Week in review

Posted on May 18, 2012 by stef

It’s been a busy week here at Pine Island Cranberry! We’ve finished this year’s planting project today and hit our 2012 goal of 51.83 acres planted, all in new Rutgers varieties–thanks to the efforts of the renovation and planting teams led by Joe Colon and Tug Haines.

Our roughneck fertilizer applications have begun. We are on pace to complete our fairy ring treatments ahead of schedule, we are monitoring for bluntnose leafhoppers, and as always, we are being vigilant about frost events.

As the season goes on, we will continue to introduce you to the Pine Island team. In the upcoming weeks, we will also talk in detail about our renovation program, which is a crucial part of our growth plan…and, of course, the ongoing management of this year’s crop.

PIICM – Scouting

Posted on May 11, 2012 by stef

It’s hard to fit the scope of Pine Island’s integrated crop management program into one blog entry. As our PIICM manager Cristina Tassone said a couple of weeks ago, PIICM “won’t work without the whole thing…everything is related, more and more every day.” Our PIICM program is a comprehensive one, based on managing the relationships between water, soils, weather, disease, insects, and nutrition, constantly evaluating current conditions as well as history and trends in order to help make good decisions with regard to water management, pest control, and other issues. We pride ourselves on using techniques to maintain the balance of natural predators and don’t apply chemicals unless absolutely necessary.

One of our core values here at Pine Island Cranberry is doing what needs to be done when it’s time to do it. A corollary to this, of course, is that if nothing needs to be done, we leave well enough alone. We used to spray on a calendar schedule; now we let nature lead the way.

To that end, one of the most important things we do is scouting. We take a net and sweep a section of bog:

And then we check to see what turns up. In this case, Cristina immediately found a spotted fireworm:

In addition to using nets, Cristina also looks at budding plants to see if the larvae are making a home:

If the count reaches the threshold level, we will do what needs to be done; if the amount is negligible, we leave it alone.

Our PIICM manager also follows up with other scouts in the field. This week, Matt and Jeremy were scouting Turtle bog:

Not everything will be spotted while in the field, so they gather specimens to examine back at the office:

Once the data is analyzed, Cristina will consult with others for the best way to proceed.

PIICM is a season-long process; as the season goes on, we’ll blog about different aspects of the program.

Pine Island Team Profile: Fred Torres

Posted on May 4, 2012 by stef

This week at Pine Island, I rode along with general manager Fred Torres as he spent his morning making sure our day-to-day operations were running smoothly. A second-generation employee (his father Ernesto was foreman under Bill Sr.), Fred grew up here and has worked on the farm part-time since he was a boy, moving up to full-time in 1971 after his high school graduation. “I started out making boxes [in the blueberry packing house], then I was the shed boy. . .then I started doing all the different jobs here and there. Ditching, that kind of thing. My dad let me run my first small crew when I was 18.” He’s continued to do this, though his scope has considerably expanded; now he’s responsible for the big picture. He oversees all of Pine Island’s operations: sanding, flooding, frost, irrigation. . .he’s worked on it all and has good instincts for doing what has to be done when it’s time to do it.

Our first stop is out at 33 Acre, where Alberto is running a crew removing swan strings. This is a method we’ll talk about in-depth in a future entry, but essentially it’s how we keep swans from destroying the vines without harming them in the process. Fred does what he does all day: talks with Alberto about his crew and their progress, resolves any issues, makes suggestions, and does whatever it takes in order to take care of business.

On the way to our next stop, he talks about frustrations with the weather – it’s keeping the crews from finishing the planting – but he does like getting all the little jobs completed, both for the satisfaction of accomplishment and for the way the smaller jobs fit into the bigger picture. “One thing about a farm,” he says. “You always have to be a step ahead. Two or three steps ahead. You need to have a plan ready.”

Next we visit Holly bog to check on Rick, working on the ditcher. Cleaning out the ditches is how we prepare for summer and makes water management much easier. Fred likes to have it done in case it’s a rainy season; it helps tremendously with irrigation.

After seeing how Rick is doing, we ride to Sawmill to see how the other member of his team is doing cleaning out the pipes. Alejandro is working steadily and carefully.

Fred had some things to chat about with our equipment supervisor, Carlos Baez, so we drove over to the temporary shop to follow up on some ordered parts and to see about some repairs.

Then it was time to check on another long-term employee working on ditching, this time at Blueberry Hill.

We finished our busy morning by going to see the progress at the new shop, where Fred spoke with facilities supervisor Mike Guest about progress and plans.

On the way back to the office, Fred says, “Managing’s a funny thing; nobody necessarily sees you doing it. It’s not like pulling boards, or running sprinklers, or anything like that. But it needs to be done, and if it doesn’t get done right, you definitely know about it.” He tells a story about a reporter who had spent the day covering the harvest; she’d seen him several times as he was making his rounds, and she stopped him to ask: “What is it, exactly, that you do?” Fred grins as he remembers his response:

“I told her I was the guy who keeps the wheels turning.”

Frost

Posted on April 27, 2012 by stef

One of the toughest things cranberry growers do is managing springtime frost conditions. In the spring, there is a danger to the crop when the temperature drops. Typically, a cranberry bog is built at a lower level than the land immediately surrounding it and the bog temperature can drop ten to fifteen degrees lower than the uplands. These conditions make monitoring bog temperature a top priority once the winter water comes off. It’s no exaggeration to say there would be no crop if we didn’t watch for frost on the bogs. A night riding along with Jeremy Fenstermaker is an exercise in watching the weather, the water . . . and managing sleep patterns.

The call by our general manager usually goes out in the early evening; depending on the forecast, the frost team can go out anywhere from 9 P.M. to 1 A.M. This particular evening, we started at 9. The guys each have their own section to run: Jeremy’s is located on Sim Place. The night begins with making sure we have everything we need: boots, warm clothing, head lamps, and coffee (especially coffee!). And then we’re off for a long night in the middle of the bogs.

The first step is monitoring the temperature. Each bog has a thermometer (usually located in the coldest section) that requires frequent checking throughout the first part of the night.

Once the temperature drops to between 33 and 35 degrees Fahrenheit (depending on the stage of growth), it’s time to turn on the pumps. On these particular systems, the pumps need to be running at about 45 psi. More than forty years ago we used to flood the bogs to prevent frost damage; we now use sprinklers instead. When the water from the sprinklers freezes on the vines, it controls the temperature well enough to keep them from harm.

It’s also necessary to check the surrounding reservoirs and canals to make sure that the water supply is sufficient to supply the pumps.

That can take some time, and doesn’t always need to be done all at once. Depending on location and conditions–is the bog surrounded by woods? Where is the wind coming from? Is the sky clear or overcast?–some will be started earlier than others. Once they’re all started, though, the work isn’t over. The next thing is making sure all the sprinklers are working correctly. This means driving around with a spotlight and checking to make sure they’re running at full capacity.

It may sometimes be necessary to repair the sprinklers, as they won’t run at full capacity if something is blocking the line. This happens more frequently when the systems first start running, and becomes less of an issue after a few cold nights.

This goes on for the rest of the night. It does get a little easier when the sun comes up, simply because the light is better.

Once the sun comes up and we’re done the repairs, it’s time to start checking the temperature to see if it’s safe to turn off the pumps. Once the thermometer reads around 35 degrees or so and the ice is breaking up, we’re okay to shut down.

After the pumps are shut down and the paperwork is turned in, it’s off to get some sleep!

Pine Island Team Profile: Cristina Tassone

Posted on April 20, 2012 by stef

Cristina Tassone, a fourth generation grower raised in nearby Indian Mills, started with Pine Island Cranberry in 2006 in order to learn techniques she could bring back to her own family farm. She started out (as so many of us in the NJ Pinelands did) in a blueberry packing house back in high school, but went on to earn her BA in elementary education from the University of Portland in Oregon. Cristina spent seven years teaching elementary schools in both Oregon and New Jersey, then went on to Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia to earn her MBA.

A ride out with Cristina to Sim Place has her musing about how all of this began. Upon her return to New Jersey, she enrolled in Ocean Spray’s “Next Wave” program, set up for the next generation of cranberry growers. It was there she first met members of the Haines family, who thought she might be a good fit and suggested she try Pine Island Cranberry to improve her expertise. She was initially hired as a part-time scout (checking the bogs for pests) for the summer. Upon being hired as full-time, she did many of the smaller jobs wherever she was needed: installing sprinklers, running a forklift, picking up auto parts, and so forth. Bilingual in Spanish, she also used her teaching skills to give other employees language lessons.

Cristina credits her increased responsibilities to a day when she was building cranberry boxes with Mike Guest, our facilities supervisor. He was called to another project…and Cristina was put in charge of her first crew. “I’ve managed to learn something from just about everyone here,” she says. One of the more valuable things she’s learned, she added, is how to assimilate everyone else’s knowledge to inform her own decisions. As she worked with various other supervisors and team members to pick up the smaller tasks that make Pine Island a success, she began to see how it all comes together. “I don’t know everything . . . I don’t pretend to know everything,” she says. “But one of the things I continue to learn every day is how all the little pieces fit together.”

Cristina is now Pine Island’s Integrated Crop manager. Pine Island’s ICM program is based on managing the relationships between water, soils, weather, disease, insects, and nutrition, constantly evaluating current conditions as well as history and trends in order to help her make those best decisions. Her willingness to learn from others is one of her biggest strengths, and she also applies that knowledge to her other specialty: Cristina is also in charge of our recruiting, retention, and training. They might seem like disparate roles, but as Cristina says: “ICM won’t work without the whole thing…everything is related, more and more every day.”

Water Drawdown

Posted on April 13, 2012 by stef

The three things that are most important to growing cranberries are water, water, and more water.

Good water management is not only the crucial part of our work here at Pine Island – it’s essential to the balance of agriculture production with the Pinelands environment. To that end, we have over the course of many years carefully crafted a system that works with both nature and gravity to best maintain and preserve the bounty of natural resources available to us.

Once the harvest is over, the bogs are flooded in order to protect the cranberry vines from the winter weather.

When the warmer weather sets in, the bogs are drained so that the dormant vines awaken for the growing season; while cranberries are most frequently harvested using the “wet pick” method, they do not actually grow under water and thus need to go through the same growing cycle as any other fruit crop. The process, which we call “dumping water” is deceptively simple: a team member takes a gate hook (pictured below) and removes the boards that have been placed across the gate in the bog. (The boards are removed in a specific pattern to work with gravity and the natural flow of the water.)

Gerardo Ortiz, a supervisor who has been with Pine Island for 30 years, knows this process inside and out.

Once the boards have been pulled and placed on top of the gate, the water moves to the next bog along the ditches. This water returns to the reservoirs and canals in order to be reused for the next part of the cycle.

It takes about 24 hours to drain completely; here it’s about halfway done.

As we prepare for the next process, which is frost protection, our reservoirs are keeping our most valuable resource safe and ready for use.

Planting at Panama

Posted on April 5, 2012 by stef

We’re always busy at Pine Island Cranberry, but now that spring is officially here, we’re really kicking into high gear. One of our big projects right now is renovating Sim Place, an old cranberry operation we acquired in 2004. We’re taking extant bogs, replanting with new varieties, and upgrading the outdated irrigation system.

These bogs are being planted with Crimson Queen®, a new variety developed by Rutgers University, chosen to maximize efficiency and increase yields when redeveloping existing bogs.

Already-rooted vines, as supplied by Integrity Propagation, are taken from the truck and loaded onto the planter. Six workers seated in the back drop the vines into the carousel (pictured below) and then the vines are distributed into the pre-dug furrow:

They are followed by other crew members, who make sure that the vines have been placed correctly:

And they’re ready to grow! These bogs should be ready to harvest in about three years.

Irrigation, of course, is the next step, so it’s important that the sprinklers are correctly installed:

Heavy supervision is not necessary, but Bill enjoys going out onto the property and seeing how things are going!

Next week: it’s time to start taking the water off the bogs.

Welcome to picranberry.com!

Posted on March 20, 2012 by stef

Along with our new website, Pine Island Cranberry is also debuting the Pine Island Scoop, where we will be telling our story as the year goes on.

As you can see, our bogs are still flooded for the winter, but that will be changing soon as we move into warmer weather. We’re also installing sprinklers to prepare for the cold nights yet to come in April and May.

Other big projects on the horizon include preparing bogs for re-planting with some new Rutgers varieties and finishing our new shop, which is coming along very nicely:

More entries soon! If you have any questions, please contact us at info@picranberry.com; we’d love to hear from you.

Pine Island Cranberry Co., Inc.

Haines & Haines, Inc.

Author Archives: stef