The poem starts with a small, physical ache: a sore hand, hurt from wrestling with doors in the dirt. The title, "Farmhand," plays on the double meaning of the word. The speaker is a worker, and also a person with an actual hand that hurts.
The second stanza turns the pain into a comparison. The speaker holds the hand carefully, the way you might treat a leased field, something you work but don't own. That suggests a mix of tenderness and distance, as if the body is on loan and can't be fully relied on.
The last lines widen into a quiet picture of oranges falling in the evening, with hardly anyone around to find them. It feels like waste, but also like a gentle, unnoticed beauty. The mood is lonely and tired, yet calm. The speaker seems to accept the ache, and to notice what slips by unclaimed at the end of the day.