Every year we recruit thousands of kids in the midwest to detassel. It is hard/hot work. I did the calculations, and, it appeared, once you got past the promises, to amount to about $4-5/hr for my daughter who is now old enough to work.
My wife grew up on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin and knows all about detassling corn. She still runs circles around me.
I used to carry and TOSS watermelons (and I am talking about 35 to 55 pound watermelons, not the oversized grapefruit you see now) all day long in South Carolina, average temp mid nineties, sometimes one hundred or more with extremely high humidity and was happy to get three or four dollars for an entire DAY fifty years ago. There was no air conditioning at home, I was going to be hot and miserable anyway so being miserable with a couple of dollars in my pocket was better than miserable and broke.
Until I was nineteen, I rogued and detasseled corn, walked beans, and bailed hay.
The only one I actually enjoyed was the roguing, but all of them brought in money in rural areas in which cushy jobs weren’t available.
I am glad I did it all. It further encouraged a good work ethic.
Oh, and I realized just how nice it could feel to simply take a shower and sit down with a soda. It’s never better than after truly hard work.