# What exactly could one expect to do working on a small vegetable farm?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-could-one-expect-to-do-working-on-a-small-vegetable-farm/391475>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [February 9, 2007, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-could-one-expect-to-do-working-on-a-small-vegetable-farm/391475 "2007-02-09T08:27:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Lama\_Pacos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Lama\_Pacos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lama_Pacos)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2007, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-could-one-expect-to-do-working-on-a-small-vegetable-farm/391475/1 "2007-02-09T08:27:38Z")

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Rather open-ended question. I mean, I get what the _end product_ of a vegetable farm is, but what are the kinds of things a farmer would do on a day-to-day basis? I imagine there are many and diverse tasks to take care of.

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**Author:** ![fessie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@fessie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fessie)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2007, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-could-one-expect-to-do-working-on-a-small-vegetable-farm/391475/2 "2007-02-09T09:27:18Z")

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I worked at the Farmer’s Market here in town last summer, and really enjoyed meeting people there.

One of the vendors was telling me about the kid she had to fire, because he cost her a couple thousand dollars by not protecting the vegetables. I can’t remember exactly what it was he did, he might’ve failed to move picked produce when it was hot out, so everything rotted. Or maybe he didn’t water something, I don’t recall. She would do things like getting up in the middle of the night to cover plants with newspaper during frost warnings, in order to have early-season vegetables to sell. Otherwise the period during which they have a product to offer is pretty brief.

Getting the produce to market is a big job, too, because it’s usually picked the day before, and then has to be loaded on the trucks at 4 or 5 in the morning, driven in, unloaded, set up in displays and sold. Having good people skills really helps - one farmer got booted because he slapped a child who’d touched his tomatoes.

At the market there are local regulations to deal with concerning the handling of food, plus the paperwork for selling through WIC or foodstamps, and withholding sales tax.

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**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2007, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-could-one-expect-to-do-working-on-a-small-vegetable-farm/391475/3 "2007-02-09T18:35:50Z")

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Driving tractor, tilling, plowing, delivering produce to vendors/restaurants, picking, planting, fertilizing, rotating through crops based on the time of year, selling on-site if that’s part of the business.