A fond farewell

Sometimes, the best thing about maintaining our blog is being able to talk to all the fantastic people who make up one of the best teams in the business. We have an entry up every week, but in the end, those entries are just words: it’s really our team who tells our story. And this week, we bid farewell to one of our greatest characters with the retirement of Bog Renovations Manager Joe Colon.

At a surprise lunch (beautifully planned by our fantastic admin Debra Signorelli), CEO Bill Haines thanked Joe for his 43 years of hard work. “There’s no job here that Joe hasn’t done,” he said. “I remember working with him in the packing house as shed boys; getting hollered at by the lady running it, getting hollered at by my dad. He’s improved a lot as a driver since then! And in the late 80s, when Howard Sprague [a long-time contractor] stopped building bogs, Joe started working on renovations, and by 1992 he was in charge of the team. It became his show. So many bogs that started out as blueberry fields were transformed on his watch, and then in 2005 we bought Sim Place. Everyone here knows the work we’ve been doing there.” Bill then continued with some mind-boggling numbers: “Since 1992, Joe has built or renovated 528 acres of bogs, installed 130 miles of irrigation pipe, moved over a million cubic yards of dirt, and installed about 10,000 sprinklers. He’s also installed about 550 gates; in fact, the first year we had Sim Place, we installed 117 gates in one year. Pretty impressive. All of that work is the model for what we’re going to do next: better bogs and better varieties, setting us up for the future. Joe has had a heck of a lot to do with all of that.”

GM Fred Torres then made a presentation, giving Joe a watch from the entire team. Joe was also presented with a framed photo, taken at Panama #1, and two first-class round-trip tickets to Puerto Rico. There were some great stories, a few tears, and a heartfelt thank you from the guest of honor, whom we are all going to miss enormously. Thank you, Joe, for everything you’ve done for Pine Island Cranberry. Bill Sr. thought the world of you, and so do we.