With travelling comes strange and amusing stories. This one, though slightly disgusting just highlights the amusement you can look back on, and in this case laugh at myself a couple of years down the line. Did I really shit myself in a broccoli field? Yes!
While living in Tasmania I worked all over the place, doing broccoli farming in 13 different farms! I loved it and urge you all to try farming in Tasmania. Earning a living as a broccoli farmer was great!
Basically you walk down endless broccoli paddocks cutting as much broccoli that is ready as you can and you fire it into crates on the back of the tractor which follows you. Once you have started one of the rows, you have to finish it. You can't really leave half way through a row and you need to carry water with you. At the end of each row you can go for a leak or a shit if you need to. I do admit this is easier if you are male!
One day I was working on a massive farm in East Sassafras, in Northern Tasmania. There was a hill at the top of the paddock and once you go over the hill you are miles from the base (the place where you park your car, eat your lunch and they have a portable toilet there). Now I was an experienced broccoli cutter at this stage.
This story is taken from the 18th March 2010. I know that because the previous night was St. Patrick's Night and I was down the local Irish Pub Molly Malone's partying with Chaz Fitzsimmons, also a Northern Irishman living in Tasmania.
Next morning was a 7am start as usual and nothing was a problem. After lunch however, we were about half way through a stretch of broccoli when I knew I needed to go to the toilet, of the number 2 variety. It was the first time this had happened while on a broccoli field. Our boss and top lady, Rebecca Gaby was working alongside us that day and I yelled over, "I'll catch you up, I need a shit" and off I ran. Initially I was going to run all the way back to the portable toilet but it was about a kilometre walk, so I pulled over at the side and crouched down in the paddock. It was out of control let's just say.
A few seconds after taking my trousers and boots off which wasn't easy I then had to use leaves from broccoli plants to clean myself. It wasn't enough so my underpants were used as toilet roll and then dumped behind a tree near the fence. It was then that my team and tractor appeared back at the top of the hill. They knew I had ran for a shit, but now they saw me with my trousers down, running desperately back to cut more broccoli.
It was a decent day in the field apart from that incident. That night, I obviously washed all of my clothes, suddenly admitting that I couldn't tell the difference between mud and shit. Don't Stop Living!
While living in Tasmania I worked all over the place, doing broccoli farming in 13 different farms! I loved it and urge you all to try farming in Tasmania. Earning a living as a broccoli farmer was great!
Basically you walk down endless broccoli paddocks cutting as much broccoli that is ready as you can and you fire it into crates on the back of the tractor which follows you. Once you have started one of the rows, you have to finish it. You can't really leave half way through a row and you need to carry water with you. At the end of each row you can go for a leak or a shit if you need to. I do admit this is easier if you are male!
One day I was working on a massive farm in East Sassafras, in Northern Tasmania. There was a hill at the top of the paddock and once you go over the hill you are miles from the base (the place where you park your car, eat your lunch and they have a portable toilet there). Now I was an experienced broccoli cutter at this stage.
This story is taken from the 18th March 2010. I know that because the previous night was St. Patrick's Night and I was down the local Irish Pub Molly Malone's partying with Chaz Fitzsimmons, also a Northern Irishman living in Tasmania.
Next morning was a 7am start as usual and nothing was a problem. After lunch however, we were about half way through a stretch of broccoli when I knew I needed to go to the toilet, of the number 2 variety. It was the first time this had happened while on a broccoli field. Our boss and top lady, Rebecca Gaby was working alongside us that day and I yelled over, "I'll catch you up, I need a shit" and off I ran. Initially I was going to run all the way back to the portable toilet but it was about a kilometre walk, so I pulled over at the side and crouched down in the paddock. It was out of control let's just say.
A few seconds after taking my trousers and boots off which wasn't easy I then had to use leaves from broccoli plants to clean myself. It wasn't enough so my underpants were used as toilet roll and then dumped behind a tree near the fence. It was then that my team and tractor appeared back at the top of the hill. They knew I had ran for a shit, but now they saw me with my trousers down, running desperately back to cut more broccoli.
It was a decent day in the field apart from that incident. That night, I obviously washed all of my clothes, suddenly admitting that I couldn't tell the difference between mud and shit. Don't Stop Living!
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Want to find out more about broccoli farming travel stories, then visit Jonny Blair's site on how to work and travel with the odd shit broccoli story around the world.