I had a similar thing . Iwould be hard pressed to call this a field trip , but it was something outside and not learning , so I think it counts . My highschool was across the street from an almond orchard , owned by a private farmer . Rather than a traditional science class , I opted for the Agriculture class , since I was in FFA which got me free tickets to the county fair every year . SCORE ! . The owners of the almond orchard would hire our Agriculuteral Science class and the other Ag . Science classes to go out into the orchard and do work . We would spend the class period picking out large sticks and rocks and tossing them aside so they would jam the harvesting machines . Hire is in quotes here . Even though the farmers paid for our services , we , the students , didn ' t see a single penny . Talk about free labor . However , I have to be fair and say that the money did go back into the FFA , and we got a nifty new pickup truck with an FFA logo and everything for hauling stuff around during the summer when we were getting ready for the fair . So it ' s not as though we never saw the money again . Still , a lot of my classmates mostly the ones who didn ' t live on farms and were only looking for an easy A complained about it .