A jimador is a type of

farmer A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer m ...

who harvests

agave ''Agave'' (; ; ) is a genus of monocots native to the hot and arid regions of the Americas and the Caribbean, although some ''Agave'' species are also native to tropical areas of North America, such as Mexico. The genus is primarily known for ...

plants, which are harvested primarily for the production of

mezcal Mezcal (, ), sometimes spelled mescal, is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from any type of agave. The word ''mezcal'' comes from Nahuatl , which means "oven-cooked agave", from and .What is MezcalElmezcal.org Traditionally the word " ...

sotol Sotol is a distilled spirit from the Chihuahuan desert northern Mexico, western Texas sourced from the family of Asparagaceae; the genus Dasylirion and several species, most commonly: ''Dasylirion wheeleri'', Dasylirion durangense, ''Dasyliri ...

and

tequila Tequila (; ) is a distilled beverage made from the blue agave plant, primarily in the area surrounding the city of Tequila northwest of Guadalajara, and in the Jaliscan Highlands ('' Los Altos de Jalisco'') of the central western Mexican s ...

. This task requires the skill of identifying ripe agave, which ripens in between 5 and 35 years, depending on the agave species. Unripe agave can have a bitter or overly sweet taste, ruining the distilled spirits made from them. The primary tool of a jimador is the coa de jima or simply coa. This is a flat-bladed knife at the end of a long pole that resembles a hoe. The coa is used to first remove the flower from the agave, which causes the central pineapple (or piña) to swell. Later, the piña is harvested, using the same tool to cut off all of the external leaves of the plant, leaving only the pulpy center which is then chopped and cooked in preparation for the mezcal or tequila production.

References

* {{agriculture-stub Agricultural occupations (plant)