About Agriberry Farm: Agriberry Farm & CSA is a family owned small fruit farm growing blackberries, raspberries, and other fruit in Hanover, as well as strawberries in Chesterfield. We cultivate community vitality by providing quality mid-Atlantic fruit to the RVA metro area and surrounding counties year round through our CSA (community supported agriculture) program, over a dozen farmers markets + pop-ups, and wholesale to local businesses. Our core values are:
- Best practices Efficient, ethical, and sustainable processes that yield high quality results
- Collaboration Finding solutions that elevate outcomes for teammates and partners
- Growth Learning, improving, and evolving
- Tenacity Getting the job done, even when it’s tough
Job Title: Field Associate Department: Field Reports To: Harvest Supervisor
Pay Range: $16.16 – $16.50 Hours: 24 – 40+
Primary Job Function: The Field Associate role is available to individuals with little to no previous work experience but can extend to experienced agricultural employees with a focus on production. This role’s production output is a vital component to its success and we believe a good can do attitude can elevate initial workers to meet this high bar with training. This is a predominantly physical/manual labor position. Field Workers will manually plant, cultivate, harvest, pack, and maintain crops under the instruction of the Harvest Supervisor. In the spring (Feb-April) the position will consist predominantly of plant care and maintenance. In summer (May-August) and fall (Sept-Nov) the position will primarily be harvesting fruit in an efficient, safe, and quality manner with some plant care duties and other jobs as needed.
Essential Duties & Responsibilities:
- Harvest berries in a safe, efficient manner, ensuring productivity and quality goals are met or exceeded focusing on the following traits:
- Thoroughness
- Quality
- Speed
- Appropriately mark their work or finished product with their worker ID, as directed.
- Pack and load harvested products, this can include aiding the Operations Manager at the harvest station upon direction and carefully assembling clamshell and specialty packaging to ensure product quality, accuracy, and safe transport.
- Understand and adhere to all food safety practices and Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) in daily work and will satisfy all related training requirements, as required by supervisory staff.
- Care for plants as instructed and assigned, including pruning, pest scouting, weeding, tying, thinning and tucking plants.
- Safely and responsibly use any hand tools provided by Agriberry Farm, such as trowels, hoes, pruning shears, and loppers, and return them in good condition at the end of each assignment. Utilizes best practices based on instruction from supervisor(s).
- Assist in opening and closing duties of the field (box prep, jam bucket processing, etc) upon instruction.
- Occasionally help Warehouse staff with packing fruit in the warehouse.
- Assist in planting, preparing ground and plastic, establishing trellis and new plantings.
- Help upkeep harvest supply station upon direction or request
- Assist or perform fruit runs bringing fruit to the cooler from the field and with data entry upon instruction
- Provide collaborative feedback to teammates to help elevate the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the team
- Other duties as assigned
Position Requirements:
- Ability to work a minimum of 3 harvest shifts per week
- Ability to commit to 9 week of work this season (between 6/1 – 8/22)
- Maintain necessary weekly average production rates, as set by the supervisor
- Ability to focus on a single task for extended periods of time.
- Ability to stay focused while in a group of peers.
- Ability to follow instructions and retain training information.
- Ability to work independently while meeting or exceeding quotas.
- High manual dexterity.
- Reliable transportation to and from the farm (there is no public transportation to/from the farm)
- Able to be prepared to start the work day at a pre-established time (7am) in order to maintain team efficiency in information sharing and coordinated execution of daily duties.
- Pass a background check and other pre-employment screening;
- Demonstrate an interest in local farming and/or agriculture;
Preferred Skills, Abilities, and Knowledge
- Maintain enthusiasm, good attitude, honesty and a willingness to treat all co-workers with respect, despite challenging work conditions.
- Spanish language skills
- Previous agricultural experience
Physical Requirements:
- Tolerate extreme temperatures (especially heat) for 6-12 hours a day;
- Comply with requirements for protective clothing;
- Work in an outdoor environment, including tolerance for pests and thorns;
- Repetitively lift and carry items up 25 lbs.;
- Demonstrate good visual acuity, with an ability to identify weeds, pests, and crops ready for harvest;
- Stand, sit, bend, kneel, stretch and squat for long periods of time while using best practices to maintain strong long term personal health;