Christina
Mehlhorn
July 8
A Rather Unexpected Delivery Day
One of the biggest lessons to take away from this Friday was about adaptation. The weekend prior, one of my coworkers, the new Farm Manager, was in a car accident that put him out of work. In addition to his absence, my other coworker was off for a week. This brought our harvesting team down from five people to three. Because the company has a small staff to begin with, the loss of two workers could become a huge detriment to the company for a week of deliveries and farm upkeep.
I know I have mentioned before about how important the customer is to the company. This was one of those times when the goals and motivations of the company have to be remembered in order to create a plan for the day. The day usually begins at 8 am by pulling trays and starting the process of harvesting. Each team typically has a specific set of greens that they are tasked with harvesting. I am usually a part of team one that focuses on cilantro, various radishes, shungiku, basil, and some varieties of peas. With those we package the cilantro, any individual radish orders, the radish mix, the basil, the rainbow mix, and the peas. Three of us are on team one and the remaining two are on team two. Their team focuses on more of the specialty orders, varieties that are more difficult to harvest, live trays, and the nutrition mix.
On this Friday, we began pulling trays and harvesting at 7:30. I was moved from team one to team two. Additionally, we asked one team member whose job is to clean trays, fill trays with soil, and clean up around the farm in between the various tasks completed throughout the workday. She had never been a part of the harvest before, so we had to train her while we were harvesting. Although this addition did bring team one up to two people, we were still down one person on team one. We harvested from 7:30 until around 11:30. Typically, during this process we have to record the weight of the greens harvested for each tray. During a normal day with recording, we harvest and record from 8 to 11 with a full team. With the limited team, we decided that having records for this specific harvest was not the priority. The focus of the day was decided to be about getting the harvest done to get deliveries to the restaurants before 5 pm. Even with cutting the time it takes to record each tray’s yield, it still took an extra hour for harvest.
It isn’t always easy to adapt to sudden changes, especially with a limited amount of workers to pull into empty positions. To combat this, one must cut out what they can in order to make sure the day runs as close to normal as possible. All in all, the morning was hectic, but it was successful nonetheless. I think that was the most important aspect to witness in action.
Tried borage for the first time. It tastes exactly like cucumber.
How we move all of our delivery bags and trays up in the tiny city elevator.
