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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] working kids

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  • From: road's end farm <organic101 AT linkny.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] working kids
  • Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 09:40:36 -0400


On Apr 22, 2005, at 10:21 PM, Robin Follette wrote:

Schools in Aroostook county (northern Maine) start in early August so that the kids can be out of school for three weeks to harvest potatoes.

Wow. I didn't know there was anywhere in this country that still had sense enough to do something like that. Around here they used to close the high schools in grape harvest season and teachers and kids alike would pick grapes; but they haven't done that for probably forty years or more, and most people would probably now think it a shocking idea. I suspect the kids learned more from it than most of them usually do spending that three weeks in a classroom.

The legal age to start farm work is a state-by-state issue. In New York State, unless they've changed the regulations when I wasn't looking (which is possible), the minimum age for farm work (except on your own family's farm) is 12, and 12 and 13 year olds are only allowed to hand harvest, not anything else. (I can legally have a 12 year old harvest, say, winter squash; but not stand there and hold a watering hose. Go figure.) 14 and 15 year olds can do most work, but there are restrictions on power equipment and some other work for anybody under 18 (though those who have taken a special course can run tractors sooner) and also restrictions on time of day and on hours worked per day and per week, depending on the age.

What we seem to have is a setup in which most kids aren't allowed to work until they've got it firmly in their heads that they don't want to; and then are supposed to be suddenly grown up at a magic age and know how to work, when they've been carefully prevented from learning how. (I include myself in this, and it took me probably about ten years to figure it out.)

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale





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