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!
I ended up doing extensive broccoli farming for about 3 months, on 13 different farms in Tasmania!! It was an amazing experience and I would highly recommend it. Cutting broccoli for a living was fab.
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.
I remember the date - 18th March 2010 as the night before I had partied in the local pub Molly Malone's with Chaz Fitzsimmons a fellow Northern Irishman. It was St. Patrick's Night.
The morning ran smoothly however and from 7am to 1pm we worked before having a quick lunch. Just after lunch and we had got half way through a long row of broccoli when I realised I needed a shit - yes it was ready to come out. Our boss was Rebecca Gaby and she was alongside us that day so I shouted over to her that I needed to go. So off I went - initially running all the way towards the portable toilet before realising it was too far to go, so time had beaten me...
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.
Apart from that it was a good day in the field. Later on that night, I washed my clothes, shamelessly realising I couldn't tell the difference between shit and mud. Don't Stop Living!
I ended up doing extensive broccoli farming for about 3 months, on 13 different farms in Tasmania!! It was an amazing experience and I would highly recommend it. Cutting broccoli for a living was fab.
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.
I remember the date - 18th March 2010 as the night before I had partied in the local pub Molly Malone's with Chaz Fitzsimmons a fellow Northern Irishman. It was St. Patrick's Night.
The morning ran smoothly however and from 7am to 1pm we worked before having a quick lunch. Just after lunch and we had got half way through a long row of broccoli when I realised I needed a shit - yes it was ready to come out. Our boss was Rebecca Gaby and she was alongside us that day so I shouted over to her that I needed to go. So off I went - initially running all the way towards the portable toilet before realising it was too far to go, so time had beaten me...
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.
Apart from that it was a good day in the field. Later on that night, I washed my clothes, shamelessly realising I couldn't tell the difference between shit and mud. Don't Stop Living!
About the Author:
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.
