From the archives: It's a dirty job, but … somebody has to harvest cukes

(Editor's note: This story was originally published in The Daily News on Aug. 30, 2008. It was part of Daily News reporter Tom Rivers’ multi-part farm labor series, which on Thursday was named among two finalists for the 2009 Mike Berger Award given out by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.)

ELBA — On Monday I headed for the fields of Torrey Farms, intent on keeping pace with the Mexican cucumber pickers. The day didn't go quite as planned.

Maybe it was all the Olympic hype and glory I had just witnessed that made me think I could achieve a gold medal effort among the cucumber crew. But the job nearly crushed my spirit after a mere three hours.

I told Maureen Torrey Marshall, the farm's co-owner, that I was certain I could get through the shift. I had recently survived 10 hours in a cabbage field during a massive downpour amid deep mud.

Two weeks ago I wrote that cutting cabbage was a miserable job: "The hardest to harvest," the headline said in the Aug. 16 Daily News. Some of our local growers told me cukes are even more grueling to pick than cabbage. Maureen was "kind" enough to invite me to join a crew of 23 other guys in a cucumber field. I would even be "chipped" so I could see how my output compared to the other workers.

I was curious and overly confident in my skills and stamina. I figured my past farm jobs – since late April – had adequately acclimated me to the rigors of farm work. I've dropped 25 pounds and added a little bulk. Bring it on.

Showtime

I show up Monday morning around 7 to join Torrey's workers at a 30-acre cucumber field on Ridge Road in Elba. A former school bus, with thick blue and white stripes painted on the sides, is parked by the road. I know the work crew is somewhere nearby. I don't see them, but I can hear a tractor in the distance.

I round a corner leading to the cucumber field and see two crews picking cukes. They each have about two dozen people, with about 12 people on each side of a tractor. The workers — all men — are bent over, hunting for cucumbers. They put the cukes in buckets and carry the pails on their shoulders. They high-step the vines and make it to a wagon behind the tractors. The workers push the buckets as high as their arms will go, and dump the cucumbers in the wagon. Then they scurry back to their rows in the field. All the pickers look very busy.

Joe Menas, the field superintendent, is quick to greet me and give me a crash course in cucumber picking. Don't pick small ones shorter than 6 inches. Don't pick big fat ones that look like long watermelons, and stay away from the ones that are crooked. Also pass on ones with lots of scratches and scabs. The ones with rot, obviously skip.

Joe also warns me about the prickly vines and stiff hairs on the stems of the cucumbers. Even the leaves can scratch you, he tells me. I'm glad I remembered my leather gloves. I forgot my boots, though, and I'm wearing running shoes.

Joe hands me a heavy-duty plastic bucket that holds 5/8 bushel of cukes, about 30 pounds when loaded. He shows me my row and I get to it. No knife is needed. Just grab the cucumbers and twist them off their stems. Some I can do with one hand, but I usually use both hands, one on the cucumber and one on the stem.

This involves serious bending and these cucumbers don't sit in a straight line. I brush aside leaves and vines and feel very annoyed when I find cucumbers with rot spots. They're no good.

Many are in fine shape and I fill my basket and head for the wagon, nearly tripping over some of the vines. I make the 10-yard walk to the wagon and one of the workers reaches down to grab my pail. He dumps it and I turn around and he touches a probe against the chip I attached to the back of my hat. I'm officially in the Torrey Farms database.

Lost

I head back to my spot but I'm not sure where I left off. The field of vines and leaves all looks pretty much the same. I find a row and start picking again. Joe swings by and tells me I'm two rows too far. So I move over.

I'm back to bending, hunting for cukes. This is the third time Torrey's workers have picked in the field, so it's not as plentiful as the first two rounds.

Joe says it's easier to lose your spot today because the vines have all been stepped on. With the first pick, when the vines and leaves were robust, it was obvious where you left off, Joe says. But now it's a little trickier to find your way. He says some pickers make a cross with two cukes to show where they were. If it's muddy and the ground is soft, pickers will stick a cucumber in the ground as a marker.

Today the ground is hard and I find the leaves cover up any attempts to make a cucumber cross. I just assume I can find my spot. I'm about five rows from the wagon. But I keep coming back to the wrong row, and Joe keeps having to correct me. I'm falling behind the other pickers and Joe joins in my picking effort, helping me fill my bucket.

He also tells the guys at the wagon to stop helping me dump the cucumbers. He thinks I can heave the 30-pound bucket over the rail without a problem. It takes a few tries, but I find I can do it without causing cucumbers to topple down on my head.

Joe has another crew to check on, so he leaves me after an hour or so. I try to stay near a guy named Jose. I find out he's 20. He tells me not to carry the heavy pail by my side. He tells me to get it up on my shoulder. I try it with the next trip to the wagon and it's a marked improvement. I don't feel any ache in my back like I did with the other carrying method. It's also easier to pop the pail up and dump the cukes into the wagon.

I'm not nearly as fast as Jose and he often picks some of the cucumbers in my row. Sometimes he sets them in a pile for me to add to my bucket and boost my numbers in the Torrey system.

Jose offers me another tip. He shows me how to straddle the row, with my legs spread out. Then lean forward and brush through the leaves. The fast pickers can grab cucumbers with their left and right hands. I try this position but it's a lot of strain on my back and glute muscles.

I find myself alternating from bending over with my legs spread out, to squatting, to kneeling. The task gets harder as the basket fills. Once it's half full, I have to drag at least 15 pounds with me.

After about three hours I feel like I've been trampled by wild bulls. My back, legs and wrists are aching and I don't think there's much chance I'm going to last until 5 p.m. I find I'm going a little bit faster than in the beginning. Joe notices. But I'm still the slow guy who can't find his row.

Help

I feel some rejuvenation when we finish one of our passes across the 75-yard field. There's a new beginning on the field next to a 10-yard strip of grass and weeds, ground that wasn't good enough for crops. I immediately take a spot next to the weeds. I know I won't get lost coming back from the wagon. This row also seems loaded with cucumbers. I get into a nice groove and I'm almost keeping up with the Mexicans.

After 30 minutes a guy named Enrique asks if he can join me in the row. He notices I'm still a little behind. I tell him he can work the row, too, although I'm wondering how this will work because the pickers don't seem to share rows. Enrique goes 10 feet ahead of me and starts picking. Two minutes later he dumps 15 cucumbers in my bucket. I've got a full load so I go to the wagon.

Enrique repeats this many times in the next 45 minutes, dumping cukes into my bucket or leaving a pile of 10 to 15 cucumbers for me. He also manages to fill his own bucket and unload them in the wagon.

Joe tells me this is typical Enrique behavior. He often helps the slow guys, or pickers who may be sore. Enrique, who's 28, does all that and still has some of the best picking stats on Torrey Farms.

From Iraq to Elba

It's lunch time. Joe invites me to eat in his white farm Bronco. The other workers head for the old bus.

I've got four bottles of water in my car and two bananas. Joe eyes my selection and offers me a ham or turkey sandwich, whichever I prefer. I go for the ham. He also has chocolate chip cookies and I eat three or four of those.

Joe, 30, is tall and lanky with a blue "Torrey Farms" shirt. Last year he completed 812 years in the U.S. Marines, including two stints in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. A West Virginia native, he married an Elba girl – the former Kate Gaylord – nine years ago when they met in North Carolina, where he was stationed at Camp Lejeune. He and Kate have three sons, ages 4, 6 and 7. Joe joined Torrey Farms when they moved to Elba last year.

Joe received a Purple Heart after his Humvee was rocked by a roadside bomb in Iraq. He suffered a severe concussion and traumatic brain injury. When he was discharged from the military, his wife wanted to return home. She is studying to work as a paralegal.

"My wife followed me and my military career for eight years," Joe says. "It's her turn. She wanted to come home and be near her family."

In Iraq he led a platoon of 40 soldiers, many of them Hispanic and many not-yet American citizens. Joe says he has high respect for the Latino soldiers and the workers at Torrey Farms. They have an incredible work ethic, he says.

He initially drove a tractor for Torreys, helping the farm harvest cabbage. He doesn't like the tractor job as much as working in the fields with the workers. It reminds him of his Marine days, leading a group towards a common goal. He refers to the cucumber pickers as his "civilian patrol unit."

Joe is leading the cucumber picking for about 10 weeks. When that's done in about a month, he'll shift to cabbage harvesting. Then he'll fix equipment in the winter and help with potato packing. In the spring he will run transplanters that get the onion and cabbage crops in the ground.

"It's a good job," he said about his new career. "You're always doing something different."

Pressing on

After lunch we're ready to start a new pass across the field. I can no longer plant myself next to the row of weeds. So I take the second row by the wagon. I figure that will keep me from getting lost.

My back is a little stiff, and I can plainly see some swelling in my wrists. But I'm feeling patriotic, can't help but think of Shawn Johnson the gymnast, and decide to press on with as much force as I can muster. Turns out I still have a lot left in the tank and I just ignore the aches and pains. I'm next to Jose again and mostly keep up with him. Joe helps me if I fall behind and Jose will even grab some of my cukes to prevent me from falling behind the pack.

Snakes and soda

Joe gets quite excited about every two hours or so when someone finds a garter snake. He insists on picking it up and removing it from the premises. I don't know what he does with it. I know he doesn't like them.

I don't see any snakes on the ground, thankfully. I don't think I would handle that well. But there are many little frogs hopping around.

We are clearly going much faster across the field this pass. There aren't many cucumbers. This section has been picked over twice and new cukes just haven't emerged like in other parts of the field. On our next pass, I purposely pick a spot away from Jose and Enrique. I don't want any helpers. I'm feeling an early afternoon energy rush and I want to see how fast I can go.

I find a spot next to a fat tire track that runs a good way across the field. That track will help me find my row. I see lots of cucumbers and I quickly fill my bucket. I'm even ahead of the two guys to my left. I get a good groove going for about a half hour. Other pickers must have scarce cucumbers because more people come over to my row. They go ahead of me and I'm left with the cukes they don't want. They're still good cucumbers, just trapped under vines.

My brisk basket-filling pace slows with the added pickers in my row. We polish off the pass and there's nothing left to pick.

Joe says we'll go to a different field about a mile away on Graham Road. I get in my car while the other workers head over in the bus.

The other field is smaller and has several big spots without any plants. It looks like the barren spots were flooded and too muddy for the crop to take root. The field is only about 30 yards long. It's maybe 3 in the afternoon and I notice several of the guys have lost their pep. I make a point of trying to pass them. That only seems to light a fire in them and they quickly speed up, leaving me in the dust.

Joe says he's going on a soda run and he gets orders from everybody for Pepsi, Sierra Mist, Root Beer and other flavors.

Almost lost

The pickers start a new pass and there aren't any clear markings where my row starts or ends. It's another wide-open prairie of cucumber vines and leaves. And I've got back, leg and wrist issues. I have two world-class sprint pickers by me and soon I'm trailing the pack.

I've got lots of cucumbers in my row. Before, I begrudged the help from Joe and Enrique. I didn't like being treated like a charity case. But I wouldn't mind a little help now.

I start to get some, but I don't know where it's coming from. There's a pile of 10 cucumbers already picked waiting for me. I go dump my basket and return to find another 20 cucumbers. I finish the basket off and return to find even more piles. This help proves a good row marker and prevents me from falling too far behind.

Joe returns with the sodas and to a hero's welcome. Some of the workers give him a buck or two, but he pays for many drinks himself. He insists I take mine for free.

Joe has soda for the second work crew and he passes those out. He also finds another snake.

He returns and helps me try to catch up. He thinks Hector, the crew chief, is the mystery angel leaving cucumber piles. But it appears other guys also are chipping in with the effort.

With all the help, I eventually catch up with about half of the crew.

There are eight to 10 guys who are star pickers and they seem to have their own race to get across the field first.

Almost done

It's a little after 4 and Joe says we'll call it a day around 4:30 when the wagon is loaded. He doesn't want to start another load that would take until 6 p.m. to fill with 22,000 to 24,000 pounds of cukes.

I'm pleased the end is near. I'm covered in dirt. Every time I unload the basket of cucumbers, dirt rains down on my head.

Joe and Hector both are helping me keep up. Despite my throbbing wrists, I still manage to heave the 30-pound baskets of cukes on my shoulder and then dump the produce in the wagon.

It's about 4:30 and the wagon is full. But Joe decides we will go another half-hour. Hector convinced him. The workers don't want to stop. They want to go until 5 so they get a full 10 hours of pay. They started at 6:30 and had a half-hour lunch.

That extra half hour is bad news for me and some of the other guys. I see one picker just shuffling through the field, not even trying to bend over for a cucumber. That fires me up a little, but I'm not going with much pep, either. I can't bend over anymore. I can only squat down to get the cukes.

Hector and Joe throw a few cucumbers in my bin. But Joe gets distracted by a mouse carrying two babies. He chases after it and finds the babies but the mother is gone. He says he will take them home and try to feed them with milk through an eye-dropper. He has been nurturing a baby rabbit he caught on Saturday.

"I just love animals – everything but snakes and scorpions," Joe says.

I push myself to 5 o'clock. I spend the last 10 minutes helping to fill other guys' baskets, adding a few here and there for the other pickers. I don't want to try for another basket of my own. I don't think I can carry 30 pounds.

How I rank

At 5, Joe calls it a day and we all make a slow walk across the field. I drive back to Torrey Farms' main office on Maltby Road. Joe says I can see a breakdown of the workers' output for the day. Maureen has the data.

We find out the crew picked 3,213 baskets in 212 manhours for an average of 15.15 baskets per hour. Jose Mayo was the star of the day, picking 202 baskets for a 19.24 hourly average, or one about every 3 minutes.

Enrique, the guy who helped me for one pass across the field, finished fourth on the day with a 17.43 average. I see his last name is Lopez.

I came in last, no surprise, but really didn't do too badly. My 10.21 average isn't too far from the slowest Mexican picker who had a 10.79 rate. (This guy has had a sore leg for about a week, Joe tells me.) So I'm only a little slower than the guy hobbling on one leg.

Joe deems my efforts a good showing, better than some of the Mexicans on their first day.

Maureen also says I did well.

"You finished," she says.

The farm uses the data to determine yields in fields. The numbers also will help the farm and federal government determine productivity standards for cucumber pickers in the H-2A program, which provides temporary work visas for farms. Torrey's has 88 H-2A workers here this year. They each make $9.70 an hour and receive free housing and transportation from Mexico to Elba and then back home after the fall harvest.

Joe thinks they're all good workers. He says they often average at least 20 baskets an hour on the first and second rounds of picking in a field.

But with the third round, there's fewer cucumbers to grab, so the numbers are lower.

The pack house

Maureen gives me a tour of the packing operation. After the cucumbers are picked they go to the packing shed next to the main farm office. The cucumbers are washed and then sorted into five groups by length, ranging from about 6 to 15 inches. They all get an edible vegetable wax coating to prevent dehydration and also to make them look shiny.

Maureen says most of the cucumbers picked that day have already been packed and will be "on the road tonight." Some are going to military bases in the South, while others will go to markets and chain stores in Philadelphia, Boston, Michigan and Maryland.

The South prefers the smaller 6-inch cucumber while the Baltimore and Philadelphia markets prefer the large cukes. Most people, however, favor cucumbers that are 8 to 10 inches.

We return to the main office and Maureen proudly shows off two massive soccer trophies. Her workers have twice won the championship in a farmworker soccer league in Brockport.

One team was made up entirely of her cucumber pickers.

"They had better endurance," she says.

The following year the packing house employees, who also work long hours, won the trophy.