The summer holidays are the perfect time of year for young adults to get a summer job and make some money. Thankfully, I didn’t even have to look for one. I had a stroke of luck when a friend of mine asked me if I wanted a job in the south of France. I immediately accepted and two months later I was on a train heading off to pick apricots for the summer.
Team work gets the apricots picked
My job consisted in helping a team of 20 other workers pick ripe apricots on a 300 hectare farm. The team was split into five smaller teams that each had a captain. We would always work horizontally across fields, not vertically. This was because the farm was on a mountain which made the fields quite steep. We would work our way through the rows of apricot trees methodically to not end up doing the same row as another team but also to save time. So each team had a row of trees to complete and once they were done they’d move on to the next one down that was free.
Captain fruit-picker and the 10 types of apricots
The captains were the experienced ones who already knew the ropes. They explained how to pick the apricots and which ones to select. The ripe ones were either small and bright red or much larger and bright orange. It also depended on which variety of apricots we had to pick, but generally that was how it was done. I was surprised by how many varieties of apricots there were. There were at least 10 and I only knew about one of them! I later learned that most of them aren’t sold outside of France which is why I had never seen such beautiful apricots anywhere else.
While we were picking, the owner of the farm would drive past us in his tractor along with a trailer to let us load it. It also gave him an opportunity to supervise us in case we’d started to pick unripe apricots.
The farming life
Life on the farm was pleasant. Lodging was provided for us, but breakfast was the only meal provided. This consisted of bread and saucisson or bread and apricot jam. We stayed in a small farmhouse, and we slept in normal beds in rooms of four or five people. There was no TV but there was an outdoor sitting area and a couple of hammocks attached between trees. For food we had to go to the nearest village by car and get groceries. Everyone had to contribute a sum of money for the food or else you wouldn’t eat. We divided ourselves into teams of four and each team chose a day of the week to cook lunch and dinner. The two teams with the best cooks had to choose two days. There was a large well-equipped kitchen in the cellar of the farmhouse.
Hard work bears 10kg of fruit
Being a seasonal worker is a tough job because the hours are long and the work is strenuous. A typical workday would start at 6am. We worked until noon, with a break for some lunch and a nap. We would start work again in the afternoon around 3pm and continue until 6pm or 7pm. The heat was unbearable at times but the shade from the trees protected us from getting sunburn. We had harnesses which attached to a basket in front of us at the level of the stomach. The baskets weighed 10kg when they were full of apricots so it did get tiring for the shoulders. At the end of the day, I would be exhausted by the hard work, but I enjoyed it!
Editor’s note: At this time last year, Max went inter-railing, taking advantage of the special ticket offer to young people in the EU. See his article
Fruit production in the UK
Editor’s note: Scientists are studying the impact of global warming on fruit tree blossoming dates in the UK. The huge apricots in these pictures come from a Surrey garden. They had to be pollinated by hand as they bloomed so early.
A few years ago, large-scale apricot production was not considered viable here, but the industry is now thriving. But the country’s fruit production has generally suffered due to climate change. Between 2023 and 2024, the UK experienced the wettest 18 months since records began, with the Department for Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) reporting producers’ fruit yields down nearly 12%.
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