patrick.net

So you want to be a trimmigrant?


I was going to post this as a reply to /u/SWITCH_D1G1TS' post about heading to California, but it ended up being long so I'm just going to put it here for anyone interested.

I found work trimming weed in Yuba County, CA last year. It took about 3 months from the time we arrived, and we arrived with no contacts or connections. I was there with my then-girlfriend and our dog. My advice is to be unattached to the fruit of your work. You may have to start by working for bud, or take jobs helping manufacture shake down into hash. You might end up working for a very low rate at first until a grower knows they can trust you. Be flexible and be careful. I found work in other less-than-legal enterprises, but ended up getting out before things got too serious.

You are there for the experience. You'll likely be living in the woods with other "trimmigrants." If you are a decent, kind person, you will find friends. People will need your help from time to time, and you will come to call on others in exchange. Be open, be honest, love people at first sight.

The people who're looking to hire you are very community-minded. They probably grew up there and even if not, they have plants in the ground and as such, have invested time and money and effort in the area. Respect the land. Clean up your campsite. Pick up trash in town. Don't scare the locals, don't get piss drunk and start trouble at the bar, don't let your dog piss everywhere and run in the street.

We had several advantages. First, we were hot and we were humble. Two kids in their 20's, no hard drug problems, friendly and willing and pleasant to be around. Our dog was mature and friendly and chill. People are used to seeing too many poorly-behaved dogs, so ours was actually an advantage. Second, we had skills. I'm a lifelong musician and my girlfriend is an amazing cook. I could play saxophone or bass or banjo and hold a bunch of hippies strumming shitty guitars into a cohesive musical unit. She could turn a handful of random ingredients consisting of whatever everyone happened to have in their pack into a soul-healing meal for 12 people, using a propane camp stove and some beat-up old pots and flatware. Third, and this one is important, we had a car and we gave people rides. Hitch hiking is still a normal way of getting around up there. We were able to drive our little Rav4 from our camp into town to look for work every morning, and we were able to help out and get two or three (or six) friends and their dogs and their gear up there with us.

The interview process was pretty easy, once we found out where it takes place. We ended up in a very small township that I'll just call The Ridge. It had a bar, a coffee shop, a second hand store, a pizza shop, a community center, a couple churches, and a gas station. The rest was farms, residences, and wilderness. Trimmigrants who had been there before or who had been lucky enough to hear about and find the place formed a tight-knit group. There were quarrels and there was drama but people mostly looked out for each other. If someone did something repeatedly frowned upon (and it takes a particularly thick skull to fall into that with these people) they would be shunned until they left. There were one or two instances where I think people were either driven to the edge of the next town and told not to come back, or they were killed. There are some wild folks up there. Unless you're a blatant alcoholic with real rape-y vibes who's known to damage property and piss off locals, this shouldn't be a problem. It's a very accepting place.

The way to get jobs is to buy rolling papers and to learn how to use them. If you're sitting around in a circle with a bunch of 20-something dirty kids and a 40-year-old man with long hair walks up to you, he's probably a grower. Don't freak out and fangirl and bother them, they're not there to talk to you yet. They probably recognized one of the people you're sitting with and want to come say hi. Just sit and listen and maybe take notes. The conversation will likely slide subtly into that year's crop. They might talk about how tall their trees are or use some lingo that is really specific. Read up on your weed plant anatomy. If they talk about "colas" they're not discussing soda. Eventually, the grower will ask if anyone has a paper. This is an important question. Speak up, say yes, and hand him one. He may hand you some fresh, dank brand-new weed and ask you to roll one. Hopefully you've been practicing your joint rolling, because he's going to watch your fingers and determine how familiar you are. This is a process that may happen daily. The easiest way to not fuck up is to not talk too much. I had the advantage of usually being the guy standing there playing acoustic bass or playing along to someone's bluetooth speaker on recorder or strumming out an old cowboy song on guitar. This made my particular circle more attractive, and saved me from having to roll joints right away.

It's not always that complicated. I've heard that in Arcata you can just sit in the square with a piece of cardboard that has a pair of scissors drawn on it and someone will pick you up.

When we finally got our first job, it was a local friend who told us about it, his name started with B. We were well-liked in the area after weeks and weeks of showing our faces, so when B heard about a farm needing work, he singled us and a half-dozen of our friends out and told us where to go. B could have told a hundred other people, but we were the first to pop into his head as worthy trimmers, because of the effort we had put in helping people and because we had a personal relationship with this individual.

We had a range of different experiences working on pot farms. Our first one was the best, we were on a well-established, legit family farm that raised hogs and grew tomatoes. As it happens, the ideal growing conditions for cannabis and tomatoes are almost identical. This was a generations-old food farming operation that grew weed on the side as a cash crop. They had a good relationship with local law-enforcement, partially because of contributions made to local organizations and charities. We had access to indoor bathrooms, they fed us a big country-style lunch in the middle of every work shift, and they paid us cash at the end of every day. They were cool about our dog and they treated us well. This is ideal.

Our second experience was with a guy who had a lot of charisma. He did what many growers do, which was wait until the last minute and then roll through the middle of town basically picking up random trimmers and driving them miles and miles out to his secluded pot farm. I'll be honest, we probably got this job because my girlfriend at the time was beautiful and talkative. It was us and our Cuban friend, plus two dogs in our Toyota following this guy in his pickup, hauling ass on windy two-lane highways in the middle of the night. When we got there, they had makeshift lean-to platforms for us to set tents up on. We had been camping by the river and it had been raining a lot recently, so this was an improvement. The place had already cut down their plants, we were only there to trim. There were no food crops or livestock. The place was completely reliant on food purchased off-site, and the only money coming in was (apparently) from the weed we were trimming.

There was some drama as they initially split us up. My girlfriend, myself, and several Spanish girls were allowed to stay and work with this guy, while everyone else, including our Cuban friend and his dog, were sent to help out another grower. That night and the following day, as we trimmed, it became apparent that this guy was probably a tweaker. We ended up staying there two nights, I think, and taking a small paycheck when we left. We were glad to leave. As I mentioned before, having a car was valuable. We could have been stuck in a potentially dangerous situation if we hadn't had reliable wheels. It can be hard to get a grower to drive you back to town, especially if you're leaving before his crop is finished. We were worried about our foreign friend and didn't see him again until a week later.

The final place we worked was a quality operation way up in the woods. This place had actually cleared away virgin forest ground, cut a dirt road, and dug a well to support their guerrilla grow. We were allowed to drive up there in the daylight. We were pleased to see that this place had a flock of ducks for eggs and also raised tomatoes and squash, I think. The facilities were sparse and rustic, some plywood buildings and lots of tents and campers. We were used to this kind of infrastructure. It was early-November by this point, so it got cold at night, but we were also getting pretty physically acclimated to outdoor life.

We were headed up this mountain trail behind the grower's vehicle and a van full of our friends. The problem was, we had taken a crazy psychedelic-enhancing tincture made from an ancient egyptian-jewish seed called Syrian Rue, on top of some psilocybin mushrooms. We had good introductions when we got there, and even ran into some other familiar faces on the farm (they had maybe 25 people trimming there.) We sat down and started trimming. The thing was, we were tripping balls. This was election night, and we were way up in the woods away from society. Our drug-induced paranoia made us believe that the world was going to shit and we were going to have to make our final stand up on this mountain with these well-armed hippies. Later, I came to believe that the people we were working for had it out for us. I thought the head guy was slipping adderall into the coffee. I thought we were going to get kidnapped, that I would get killed and my girlfriend would get sold into sex slavery. I don't even know, we were pretty zonked. We ended up bailing on those nice people without getting paid. That one was a good opportunity that we (mostly I) screwed up by being irresponsible with drugs.

There's another lesson for you, know your limits. If some guy living in an RV cautiously offers you a drug you've never heard of and tells you it will definitely freak you out and probably change your state-of-mind permanently, believe him, and don't take it before you have to work.

My time trimming in Northern California was meaningful and difficult and exciting. All-in-all, the time spent living on the river with our little tribe of beautiful, flawed travelers was the most enjoyable part of the whole thing. We hiked several miles over rough terrain every day. We swam naked in the river and shared coffee and spliffs and music and stories and food. We met people from all over the world, amazing, inspiring people with resilient spirits and big hearts. I was vetted by career criminals, doing small, simple jobs like driving them around or helping them move innocent packages as they watched and tested to see how well I followed directions. We eventually peaced out of there with a few thousand dollars in-hand. We could have made a lot more, but we started with no connections, nothing but our wits, our car, and the name of a town. I'm hesitant to give out the name of the place here, but these are stories that have relevance in any trimming or seasonal labour scene.

I broke up with that girl and went on to start hopping trains. I ended up in Boulder, Colorado in January with no shoes, totally burnt out after a heavy acid trip. I went home to Washington on a Greyhound bus, healed my feet and my heart and my soul, quit doing drugs and smoking pot, joined a 6-piece ska band for a van tour around the US, and continue to travel off-and-on as my music career allows.

To those who have heard about this kind of work and are curious or interested, lighting out and joining this strange, happy community of wanderers might be just what you need. People say that the scene is crowded, but in my experience, growers (and other types of "employers") are always looking for good, reliable people. The road will teach you so much about yourself, about the world, about nature. You will see human nature at it's best and it's worst. Compassion and courage are requirements, but they are also traits that you will acquire as you see others exhibiting them.

If you are serious about finding trim work, now is the time! Most people in N. California harvest in late summer through late November. You need time to get there and establish yourself in the scene. There is no time like the present.

I'll be hitch hiking from Washington State to New Orleans this fall. If you're anywhere along that possible route, or if you just want to talk, pm me. Good Luck out there.

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