The day I did a shit in a broccoli field

By Jonny Blair


With travelling comes strange and amusing stories. This one, though slightly disgusting just highlights the amusement you can look back on, and in this case laugh at myself a couple of years down the line. Did I really shit myself in a broccoli field? Yes!

While living in Tasmania I worked all over the place, doing broccoli farming in 13 different farms! I loved it and urge you all to try farming in Tasmania. Earning a living as a broccoli farmer was great!

Basically you walk down endless broccoli paddocks cutting as much broccoli that is ready as you can and you fire it into crates on the back of the tractor which follows you. Once you have started one of the rows, you have to finish it. You can't really leave half way through a row and you need to carry water with you. At the end of each row you can go for a leak or a shit if you need to. I do admit this is easier if you are male!

On this particular day I was working out at East Sassafras in the north of Tasmania. It was a massive farm. While cutting we worked our way up a large hill, beyond which you disappeared into wilderness and were miles from your base (at your base you park your car, eat lunch and there's even a portable toilet). At this point I was an experienced broccoli cutter.

It was 18th March 2010, the morning after St. Patrick's Night, so a few of our team had gone down to Molly Malone's pub, myself obviously included to meet another travelling Northern Irishman, Chaz Fitzsimmons.

The morning ran smoothly however and from 7am to 1pm we worked before having a quick lunch. Just after lunch and we had got half way through a long row of broccoli when I realised I needed a shit - yes it was ready to come out. Our boss was Rebecca Gaby and she was alongside us that day so I shouted over to her that I needed to go. So off I went - initially running all the way towards the portable toilet before realising it was too far to go, so time had beaten me...

A few seconds after taking my trousers and boots off which wasn't easy I then had to use leaves from broccoli plants to clean myself. It wasn't enough so my underpants were used as toilet roll and then dumped behind a tree near the fence. It was then that my team and tractor appeared back at the top of the hill. They knew I had ran for a shit, but now they saw me with my trousers down, running desperately back to cut more broccoli.

It was a good day in the field apart from that. Later that night, I washed all my clothes, shamelessly admitting I couldn't tell the difference between mud and shit. Don't Stop Living!




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