A jimador is a type of Mexican

Mexican people

Mexican people refers to all persons from Mexico, a multiethnic country in North America, and/or who identify with the Mexican cultural and/or national identity....

 farmer

Farmer

A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, who raises living organisms for food or raw materials, generally including livestock husbandry and growing crops, such as produce and grain...

 who harvests agave

Agave

Agave is a genus of monocots. The plants are perennial, but each rosette flowers once and then dies ; they are commonly known as the century plant....

 plants, which are harvested primarily for the production of mezcal

Mezcal

Mezcal, or mescal, is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from the maguey plant native to Mexico. The word mezcal comes from Nahuatl metl and ixcalli which mean 'oven cooked agave.'...

, sotol

Sotol

Sotol is a distilled spirit made from the Dasylirion wheeleri , a plant that grows in the wilds of Northern Mexico, New Mexico, West Texas, and the Texas Hill Country . It is known as the state drink of Chihuahua, Durango and Coahuila. There are few commercial examples available...

 and tequila

Tequila

Tequila is a spirit made from the blue agave plant, primarily in the area surrounding the city of Tequila, northwest of Guadalajara, and in the highlands of the western Mexican state of Jalisco....

. This task requires the skill of identifying ripe agave, which ripens in between 8 and 12 years. 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

Coa de jima

A coa de jima or coa is a specialized tool for harvesting agaves.It is a long, machete-like round-ended knife on a long wooden handle used by a jimador to cut the leaves off an agave being harvested and to cut the agave from its roots...

 or simply coa. This is a flat-bladed knife at the end of a long pole that resembles a hoe

Hoe (tool)

A hoe is an ancient and versatile agricultural tool used to move small amounts of soil. Common goals include weed control by agitating the surface of the soil around plants, piling soil around the base of plants , creating narrow furrows and shallow trenches for planting seeds and bulbs, to chop...

. 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.