooping, and kneeling are required. Use hand tools, including but not limited to shovels, shears, clippers, loppers, and saws. Lift, carry, and load/unload products or supplies. Use power equipment, including but not limited to tractors, trucks, utility vehicles, power shears, high lifts, forklifts, skid loaders. Must operate agricultural equipment safely, with or without direction. Assist with farm building/field maintenance and repairs. Equipment Operation: Drive/operate hop trucks, tractors, utility vehicles, high lifts, forklifts, and skid loaders. Hop Harvest: Drive hop trucks and/or tractors from the hop machine to the hop yards to collect hop vines for processing. Assist in hop field picking up bines and hop clusters from the ground behind the top cutter and put them into the truck/tractor trailers, ensuring the vines are not obstructing the taillights of the trailers. Hang hop vines onto hooks to feed into the hop machine. Feed hops that have fallen into the floor conveyor in the hop machine. Sweep/clean building floors to ensure cleanliness throughout hop harvest. Assist in the baling room by placing bale cloth on pallets, cut bale cloth with a hot knife, stencil hop bales, mix hops with a pitchfork and feed hops onto floor conveyor. Assist with drying hops in the kiln by monitoring the temperature of the burners and fans. Line the hop kilns with kiln cloth, blow off/clean kiln cloth between each kiln dumping, and reline the kiln with cloth. Remove any sticks/stems that may come through the kiln from the hop machine. Track harvest information in notebook. Apples Harvest: Spot and or strip pick fruit based on seasonal need. Snap fruit off tree with thumb and palm of hand to avoid stem pulls, punctures, bruising, or other damage. Pick culls and peelers. Fill fruit buckets and place fruit in bins. Follow the supervisor/foreman's instructions on color/size requirements. Must be able to differentiate between colors and fruit varieties accurately.
Special Requirements:
This job requires a minimum of 2 months of agricultural employment experience working in a commercial hop farm handling both manual and mechanized tasks associated with commodity production. 4e) Must be able to lift and/or load 60lbs. 4g) Work may take place when temperatures are below freezing and above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. 4h) May require extensive pulling and/or pushing of tools, wheelbarrows, fruit containers, etc. 4i) May require worker to sit and/or walk for extensive periods of time while sorting, picking, examining, weeding, transporting, pruning, etc. 4j) Workers will be required to stoop and/or bend over while performing farm labor such as weeding, irrigating, pruning, picking, removing debris, etc. 4k) There will be repetitive movements while performing most of the farm labor duties, for example picking, sorting, pruning, shoveling, weeding, etc.