Farm Helpers

[Lalaith]

Hey all
I was wondering whether any of you had helpers around the farm and what you (and they) thought was a fair wage for their help. I'm talking sort of a general farm handyman type of arrangement.

The reason I ask is because I broke my arm pretty badly last year and my hubby has been ill and so I took on a hired man to do chores and help me out. I didn't have any money to speak of so I gave him a free lease on a couple of acres to grow his own organic produce. In exchange, he works around an hour or two a day for me or sometimes more if I have a particular need.

He doesn't live on site and I don't feed him every day but if I catch him around I'll give him some of what I'm having for lunch.

Does anyone else have an arrangement like this and how do you find it works out for you? Do you barter or exchange for any other skilled or unskilled labour?

Thanks in advance for your input

 

[freemotion]

I do a fair amount of bartering, and I always trade going rate for going rate. Dollar for dollar.

If I were in your situation....well, skilled is subjective. There are a lot of things that I can't do, or can't do efficiently or without tears of frustration! So a moderately...but not craftsman...skilled handyman would be worth a decent wage to me, especially if I were bartering for it. Depending on what he does....I'm thinking $20 or more per hour. More if he's doing a lot of things that you can't get a strong high school student to do because it takes more experience. More if he needs no supervision or instruction.

Sounds like you have a reasonable trade, worth it for both of you!

 

[miss_thenorth]

My 13 (soon to be 14 )yo son, works for the neighbour once a week to muck out the stalls, do odd jobs, that the neighbour doesn't have time for. DS gets $20 a night, and he usually works about 2-3 hours.

DS loves it. If it were skilled labout, you would have to tack on some more $, but for general labour, any kid will be happy with about $8/hour.

 

[hwillm1977]

I did some part-time work at a local dairy farm... I got $15/hour for feeding, mucking, checking cattle over, maintaining some of the equipment, checking milk and getting ready for the delivery truck to pick it up... pretty basic work that anyone could do. That was a couple years ago now too.

I did part-time again at a riding stable and got $7/hour (that's less than minimum wage here), plus two riding lessons a week and I loved that. I couldn't afford to pay a dressage coach at the time and I only had to muck out 10 stalls a day, feed the horses and make sure none of them had injured themselves overnight.

 

[Lalaith]

Sounds like some of you had to work really hard for your coin. I'm thinking about mucking ten stalls a day plus everything else and cringing. But I imagine that was done for the love of horses and thus did not feel so much like work...

 

[hwillm1977]

Sounds like some of you had to work really hard for your coin. I'm thinking about mucking ten stalls a day plus everything else and cringing. But I imagine that was done for the love of horses and thus did not feel so much like work...

Yep... the cows I hated... there were 600 head of cattle there, 216 being milked at any given time but I was just helping out a neighbour for a few weeks when their hand quit, till their son came home from college. They have this fancy rotary machine that milks all 216 in a little under 2 hours.

The horses was great fun, 10 box stalls really didn't take any longer than 2 hours a day (including the feeding and scrubbing water buckets)... and I got lessons for 'free' so I loved that.