Cannabis harvest season brings seasonal workers to California

Humboldt County in California is known for its giant sequoias. But this region, located 200 km north of San Francisco, is also famous for something else. Humboldt is all about cannabis What Napa is to wine: it is the heart of the cannabis production in the United States.

Every fall, young people—mostly in their twenties—come from all over the world to harvest cannabis. They’re looking for jobs as «trimmers,» workers who clean the buds and prepare them for sale. Locals have a name for these young migrant workers: the « trimmigrants« .

More than 100,000 cannabis plants are growing on the slopes of Humboldt, according to an estimate by the county sheriff. All these plants need to be harvested at the same time and processed quickly to prevent mold or other problems. From September through November, everyone is hard at work. And that’s where the “trimmigrants” are a huge help.

To understand this story, you need to know what goes into preparing weed. Cannabis grows in huge bushes, and its flowers are the flower heads that’s meant to be smoked. Trimmers trim the buds, cut off the small leaves and stems, and shape the buds with scissors. The idea is to make the weed look presentable so it sells well in medical marijuana dispensaries.

Cleaning Cannabis Buds

Gaberville, a small town of 900 residents in Humboldt, swarms of migrant workers during harvest season, boys and girls, with bulky backpacks and pit bulls. Many of them look like modern-day homeless people.

These seasonal workers are paid by weight, and the fastest ones can earn up to 500$ a day—in cash and under the table—but if the plantation where they work is illegal and there’s a police raid, they could also end up in prison.

The harvest attracts young people eager to work, but also those who are more drawn to the easy access to cannabis. Young Europeans are hired more readily than Americans, who are seen as the children of hippies.

Tim Blake has been growing cannabis since the 1970s. His collective, Healing Harvest Farms, is located south of Humboldt in Mendocino County and organizes, among other things, the’Emerald Cup, the local Cannabis Cup. His farm is small but legal. Tim grows 25 plants—the limit for medical marijuana—but his plants are huge.

«Look at the different colors,» he said, pointing to his plants. «There are the purple ones, then the dark green ones, and then the light green ones.».

Tim's plants look like little trees. They're over 3 meters tall, and each one will yield more than 3 kg of weed. «As soon as you touch the leaves, you can smell the resin. It gets right on your fingers.»

Tim employs six people to clean his heads. Worried that a stranger might steal his entire harvest—which is worth nearly 250,000 $—Tim hires only seasonal workers he knows.

«We sit here all day,» says a seasonal worker named Bishma, a local who works in the restaurant industry to support his wife and two children. But during the fall harvest, he lives on the farm full time. «Some people think we sit here for 8 hours. But we sit here for 14 hours. And it’s the same repetitive motion, over and over again.».

Many locals depend on cannabis. For young people, it’s such a lucrative job that some earn in three months the money they’ll need for the whole year. The cannabis legalization will likely lead to lower wages, bringing them in line with those for any other agricultural work. Not to mention mechanization, which is expected to arrive soon in cannabis fields—and perhaps even in harvest rooms.