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When broccoli harvesting turns shit

By Jonny Blair


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.

So when you work in broccoli cutting a tractor follows you down never ending rows of the green vegetable and your job is to slice it, de-leaf it and throw it into the box. You're kind of stuck on each row doing your job, so you don't want to leave the row, even if you need to go to the toilet. You can carry water with you and drink it at the end of each row, where you can also have a quick piss while the tractor turns around. I admit this is a bit easier for a guy than a girl.

So one day I was on a big farm in a place called East Sassafras, northern Tasmania. There was a hill in the field, and beyond the hill you would be miles away from the base. The base is where you park you car, munch your lunch and yes, there is a portable toilet there! I had become quite an experienced broccoli cutter...

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.

Next morning was a 7am start as usual and nothing was a problem. After lunch however, we were about half way through a stretch of broccoli when I knew I needed to go to the toilet, of the number 2 variety. It was the first time this had happened while on a broccoli field. Our boss and top lady, Rebecca Gaby was working alongside us that day and I yelled over, "I'll catch you up, I need a shit" and off I ran. Initially I was going to run all the way back to the portable toilet but it was about a kilometre walk, so I pulled over at the side and crouched down in the paddock. It was out of control let's just say.

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!




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