A Two-Month Holiday on a Farm
Text: Zuzana Nestrojová, Ostrava
Photos: Jan Polverini, Prague/Rome
The word Ireland brings to mind something different for each of us. For some, it is a wonderful country full of luscious green, while others immediately see themselves sitting over a pint of dark Guinness, with an Irish jig playing in the background. In addition to its many attractions for hundreds of thousands of tourists, Ireland draws countless thousands of people with its open labour market, above all inhabitants from the EU new member states.
Stella Fišerová, a student, also decided to spend her holiday time in Ireland to earn money for school. Stella is 25 years old and lives in Ústí nad Labem, where she studies English and Geography.
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The family Stella comes from doesn’t have any experience with migration. It was only her cousin Andrea who had gone to Ireland to work as an au pair, and the island nation had fascinated her so much that she had stayed there for good. Stella is convinced that “it must make parents happy when they see that their children are independent, can go off to a foreign country and take care of themselves”. Her motto is: Go somewhere to work, earn your own money and don’t depend on your parents. She even claims that the relationship to her parents might improve as a result of the seperation.
Stella expected to make money and improve her English during her stay in Ireland. At the same time, she felt the need to change her surroundings and wanted to get to know a new country and new people. Ireland is a combination of many advantages at the same time. Stella had already worked for two years as an au pair in England. For eight months, she had lived in Manchester and had spent the rest of the time in London. She had attended a language school during that time and studied English. “When you spend the whole year constantly moving between school, your flat, the library, and some other closed space where you might have a part-time job, you need to regain energy in the countryside,” Stella explains. “The summer job on the farm in Ireland was the most reasonable thing for me to do, because it was a chance to work in the countryside, surrounded by nature, and earn money at the same time.” She adds “I also chose to go to the farm because I knew from my friends’ experience that a lot of foreigners worked there, so I would be forced to speak English.” She complained, however, at the same time that it is too bad that one cannot come across a job like this in the Czech Republic.
Stella’s choice of country was also influenced by her friend Hilary-Anne, whose father is an Irish farmer. Stella met Hilary-Anne at a poetry event in Ústí nad Labem and the two have maintained contact ever since. During Christmas of last year, Stella began seriously thinking about working abroad. “I considered Switzerland, but I kept saying to myself that it would be better to go to a country where they speak English,” she says. After discussing it with her friend, Stella eventually made the final decision to work on the Irish organic farm. She exchanged a few e-mails with the son of the farm’s owner who said that she could come at the end of June. She had a bit of money saved, and borrowed the rest of her travel costs from the bank. She flew directly from Prague to Dublin together with her friend Pepa and they stayed in Ireland for two months.
Stella’s cousin Andrea picked them up at the airport and took them straight to the farm. The farm where Stella worked during the following weeks was located sixty miles to the south of Dublin. Work on the farm was organized by Duncan Haely, the son of the owner, who lived there with his entire family. The other son was a student in Dublin and the daughter, Hillary Anne, works in Ústí nad Labem as a teacher. During the time Stella worked there, the farm employed around ten people. Most of them were foreigners. Germans, Poles, an American, a Belgian, two more Czechs and Stella. They spoke English together.
Stella did not sign a written contract with the farmer. However, even oral agreements count in Ireland as contracts. The employees could choose wether they wished received their pay in an envelope every Tuesday or if they would prefer to get the whole amount at the end of their stay. However, they did not receive any sort of confirmation of the number of hours they had worked. When Stella started, she was told that work on the farm lasted from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and that there was a break for lunch between 1 and 2 p.m. But in reality the situation was entirely different. She did in fact work, like the others, beginning at 9, and then everyone did get a lunch break. But she usually did not finish working at 6, by far. At 11 p.m., they would have to load trucks headed to the market the next day. The men worked even longer than the women and often did harder work. The working hours were thus not being upheld and the employees had to work according to the needs of the employer until all the work was done.
!/wie/cms/images/331.jpg!Stella, like the others, earned 150 Euros for working six days a week and if she went to sell the goods at the market, her earnings could be raised by 70 Euros, i.e. to 220 Euros. Even though Stella worked overtime very often, she did not receive any additional money. If she worked seven days in a week, she received more money, but on the other hand, if she worked less than six days in a week, her earnings dropped well below 150 Euros. But the number of hours worked in a day was never taken into consideration. Regardless of whether Stella worked eight hours or ten, she still earned around 25 Euros per day. Whether Stella would work seven or five days in the week was her own decision. When she wanted a day off, she simply told the son of the farm’s owner that she wasn’t coming to work. “I knew the work on the farm would be hard, I was prepared for it, but I have to say that I thought it would make me happier,” is how Stella describes her experience from the job.
The minimum wage in Ireland is 7 Euros per hour. Yet Stella was receiving just under 3 Euros. “I know 3 Euros per hour isn’t much and that I could earn that much in the Czech Republic too,” says Stella. She knew that finding another job would be very difficult, because there are hardly any short term jobs available, such as for three months or for the holidays. Employers usually wanted workers to stay for half a year or more. They also requested confirmation from your previous employer, from the Czech Republic in this case. “In Ireland, the average wage is 10 Euros per hour, the minimum is 7.3 Euros and we make just under 3 Euros per hour. But we do get room and board for free,” says Stella. But her cousin was convinced that Irish people would never work on a farm for that kind of money. Two Irish people who worked with them on the farm earned 8 euros per hour. “But they didn’t sleep or eat on the farm…” explains Stella.
She and Pepa occupied a room in the attic. They lived in the house together with the owner of the farm, who stayed there from Monday to Wednesday. The room was small, but cozy, and the walls were painted with various murals. Stella liked reading there, or studying, because an important exam awaited her at school upon her return. Previously, two long-term employees from Poland had lived there.
The organic farm produced vegetables without any type of chemical spraying or other artificial means. In addition to the vegetables grown there, the farm also imported another sixty types of fruit and vegetables. Stella had to load the imported products into the refrigerator or the storehouse. This was rather difficult work for her, because the crates were very heavy.
On Saturdays and Sundays Stella had the possibility to sell fruit and vegetables at the market. On those days she would get up at five in the morning and she and her co-workers would leave at six for the market in Temple Bar, a well-known section of Dublin. The market opened at nine in the morning and closed at six in the evening. “I really like that the Irish are very particular about whether the fruit and vegetables come from Ireland. If the products are imported from another country, they might not buy them,” is how Stella praised the support for national agriculture. But selling at the market was also not easy.
After an entire day there, Stella had to load and unload the goods from the truck. Sometimes the work didn’t manage to get done and you would hear that the goods were still being sorted the next day. In addition to this work, Stella also sorted fruits and vegetables. She put the produce that was in good condition into the storehouse or the refrigerator, and what was in worse condition went into the crates that were then used to feed the pigs. “It was really odd to see that fruit that in my opinion would be good to eat gets thrown to the pigs, but I got used to it. Even the pigs have to have something to eat,” Stella recalls. Among her other responsibilities was loading the goods in the crates onto beds of straw as per order. Stella usually didn’t do this job by herself, but rather, together with several other workers. Among her favorite jobs were planting new plants, picking fruit, and digging up plants. There was a special technique for pulling weeds on the farm, they called it “bed weeding”. This was very difficult for Stella because to do this job she and two co-workers had to lie on their stomachs on a box-like structure pulled by a tractor with their heads down, and pull weeds as the tractor went along.
Stella would spend her free time in various ways: she would read, exercise, go running, go on walks. She really liked to draw. She would occasionally go for coffee or shopping to Baltinglass, a town four miles away. Once a week, she would write her parents an e-mail saying how she was doing. She never called anyone. She wrote her grandmother a letter. When she had a day free, she liked to spend it by herself. On the hill behind the farm she found a spot where there was an amazing view of the surrounding area. “This is my secret place, which I’ve only shown to a couple of people so far. I come here to relax and meditate, because I need to be alone sometimes. It’s important for me, since I’m surrounded by people all day,” Stella admitted.
With the money she’s earned, she would like to buy a tent, sleeping bag and backpack, and the rest will be for school. After all, earning money for school was the main reason she went to work abroad. She did not send any money home.
Despite the badly organised work on the farm and the fact that she had to drag heavy crates of fruit and vegetables, and the fact that she worked all day and was very tired in the evening, Stella fell in love with Ireland, a country she had not known previously. “The countryside is similar to ours in Bohemia, trees, fields, forests. My grandparents live in an area known as “potato land”. I’m used to agriculture,” Stella explains. She is convinced that she will return to Ireland and even to the farm one day, either as a tourist or as a seasonal worker again: “It was an unforgettable experience. I do not regret it and would recommend it to everyone. It is the school of life.”