Tag Archives: Equipment

Improvement and change

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Pine Island Cranberry always works toward doing what we do better every day. We’ve been working very hard to bring this year’s crop in with some new machinery…but we still have a crew out there with the older equipment, doing whatever it takes to finish their work!

Supervisor Jeremy Fenstermaker’s Green Team is out at Mike Hensel right now, using the old reel harvesters to knock berries off the vines. “Usually, we use the Gates Harrow on level bogs, or bogs with only one or two big picking patterns,” Jeremy says. (Each bog is picked in a specific pattern according to terrain, and the picking crew has to carefully move their harvesters around stakes which have been arranged by the team leader for maximum operational efficiency. Following this pattern allows for minimal damage to the vines.) “These bogs are older; they have ditches and aren’t very level, so we have to pick them with the reels. You need a guy leading to show where they’ve already picked. With the Gates Harrow, the water has to be low enough that Rick [Zapata] can use the fruit for a guide. With these bogs being so out of level, we can’t hold the water low enough for Rick to see where he’s picked already.”

So, while Rick is over helping next door at the Sooys’ operation (“Those bogs are nice and level, and the Sooys are great neighbors”), Jeremy reflects on some of the differences between the traditional reel harvesters and the Gates Harrow machines. “Using the Gates Harrow frees up a lot of people to do other work that needs to get done. It’s moves a lot faster, too; the only problem is you have to pick ahead so you can get the timing right for gathering and keep the water flowing.” He also thinks the new machines pick a lot cleaner than the regular ones. “I think there’s less damage to fruit with the Gates Harrow; it combs the berries off vines, which makes harvest easier on vines, as well.”

Having the additional machine still makes things easier for a crew using the traditional reel harvesters. “It’s nice having two this year,” Jeremy says. “With two you can keep three crews running smoothly with no hold-ups getting the fruit to the packing house. It works out very well.”

Around the farm

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Harvest is in full swing, and Pine Island has three picking crews and one clean-up crew working as hard as they can to bring the crop in! But that’s not the only thing going on around the place.

Work continues on the care of the young beds, with New Production manager Mike Haines making sure our newly planted acres are getting everything they need. “I still get out there and check them every day,” he says. At this time of year, we’re not putting on fertilizer, but he likes to make sure they’re getting enough water. CEO Bill Haines strongly believes the most important part of being a grower is knowing your land and getting your feet in the bog, and Mike has taken that to heart. “Mostly, I’m getting out there to familiarize myself with how they grow; I check every day on the growth of roots and runners. That way I know for future reference how quickly they grow, and learn the cause and effect of each process.” He says it’s also highly interesting to see the relationship of different soils to water (we used mined sand for some of the new acreage, as opposed to what was already in the bed pre-renovation), and the subsequent effect on the plants.

Other ongoing tasks include preparing to install 2-inch underdrain at Old 11 Acre (“We need to wait until they’re nearly dormant,” Mike says. “The greener they are the more likely they’ll be damaged by the instalation), while the equipment team fills in the gaps between harvest repairs by servicing the Hydremas and other machinery not being used for the harvest. “Mostly we’re out there fixing the stuff they break,” says equipment team member Coco Mercado. “But in the meantime, we’re keeping busy and trying to stay ahead of the maintenance schedule!”

Welder Fren Henschel, in the meantime, is working on a new piece for the bogside cleaner, which he’s hoping to test ASAP!

Harvest begins!

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It’s official: harvest has started at Pine Island Cranberry!

This week, harvest began at our Sim Place bogs, with supervisor Matt Giberson overseeing a hard-working team on the Gates Harrow and new bogside cleaner. Last week, Matt and his team (along with a staff member from Paul’s Machine & Tool) tested the cleaner on some newer bogs that aren’t yet producing much viable fruit, but now the real test has begun!

While setting up the boom remains the same, the bogside cleaner does the job of several machines, eliminating the need for an elevator, extra tractors, and the cleaning equipment at the packing house; instead, bog debris is removed from the fruit as it is gathered, and the loaded truck proceeds immediately to the Ocean Spray receiving station in Chatsworth.

“It’s going well, really well,” COO Bryan vonHahmann says. “We’ve come a long way in the last two weeks. There’s been a big learning curve, as expected. We’ve set some goals; by the end of the season, we want to have a truck loaded every twenty minutes, and we’ve just loaded one in eighteen. We have a few more modifications to make, and we’ll do those over the season, but we’re really pleased with where we’re at!”

The new technology isn’t the only thing Bryan is happy about: “The team has done a fantastic job taking on new tech and working through issues; no one is getting discouraged, just forging forward. They’re all very engaged.” He notes that the team leader has already picked up on many of the intricacies and called a brief halt to proceedings at one point because something sounded “off” to her. “She thought something didn’t sound ‘right’, and stop to check immediately. She didn’t find anything, but had the wherewithal to stop it as opposed to letting the machine run and possibly finding a bigger problem later on. She’s doing a great job.”

Bogside cleaner

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One of our top priorities at Pine Island Cranberry is efficiency; we’re always trying to find ways to become better growers! This includes being open to new methods as well as new equipment, and this week, our team tested the latter with our new bogside cleaner.

During the harvest, berries are placed on a truck via an elevator. The truck then goes to our packing house to unload and prep the berries for the receiving station by removing as much bog debris as possible. The bogside cleaner improves this process by removing the packing house step entirely and removing debris as the berries come out of the bog. “This is better on fuel and easier on the team,” explains supervisor Matt Giberson. “It should actually require fewer people in the water.”

Matt and his team tested the cleaner on some newer bogs that aren’t yet producing much viable fruit. (Young beds have yet to develop a dense canopy, and while they often yield fruit, a high percentage of that fruit contains rot.) This makes our young beds a good place to test run new equipment immediately pre-harvest. “It’s always a learning process,” Matt says. “We tried it for three days on different bogs to learn some of the variables and how we’ll need to adjust.” Among those changes were oil pressure on the pump (“That made a world of difference”, says Matt), bog shape, and amount of debris. Older bogs, especially at Sim Place, may have more roots pulled up with the rake on the Gates Harrow, which can cause the machine to jam. “We may need to make changes to the sprayer that we keep in the bog itself,” Matt says. “We’re thinking maybe adding a grate to that will help stop more branches, grass, weeds…all that fun stuff.”

“We’re going to need to make some more changes along the way,” Matt says, “but that’s what we always do! I think it’s going to make a huge difference.”

Getting ready!

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Autumn will be here quicker than we think, and to that end, our team is working hard preparing for the upcoming harvest!

Bog Renovations Manager Steve Manning is getting ready to start planting next week. “I have the guys out there right just touching up some stuff,” he says. “We’re land-leveling at the Warehouse reno and we’re fixing all the ditches. We also still have some sprinklers to install, which has to be finished before we put the plants in.” He has also followed up with his research into erosion control. “There’s a team at Black Rock putting in coconut mat all along the edges to act as erosion control, so hopefully it doesn’t wash out. Even if it only works about seventy percent of the time it should make a huge difference. There’s nothing more disheartening than getting something fixed just before a storm comes along and tears things up.”

Our much-missed seasonal team is also beginning to arrive, and have started performing other prep tasks such as weed control, while our equipment team is making sure all of the harvest equipment is in good shape! “A lot of minor repairs, mainly,” says Louis [Cantafio]. “Most of what we’re doing is preventative maintenance. During the season we’re always running hard, so everything gets oil changes, new plugs, and anything else they need for a standard tune-up. And we’re ordering parts in because things are going to break and we need to have them back up and running right away.”

“Powering” through adversity

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The storms that blew through southern New Jersey this week left a lot of the area without electric, and Pine Island was no exception. But our Facilities/Equipment team came through for everyone!

Facilities/Equipment Manager Louis Cantafio says, “When the power went out Tuesday night, we figured it’d be back up sooner rather than later, so we spent Wednesday working on things we could do without electric. By the end of the day, though, we realized we were in it for the long haul; estimates were for power being restored as late as Saturday. So Bill [Haines] called me on his way home and said, we need to put together a plan and make sure everyone has water.” Bill told Louis to assume he’d have whatever resources he needed and to let him know if there were any roadblocks, and the team was off and running.

“The biggest challenge was getting enough generators,” Louis says. “I hit five places and found ten generators. I’d back up, unload, and the guys started unpacking, putting in oil and fuel, staging them at the locations we’d identified along with additional fuel cans, and Mike [Guest] and Emmanuel [Colon] would follow shortly afterward to make sure the wells got powered. It was amazing.” Facilities Supervisor Mike Guest agrees: “This was definitely a team effort, no question. Louis did a great job finding everything we needed, then the shop got them up and running…it couldn’t have been done and done that fast without excellent communication.”

“We did good!” says Equipment Supervisor Carlos Baez. “The generators would arrive, Fred [Henschel] and I started building them, and then Ernie and I started to deliver them while Fred and Coco [Mercado] started filling 5 gallon cans and set them up with every generator. You can do without a lot and keep going, but you can’t do it without water.” Fred adds, “It was a production! But now we’re going to disassemble everything, label it, and then store it in a secured area and add them to the maintenance plan, so we’re ready if it ever happens again.”

For his part, CEO Bill Haines is impressed. “Everyone did a hell of a job,” he says.

Last but not least, of course, some of our intrepid office staff made the rounds Thursday in a Gator, bringing water to everyone who was out working so hard!

So a huge thank you to our Facilities and Equipment team members Louis Cantafio, Mike Guest, Emmanuel Colon, Carlos Baez, Ernie Waskiewicz, Coco Mercado, and Fred Henschel; to our office team members Debra Signorelli and Stacey DeLaurentis, for keeping our hard-working team hydrated; to Matt Giberson and PIICM Manager Cristina Tassone, for keeping the planes moving; and to our neighbors at Lee Brothers, for allowing us to use their wells to fill our own tanks. Our team is second to none in the industry, and that is in no small part due to their willingness to do whatever it takes for both our land and our people.

Renovation updates: pump houses

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Our team was ready this week for the next step in our Black Rock renovation: installing the new engines at the pump houses! This part of the reno is handled by our Facilities/Equipment team, and they certainly have a lot to do.

“Whenever we renovate a system, everything gets replaced new. All new irrigation, all new underdrain, all new water control structures,” explains Facilities/Equipment manager Louis Cantafio. “The old engines come out and get completely rebuilt; they were definitely old enough to replace. We’re also pre-gaming a little bit for the automation process. It’s a little more efficient for our team to work on this at the shop rather than going engine to engine out in the field. Because when the reno team is ready to set main line, the engines must be there already. We don’t ever want to hold up the reno team; the stuff they depend on has to be done ahead of time.” Then once the engines have been set up, Facilities Supervisor Mike Guest can put the buildings up.

Welder Fred Henschel has been working on the aluminum fixtures for the new pumps. “I started these a few months back,” he says. “When the old ones come out, I do try to recycle some parts in other projects, but with these we like to try to keep everything new. We don’t want to have to worry about a line going bad because it rotted away in only a couple of years.” Nonetheless, he likes to be prepared, and is also making a few spares, just to be on the safe side. It’s not much like work, according to him: “I just like to build stuff, really!”

With seven systems to take care of, that’s a lot of work, but the equipment team is up to the challenge. “It’s all about preventing downtime for other departments,” says Louis. “They shouldn’t be held up because of equipment.” And now that everything is installed, our reno team can move on to the next step: installing the main lines!

Chile – sand screener

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Back in February, our equipment team was working to prep our old sand screener to ship it to our affiliate farm, Cranberries Austral Chile (CAC).

Ernie, who was the lead on the project, put in a lot of time making the necessary repairs for easy maintenance when it gets down to Chile. “We want to make sure it’s in great shape for those guys,” he said at the time. “…Basically, we’re going over it and making sure everything is right and that it’s running well.” He also mentioned that actually getting it into the shipping container was going to be a project in itself, and he was absolutely right!

Coco Mercado says, “We did a lot of prep work. All the bigger stuff wouldn’t fit inside the container, so we had to disassemble all the big pieces and make absolutely sure all fluids were drained in order to pass through Customs.” Supervisor Carlos Baez says it took the entire day to disassemble everything, but it is about ready to go! “It’s going to be a tight fit, I can tell you right now,” he says. “But I took a lot of pictures as we were taking everything apart, so once it arrives they should be able to put it back together pretty easily.”

Facilities and Equipment Manager Louis Cantafio is pleased the project is just about wrapped up. “The biggest challenge was getting the conveyor off, but the worst is over,” he says. “Once it gets down there, CAC has the bigger challenge in putting it back together!” CAC, however, has been fantastically helpful about project details. “I thought I would need to research shipping companies, but they have people they deal with all the time and took care of all the transport logistics; it was great.” He’s pleased that this project is wrapping up so the team can turn their attention to some other big projects: in addition to sending some other equipment down to Chile with the screener, the team is working on several maintenance and building projects right here at home. “We’re doing a lot of work on the pump houses making sure they stay in compliance, we got the new Hydremas, we had some involvement in the camp reno, and then we’re pouring bases for new pump houses and rebuilding engines for the bog renovation project. We have a lot going on!”

“But ultimately, CAC is going to be able to increase their efficiency in processing sand, and that’s a job well done for us,” Louis says. “My team always does whatever it takes to hit our targets.”

Winter update – Equipment

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Our team continues to work on our winter targets for sanding and bog renovation, which in turn keeps our equipment team hustling! Says team member Ernie Waszkiewicz: “The weather can take a toll on the trucks; there’s a lot of hard starting. But that’s something we expect, so we can just keep clicking away on that as well as the rest of the routine.” In the meantime, team member Coco Mercado, who is acting as equipment supervisor while Carlos Baez is on vacation, is keeping track of service calls and making sure he and Ernie respond as quickly as possible.

The biggest ongoing project our equipment team is working on is prepping our old sand screener so we can send it down to CAC in Chile. Ernie, who is the lead on the project, has been putting in a lot of time making the necessary repairs for easy maintenance when it gets down to Chile. “We want to make sure it’s in great shape for those guys,” he says. “We’re putting on new fittings, new hose, new valves…a different style that operates with toggle switches. Basically, we’re going over it and making sure everything is right and that it’s running well. We’re cleaning it up a little and retrofitting some return lines to make things as easy as possible for the guys down there.” Getting it to Chile is going to be a project in itself: “We’re going to have to disassemble it some so we can fit it in one of those overseas boxes! It’s going to be a challenge; I think we’re going to have to get it over to the platform at the packing house and load it from there.”

Prep for reno and fall planting is coming along as well. Lots of 4-inch underdrain has been delivered and is waiting for the next phase:

And welder Fred Henschel is working on the planting cages for the new wagon. “With the old cages, we needed someone to physically hook the chain to the top; this new design should work so that the person running the machine can just hook it up themselves with the equipment,” he explains. “Then we save time and labor; no one has to sit on the trailer and wait and they can be out there on the planter.”

The cages will be ready to go well before planting. The screener project is to be done by mid-month, and our team will keep doing whatever it takes to make sure it’s ready!

Improving equipment

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Last month, we talked with Assistant Manager Mike Haines about drainage repair and the opportunities it gave us for collaboration with our fellow growers. “The cranberry community isn’t so huge that businesses will make equipment especially marketed to us,” Mike said at the time. “A lot of what we do is done by working together to improve what we have.”

While we’d been borrowing the current set-up from fellow grower (and fantastic neighbor) Bill Cutts, our equipment team started working on building one of our own, making improvements based on team recommendations. This week, equipment team member Fred Henschel is nearly finished!

“This machine does everything,” Fred says. “It holds the rolls of 2-inch underdrain, it works with either a skid steer or a tractor with a three-point hitch…it’s been designed to fit just about everything we have on the property. Whatever is available.” He also designed it with some flexibility in mind. “It was designed based on input from the guys who will be using it, but if for some reason they really don’t like it, the entire center implement can be unbolted and I can place it on a different frame. It’s a prototype; nothing like this had been built before, as far as I know, so I can remake it until everyone’s happy with it.”

The entire machine was designed to be as efficient as possible. Fred looked at how the machine was cutting vines and decided he wanted as sharp an angle as he could get so it wouldn’t push the vines out as far; at that point, the roller would be able to pack the dirt right back down again. Having the spools right on the machine should also increase the speed. “What they can do is tow the trailer with all the rolls, put two on the machine, and keep going. Probably be able to go at three or four times the speed.” He’s also made some modifications for tools. “The basket here is for their tape and their knives, in case they need to add more pipe. This way they can take care of it right there and keep going.” As for changing out the rolls, he attached spinner handles for everything so nothing needs a tool to unfasten.

While the water is on the bogs for the winter, our equipment team is looking forward to seeing how the new machine works in the spring; we’ll be checking back then!