@27sp.sandra Thanks so much, Sandra!
Regarding the kiwi flowers - I just realize that it probably sounds much more romantic than it is. Kiwis grow a bit like wine grapes (you live in Esslingen, so you’re familiar with that I guess), so imagine long rows with vine-like plants. I was picking the male buds from the plant, which got later processed for the pollen in a special mill. The pollen was later sprayed on the open female buds to increase pollination and therefore boost the harvest. Bees still do the heavy lifting of pollination, but not every bud opens at the same time and an unpollinated female bud won’t grow into a Kiwi. So for farmers, it’s very profitable to have people helping with the pollination. I stayed for the whole season and picked the grown Kiwis afterward too.
So much for the magical story of kiwi pollination. I did a lot of agricultural labor while backpacking around Australia and New Zealand. Cherries, blueberries, grapes, Tomatoes, Zucchini… It’s very, very hard work and you have to be fast to earn decent money because it’s all piece-rate based. I got a good understanding of the backbreaking labor that pickers all over the world have to do, so we can have a full-stacked fruit and veggie aisle in the supermarket. It made me even more aware of the worth of produce and I think people would be a lot less wasteful if they knew what kind of labor is concentrated in just one single Kiwi / Cherry / Tomato.