a Strawberry Farmer's Life

I came to Amuri Creek Fruits farm in Mount Barker on 17th of October after a 5-hour ride of TransWA bus from Perth. On the day I arrived it was cold and raining hard. Actually it's the typical weather here in this season, and it will be the same until November.

Mount Barker region is beautiful with hills full of lush trees, orchards, vineyards, and grasslands for raising sheeps. The scene here is rather different than the other rural places I've been to in Australia. The rain is abundant here, so there is not a single sign of the severe drought other parts of Australia are suffering from.

The Amuri Creek farm locates 30mins of drive out of the little Mount Barker town. The farm has strawberry fields and cherry orchards, and they also keep more than 3000 wool sheeps. On the farm currently there are 9 backpackers including me staying at the farm's simple accommodation, of which are 4 Taiwanese, 4 Korean and a German girl, the lovely and very friendly Claudia, but soon will be there a lot more coming due to the large amount of produces in summer. The owners of the farm are a friendly couple. They told us that in last year there were more than 50 workers working on the farm.

The weather here is still not very good most of the time. In the past week, there are more than 5 rainy days. Like today, it rains quite hard and is very cold. The strawberries grow better when the weather is hot. Therefore we do not work a lot right now. Normally we work 2 days and then take one or two days off, and on our working days we work only like 5~6 hours. We start picking strawberries at 8AM, then take a 30-minute rest at around 10AM, and then work until around noon, then we have lunch, and then start packing after lunch for about 1 or 2 hours. The pay currently is 16 dollars per hour for picking, and 1.30 dollars per tray for packing, but it will be the opposite when there are a lot of produce. Picking strawberries is a very demanding and exhausting job, because you have to keep bending down and that will make your back hurts alot, and you have to pay attention to the berries, you don't want to miss any single one, if not the farm owner will keep telling you that you have to be careful when picking, and you have to pick in the way they teach you.

The cherries are still flowering, and although there are already some fruits, but they're still green. They say the cherry season will begin about a month later. I do hope that I can switch to cherry team, I hate picking strawberries.