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While hitchhiking around Northern California and Southern Oregon recently, I encountered dozens of nomads thumbing rides on Highway 101, pitching tents under bridges or parking their vans in unused parking lots for the night, cooking organic vegan food on propane stoves, and wandering around towns with small scissors hanging from their backpacks. Dubbed by the locals as “trimmigrants”, these predominantly European travelers flock to the west coast US year after year to capitalize on the region’s biggest cash crop: marijuana. In the autumn months, the plants are ready for harvest but there is a lot of work to be done before it’s ready to appear on dispensary shelves or in the trunk of your local drug dealer’s car. I was lucky enough to interview Clyde Cladiddlehopper, a seasoned trimmigrant, to get an inside look into this booming industry.
Me: What type of work do you do?
Clyde: The main work that most people come for is trimming. Marijuana buds grow surrounded by leaves, and it’s the trimmer’s job to cut the leaves down so that mostly bud material remains. The buds contain a higher concentration of THC and CBDs than the leaves, which are the active chemicals that make marijuana function as a medicine. The trimmer will take a branch from a dried cannabis plant, buck the buds off of the main branch, check them for mold or abnormalities, and break them down into 0.5-2 inch segments with as little exposed stem as possible. They then cut off the excess leaf material and shape the bud so that it looks pretty–kind of like trimming hedges on a micro scale.
This isn’t the only type of work available, though, as harvesting, drying, and construction projects also require a significant amount of time and effort. Early in the season, the harvesting and drying work begins, then trimming with a few harvest/maintenance days mixed in, and by the end of the season the trimming is wrapping up and more focus is given to taking down gardens, repairing greenhouses, etc. It depends on the grow operation, also, because some hire only trimmers and some hire employees to help with everything.
Me: How long does the work last?
Clyde: The harvest/trim season is roughly three months, from September until November, but it changes a bit from year to year depending on the weather. There are many operations of different sizes, so some will hire for several weeks or even months at a time, but most small-scale operations hire a crew for a week or two and finish up all of their product in that time, and then they’ll keep maybe one or two people to help with the necessary end-of-season construction and maintenance. During the job it’s typically 12 hours/day, 7 days/week, so it’s a lot of work. It’s pretty common to see trimmers disappear into the hills for a couple weeks when they find a job and then show up again along Highway 101 in Humboldt County, searching for the next job.
Me: How do you find work on weed farms?
Clyde: It’s all about networking. Talk to as many people as possible, give them your number, tell them you are motivated and want to work. Some people stand on the road with signs, others go to bars and talk to locals, but the best way is to come up with a creative approach so that a grower will remember you over the other hoards of trimmers lining up outside the local grow shop. I’ve found work through friends, friends of friends, but my most successful tactic was hitchhiking and eventually being picked up by somebody involved in the industry who was comfortable recommending me to his friends after spending several hours in the car together. You’ve gotta be careful about who you work for, though, because some growers are real shitheads.
Me: Have you had any bad experiences?
Clyde: I’ve had a lot more good experiences than bad ones. Most growers are really great people; old hippies who love weed, new age spiritual hippies who have found a way to fund their daily purchases of $20 gluten-free dairy-free organic raw chia seed with spinach smoothies and rocks blessed by South American shamans, or redneck-turned-stoner grow bros with huge trucks who are too permastoned to do any harm. But there are a small minority of growers who have gone crazy from the money and treat their workers like slaves. I’ve heard stories of sexual harassment from growers who have spent too much time on their own in the hills disconnected from society, growers who refused to pay their employees, sweatshop-like working conditions, and excessive drug use.
My worst experience was in the village of Hugo, Oregon, working for this horrible woman who spent the majority of her waking moments screaming the word “fuck”. I was part of a crew doing some construction projects for her. She would always tell us to do something, for example to put the floor supports in a certain position, and we’d try to explain how that would make the floor uneven so we should do it differently. She would then scream “fucking do it right fucking now!” and storm off. We’d do it her way, she’d come back and find the uneven floor and scream at us for doing it wrong. And she would deduct dollars from our payment when she saw us doing things like “putting on a fucking bandaid” or “fucking walking too fucking slowly to get a different tool while on the fucking clock. Because she created such a negative atmosphere, nobody cared at all about their work, so we wasted a ton of time on the clock when she wasn’t looking, hid our mistakes instead of fixing them, and generally did horrible work. The only thing that kept everybody there was the great people in the crew and the really good (read: profitable) weed that she had promised to let us trim when the construction was finished.
Me: What are the living conditions like?
Clyde: It depends on the operation, and ranges from sleeping in your own tents/cars to living in the grower’s house. Most places at least have a kitchen for communal use, a bathroom, and some extra blankets if it gets cold at night. Many have camper trailers or RVs which trimmers sleep in, too. Some places will feed you three meals a day to increase your productiity but most don’t.
Me: Is it legal?
Clyde: That depends. In Oregon, recreational weed is legal and in California, it’s been legal for medicinal use for a while and was just recently legalized recreationally, so many operations are growing legally. How they handle the employees and sell the product can vary, but as policy changes make it possible to sell and employ legally on the books, more and more operations are moving in that direction. Working for cash without a work visa is generally frowned upon by the authorities.
Me: What are your favorite and least favorite things?
Clyde: My favorite thing is the community. The other people who come to trim are awesome to hang out with. You get a lot of long-term travelers who do this to fund their travels for the rest of the year, as well as lots of people who are at transition points in their lives and are doing seasonal work because they don’t want to be too tied down to one place or job. Everyone has an interesting and unique story and people are really easy to connect with. And it’s a great way to save money. You get paid by your output weight, which depends on how fast you are and how dense the buds are, but it’s common to make between $150-$300 in a 12 hour day.
My least favorite thing is sitting inside, under a bright flourescent light, moving only my hands for hours at a time. We listen to a lot of good music, TED talks, audiobooks, and podcasts, though, so at least we can learn something interesting while working.
Me: Would you recommend this type of work to other people?
Clyde: It’s not for everybody, but for travelers or open-minded people who want to experience something new and save some money quickly, it’s great. You have to be able to put up with intense bursts of working, uncertainty about when or if you’ll have more work, potential legal ramifications, sleeping in cold rainy places, and you’ll have to be willing to push the boundaries of your comfort zone. If you can do that, then you’ll love the trimmigrant community.
