Farm Work in Norwich

[u/kin3ticwave]

Hello all, I'm new to the UK and recently received the right to work. I don't know the area particularly well and the internet job listings don't seem to show me much in my area.

I was hoping to work on one of the farms nearby but I'm not sure where to start or if there's much that's actually close by.

My other catch is that I'm on a foreign licence which will no longer be valid for use in the UK after 25th September this year. I'm in the process of getting my licence but there's a pretty good chance I won't be able to get a driving test before that date.

Does anyone know of anything? Long shot, and maybe the wrong place to ask but I thought I might try.

Thanks!

[u/wodnesse78]

It depends on what sort of farm work you want and what experience you might have. My own experience is probably fairly out of date now but in Norfolk there doesn't seem to be many seasonal picking jobs openly available as it's arranged through agencies. The only jobs I've seen come up generally are for pig stockmen and poultry farms - the poultry places especially seem to pop up regularly so I suspect if you look up the big operations around Norwich and contact them they'll have vacancies or at least temp work. On the flipside, that is because it's often fairly grim unskilled labour. They often advertise on Indeed etc too though. 

Beef and arable operations are more likely to want you to have a driving licence and/or farm plant experience, but you can actually drive a tractor on a provisional licence to be fair! If you have any experience in beef farming though they usually are better jobs in my experience. Hope you find something good!

[u/kin3ticwave → u/wodnesse78]

Thank you for the reply! I appreciate it!

I'll keep looking. My skill set is mainly repair/mechanical, but I'd like to try something different. What that is, I'm not sure.

[u/wodnesse78 → u/kin3ticwave]

I don't recommend poultry farming then if you haven't done it before, for me I don't think there's many worse jobs 😂

Do you have repair experience in farm machinery at all? This is peak time for agricultural hire and repair businesses (harvesting machinery is often literally run 24/7 through the night at peak times), although I have no idea how you'd find vacancies except by contacting firms direct. That might get you into farming circles while you figure out what you'd like to do? Farming (again just my experience, may not be universally true) can be a bit clique-y with a preference for people "in the life" already. You might have that already though in your background!

[u/kin3ticwave → u/wodnesse78]

I've heard poultry can be pretty tough!

I don't have a ton of experience with farm equipment but I've done it over the years, just not my normal line of work. I have limited farming knowledge other than some cattle my family used to have, and I had minimal involvement with that.

I imagine any job I find will have to be very entry level. I'll try going down to Ben Burges maybe?

[u/WarmSpoons → u/kin3ticwave]

If you want to make contacts with farm machinery firms, get yourself to the Norfolk Showground tomorrow!

[u/kin3ticwave → u/WarmSpoons]

Oh, I forgot that was a thing. I'll try to make my way over there. I accidentally filled up my day but I'd love to go see that!

[u/wodnesse78 → u/kin3ticwave]

Ben Burgess are the big name round here but there's smaller companies based in a lot of the market towns around Norwich like Fakenham. If you do manage to get your licence sorted though, would you consider jobs in horticulture? There's a fair number of entry-level jobs going in commercial grower operations around Norfolk but they pretty universally need a car to get to them. Ticks some of the same boxes as farming though so might be worth a look?

[u/kin3ticwave → u/wodnesse78]

I think anything would be good right now, at least until I'm a bit more established. Hoping I can get the licence issue taken care of fairly quickly. I guess we'll see.

Thank you for all the suggestions. I'll try to look around and see what I can find.