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Comment by kyleblarson | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat related but I was watching Idaho Public TV the other night and found it interesting that high school students get a school vacation during harvest season and comprise a large percentage of the harvest workers in Eastern Idaho: https://www.capitalpress.com/high-school-students-key-to-eas...

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I lived in south east Idaho during some of my high school years and worked for a local potato farmer. During the fall break, I would work 18 hours a day driving potato trucks, and pulling dirt clods from conveyor belts.

If the work was not done by the end of the break, you could get excused from school for as long as needed to finish. Kind of weird priorities for the area if you ask me.

And yes, it was just as glamorous as it sounds.

How were the earnings? Sounds like it might be some pretty solid income for a highschooler.

My wife is from the area and she did "spud harvest" as it is called. You are correct it is a pretty good income, my wife would regularly walk away with 3-4k which considering just a week of work isn't bad.

Heck I've thought about taking a week off to do spud harvest, take a chance to get out of the office and do something physical for once.

that's pretty interesting. Reminds me of this statement a coworker of mine said when the California wildfires returned last year. He shared with us that up in Oregon, the state he recently moved to, they recruit a ton of volunteers and local men to go to town on any fire that pops up and take care of business so things don't get out of control. That's a very different response from California where I think everyone waits for the officials to take care of it as far as I can see.

In NZ, most fire brigades outside of urban areas and bushfire response are volunteer based. Which requires a lot of understanding employers - it wasn't uncommon in my rural town during our high fire risk season for our teacher to sprint out the classroom when his pager went off, then the principal would cover for him.

A year or 2 back someone did a little arson on the wooden part of the fence around an electric substation in my town (California). The firefighters were standing around with their thumbs up their asses watching it burn because they had to wait for some official to get dragged out of bed to tell them the mean electricity wasn't going to hurt them.

I still kick myself for not just grabbing a one of their fire extinguishers off the back of the truck and putting it out myself. From outside the fence where the public are allowed to go at all times and no electricity magically kills them.

The vast majority (around 67% in 2018) of US firefighters are volunteers[1]. My mother started as a volunteer in her small canyon community in Orange County, CA, and did that for five years before becoming a full-time engineer for the OCFD. She worked several wildfires in the area as a volunteer.

1: https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-too...

I live near Mountain View and one only needs to go 15 miles out in rural areas like La Honda where the local fire service is all volunteer (cause there's not enough taxes to pay for fulltime fire fighters) with a few CalFire outposts scattered in closer for state forest coverage. There's also a combined network of professionals and volunteers who watch for signs of fire in forested areas statewide.

All depends on how rural your area is / the availability of services. Many places don't have fire service of their own, or they have volunteer service that doesn't necessarily work around the clock.

Similar vacation scheduling happens in northern Maine around the potato harvest.

https://bangordailynews.com/2016/10/08/news/aroostook-county...

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