The worst days are clear, hot and windless. The sun beats the body on a day like that. So before the picking begins, C tries to have a good talk with his partners, the men and women who work in the groves.
He’ll ask where they grew up; what they like about this country versus that; get them remembering their favorite childhood memories. Anything positive to start off the day.
“Don’t worry,” he sometimes tells them, when he sees a hard day ahead. “We’re going to get done with this day, and we’re going to get on to the next day.”
After 10 years of picking citrus, C knows how to work the heat. He has learned the best way to position his ladder to save five minutes from the picking of a tree. He knows not to go for weight, even if weight gets you higher wages; better to stick with a half-full picking bag than to risk the force of it making you fall and lose more time and money.
It’s all about technique.
“We’ve been learning from people who have been doing this before we started,” says C. “We pass the word—one generation to another generation.”
