Harvest 2016 visits

Posted on October 21, 2016 by stef

We had a special visitor come in to view the harvest today: Nora Muchanic from Channel 6 Action News!

First, she got to see the Gates Harrow in action. The harrow is one of our newer picking methods, which picks cleanly, quickly, and efficiently, and causes less damage to the vines.

She also chatted with team members Mike Haines (pictured below), Jeremy Fenstermaker, and Bob Heritage before getting into the water with the gathering crew! This crew was working with the traditional elevators today, rather than the new bogside cleaners, but it’s always a fascinating process to witness.

While she wasn’t able to stay and visit the packing house, we followed the truck back to the platform anyway. . .just for our readers!

Big thanks to Waldemar Blanco, Rick Zapata, and Mickey Mercado for letting us get in their way today, as well as to Mike, Jeremy, and Bob for taking the time to chat! And thank you to Nora and Channel 6 for being so great to work with; we appreciate your patience and flexibility.

From Bog to Bottle 2016

Posted on October 14, 2016 by stef

Harvest time means it’s time for our yearly visit from George Giorno of Ocean Spray! George comes to see us every year, along with various account executives from some of Ocean Spray’s wholesale customers. This year, we were happy to visit again with Greg McCann and Jim Falese of Advantage Solutions, as well as Chris Przewoznik and Ed Peslak of General Trading Wholesale, Lauren Schmidt, Jeff Bowen, and John Scarangello with Ocean Spray’s retail operations, and last but not least, George’s daughter Marissa, a sales analyst with Kellogg’s!

The morning began in our main office, with CEO Bill Haines giving the group an introduction to our operation and a brief family history. Then, it was off in the van to see the harvest in action! We were unfortunately not able to see the harrow at work, but the group was able to see our new bog side cleaner running out at Sim Place, and even got the chance to go up and see the view from the top!

Greg McCann was happy to see our new equipment, as well as the results. “I really enjoyed this visit, as I saw a new process that you weren’t really using last year! It’s great to see how you now save steps in the process and free up some of your people to do other things,” he says. And he was impressed by our team’s driving skills, as well: “It was interesting to watch the tractor trailers navigate around the narrow roads throughout the bog.” He’s looking forward to coming back again next year, with different customers, and the feeling is mutual!

Lauren Schmidt, Ocean Spray’s newest Retail Operations Manager, expressed similar enthusiasm: “I loved the tour of the farm and bogs. Our team got the full experience, from tasting fresh cranberries off the vine, to watching each step in the impressive process of harvest. We lucked out with a beautiful fall day and the colors of the harvest were gorgeous! The Haines family took time out of their busy schedules to show us around for several hours and I know everyone felt the pride they have in the business throughout our time together.”

We say this every year after George and his group come to see us: it’s always a pleasure to speak with people who are genuinely enthusiastic about what they do and are so willing to completely immerse themselves in a new experience. “It‘s always fun to have George and his team here and show our customers how we really do it. I think it’s good for all of us,” Bill says.

Harvest challenges

Posted on October 7, 2016 by stef

Water was a big concern going into the autumn this year, as we hadn’t had any rain and were running the wells off and on every day. But our team remained optimistic, and in fact, the weather ended up cooperating for a bit!

“It’s been a very challenging year for water,” says CEO Bill Haines. “We had a very dry August and not much rain in July either. We were short on water and running wells constantly when the season started. Fortunately, we got four inches of rain on the first day of harvest, so that’s given us some relief, but we still don’t have a lot. So we’ve had to be very inventive about how we get the water, but conservative in its use. And because we’ve been waiting on color and the color’s been slow coming, we’ve had to be flexible about which bogs to start picking. Often they’re not the most logical place/sequence for flooding, so we had to get creative by moving water mechanically instead of by gravity, and just using our imagination to get stuff done. Jeremy [Fenstermaker], Matt [Giberson] and Gerardo [Ortiz] have all done a good job with it. They’ve been flexible and willing to try new stuff. So far it’s worked.”

Some varieties color earlier than others, and that is a factor we consider when planning our picking strategy. Ocean Spray likes a consistent color, so we will take samples to the receiving station to check the TAcy number (an acronym for “total anthocyanin concentration” and is a unit of color measurement used in a cranberry) before harvesting. Unfortunately, we haven’t really been getting cooler evenings until recently, but things are finally cooling down and the past couple nights have helped a lot with color.

“With the TAcy considerations, we don’t want to go into high production beds and have low TAcy,” says Matt Giberson. “We’d rather go into the Early Black beds and get those out of the way first. We also worry about rot; we don’t want fruit to get bad, so we have to get it out of there. We’re taking our time with the later varieties until we get the required color level. Cooler days and the cloudiness last week were pretty good for the fruit. We could use another one to two inches of rain, but we’re better off than we were a month ago.”

“In past years, we’ve been done by November 7th,” Matt says, “which means we have about one month left now with over 900 acres left to go. But we’re about to kick things into high gear, acreage-wise. Today we started all three crews at once for the first time this season, and once we get that color where we want it, we’re going to really start rolling!”

Quail update – September 2016

Posted on September 30, 2016 by stef

No harvest update this week, but fear not; our team is working hard at bringing in the fruits of their labor! Instead, check out our forestry blog for a brief update on the quail initiative!

Harvest begins at last!

Posted on September 23, 2016 by stef

The 2016 cranberry harvest is finally underway at Pine Island, and the Pine Barrens have never been prettier!

This week was the real test for the new customized tractors we spoke about last month. Since the last harvest, our team has modified two tractors with high-powered blowers (much higher than we have used in previous years). On the front is the hookup for the boom, which can be used by a single operator. The idea is to have the driver hydraulically operate the boom so that when he comes up to a pipe gate or a corner, he can run it out from the cab and will no longer need to rely on extra crew to change it manually.

“It went extremely well,” says COO Bryan vonHahmann. “Like anything you design, research, develop, and build, once you finally implement it you find things you might have predicted but weren’t quite sure about until it’s put to practical use. But this first week’s been great, and we can now boom up a bog with two people versus six people. It’s so much more efficient; the team moves faster because the equipment moves more quickly and we can allocate resources better.”

Tweaks are already being planned. “The blower portion works phenomenally,” Bryan says. “One thing we need to adjust is that we run the clutch a little bit, because even in the lowest gear the tractor moves a bit too fast. The other is that a boom full of fruit is heavy, and the arm that pulls the boom is flexing more than we would like once gathering gets underway. Part of that is just getting the operators used to how they need to position it and to keep an eye on it, and part of it that we’ll need to reinforce the arm. We did think of these two things before we put the equipment out there, but weren’t quite sure to what degree it could impact us.” The team can likely use the tractors all season without issue, but we’ll start making the modifications and apply what we’ve learned to the two additional tractors Bryan wants to build for next year! “It’s a huge advantage,” he says. “Even with the changes we’re going to make, the work the team is doing with them is fantastic.”

Bogside cleaner testing

Posted on September 16, 2016 by stef

Harvest is starting soon, and as we discussed last week, we took delivery on a second bogside cleaner for use in the upcoming season!

Last year, we began using this new equipment to help improve efficiency. 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, as it requires fewer people in the water. As with any new equipment, there was a learning curve, but our team made modifications as they became necessary and took notes for subsequent harvests.

“It’s been a long process,” says COO Bryan vonHahmann. “When we first started considering a berry pump, we went out to Wisconsin and looked at three or four makes of cleaners as well as looking at one owned by [our neighboring growers] the Lees. We ended up going with Paul’s Machine & Tool because they’d already done quite a bit to accommodate the user interface to make it more intuitive, and they were also very willing to customize it however we wanted. In practice, this meant changing the 6 inch pump to an 8 inch one, as well as asking them to build it a little higher to make it easier for our trailers; a few small changes, and some significant ones. But they provided us with great service, and came out themselves to help set everything up last year.”

The real test was during harvest itself, of course, and as expected, the team found that the machine would need some modifications based on practical use. (As Bryan says, succinctly: “When we placed the order, we didn’t know what we didn’t know.”) One of the issues the team discovered was finding a lot of bog debris in the final product, as well as a diminished ability to remove the wastewater fast enough. “We wanted it to be as efficient as possible,” Bryan says, “so we made some minor changes during harvest last year to remove vines and trash. But it became more labor intensive than it was worth.” So for the second machine, we asked Paul’s to make some design changes. The new berry pump added extra row of cleaning grates to the cleaning box and changed spacing on the box. At same time we sent the old cleaning box back and they sent us the new 5 grate design in return. The combo of the new spray boom and an additional cleaning grate should provide better quality fruit for the trailer to take directly to the Chatsworth receiving station.

Testing the new machine on a young bog will be useful for a couple of reasons. 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 them a good place to test run new equipment immediately pre-harvest. “We may well need design changes,” says Bryan, “but we’re looking forward to trying it and see how the new design works. The more fruit that goes in, the less water goes in. We’re going to run the older one on two bogs and bring the new one out for a third bog. We’re trying a modified 5 grate cleaning box with wider spacing on the teeth on one bog, and the standard 5 grate on the other to see if it makes any difference. In young beds you’re going to get a lot of rot and vines; it’s just the nature of the beast. But we’re hoping the wider tines will help push those through.”

Harvest prep 2016: Part 2

Posted on September 9, 2016 by stef

When we talked about pre-harvest prep a couple of weeks ago, COO Bryan vonHahmann discussed how everything now becomes more critical as we enter the pre-harvest interval, in particular the final fertilizer application that helps the plants through the winter.

Team members Tim Bourgeois and Juan Carlos Gonzalez-Perez started those applications this week, and it’s going well. “This type is usually applied via fertigation,” Tim says. Fertigation, a process where plant nutrients are applied through irrigation systems, has many benefits, such as increased nutrient absorption by plants and reduced water consumption due to the plant’s increased root mass’s ability to trap and hold water. “We’re taking the truck around from pump to pump, starting each system, looking for any leaks. We’ll fix any, if we find them, then repair any clogged sprinkler nozzles before we start so each area gets the coverage it should.” Typically, a bog should be done two to three weeks prior to harvest, so Tim and Juan Carlos are mirroring the harvest schedule order as they start the applications. Weather can also be a concern: “The wind will blow falling water away from where it needs to be,” Tim says. “If the breeze is under 7 to 8 mph we’re in good shape; otherwise it’ll go on top of the dam, which is a waste. Yesterday we could go till noon, but the day before we had to quit by 9:30 because the wind was picking up.”

The rest of our team is working hard to get the farm ready, as well. “We’ve been mowing like crazy,” says Matt Giberson. “We’re running six mowers, including two on loan from Rutgers. It was really generous of them to do that, and it means we’ve been able to cover a lot more ground.” Mowing is necessary to finish prior to harvest because the grass can get really thick on the edge of the dam, which makes it harder to get the berries out.

In addition to all of the grounds maintenance, the second bog side cleaner arrives today. “We have to unload that and put everything together, which can get a little involved,” Matt says, “and then we need to get it ready for a practice run on Wednesday or Thursday to make sure it’s good to go.” For the practice run, the team will be at the young beds at Old 11. “It’s a second year bed, so there’s not much fruit,” Matt explains. “We’re not expecting great fruit from that, because it’s not really ready, which makes it ideal for a trial equipment run.” Additional ongoing maintenance includes clearing the weeds, especially by the pump houses, crowning dams, and working on the wider turnarounds. “Now that we have a second bog side cleaner, we’re going to need more room, so Steve [Manning] is out there with a crew widening the dams at Red Road and Bishop’s Mill as well as the top of the property at Rancocas, including gate extensions to make sure we can make the turn with no problems. It’ll help with sanding in the wintertime, too.”

Water is a big concern going into the autumn. “We haven’t had any rain,” Matt says. “We’ve been running the wells off and on every day, and with the irrigation you lose some on the reservoirs. The home farm is okay, though we’re hoping for a good rain. Sim Place is lower because that big reservoir is so huge it takes a while to fill up. And the weather between here and there can vary a lot; we can get a shower on the home farm while Sim Place doesn’t get anything. All the boards have been in for weeks, but haven’t taken any out so we can maintain everything. We’re trying to save water where we can, but we’d love to see a good rain before we start, especially at Sim Place.” So far, though, he’s optimistic: “The fruit’s looking good! Some of the numbers I’m seeing look good, and I can’t wait to see how a few of our newer bogs do this year.”

Planting – 2016

Posted on September 2, 2016 by stef

Our team has finished planting the latest set of renovated bogs, and things are looking good!

Since 2014 we’ve been planting in late summer in order to take advantage of the weather, the longer daylight hours, and the increased team availability. There are two methods of planting: conventional propagation, which means pressing mowed vines or prunings directly into the bogs to be established; and rooted cuttings, which means planting plants with roots already established. Pine Island has used both methods in the past, but mainly we’ve moved on to using rooted cuttings. Another concern with planting is implementing an irrigation program, both with ground water and sprinklers, that provides moisture for vine growth without causing excessive soil saturation, which can lead to favorable conditions for phytopthora, which in turn can lead to fruit or root rot. Pine Island uses both ditches and sprinklers for irrigation. During the early spring, after the winter flood is removed, irrigation is usually covered by our frost protection program. However, concerns for adequate soil moisture should not be forgotten during frost season. Several warm, sunny days without rain or frost irrigation can result in the need for irrigation. Checking the soil yourself is extremely important; tensiometers are good, but it’s important to learn the hands-on method, as well.

“We planted 79 acres this year,” says supervisor Matt Stiles. “We averaged a little over 5 acres a day with two machines and a crew of 24.” This year’s variety is Mullica Queen, chosen because of its timing. “We went with that one due to the geography of this year’s reno. By the time they’re ready to go we can pick one area all at the same time.”

This was Matt’s first year running the planting operation, and he did well. “It was definitely a challenge,” he says. “Coordinating everything, getting the right plants at the right time with the right people. Constantly adjusting the planters, how to identify a problem and how to fix it. And you have to be very careful working around the irrigation system; it’s tough for the driver on the tractor to actually see the sprinklers. But everyone did really well.”

“We planted more acres per days than we ever have,” says manager Mike Haines. “We now have two twelve-row planters now, after replacing the eight-row we sent to Chile. Last year we averaged 4.25 acres a day, and this year we got a little over 5 per day. Which is a lot more, especially with the heat this year. It was a big obstacle for Matt to overcome, but he did a great job.”

And as a bonus, Matt also took some video! If you think the GoPro gave us some great point-of-view shots, wait till you see this!

*Photos/video courtesy of Matt Stiles.

Harvest prep – 2016

Posted on August 26, 2016 by stef

Harvest is getting closer every day, and our team is working steadily to make sure everything is ready!

“Everything now becomes more critical because we have the pre-harvest interval that we need to be sensitive to,” says COO Bryan vonHahmann. “We also apply fertilizer this time of year, which helps the plants through the winter. Those are the big things. We’re going through and looking at the sequence for TAcy, for what beds we expect to pick first. We want to take advantage of the higher TAcy levels.” Some varieties color earlier than others, and that is a factor we consider when planning our picking strategy. Ocean Spray likes a consistent color, so we will take samples to the receiving station to check the TAcy number (an acronym for “total anthocyanin concentration” and is a unit of color measurement used in a cranberry) before harvesting. While the humidity gets worse in late summer, the nights tend to get cooler, and this actually improves the color.

“Equipment is also a big part of prep,” Bryan says, “so we’re designing new stuff for equipment to make us a little more efficient, and we’re looking forward to experimenting with that.” To that end, manager Louis Cantafio walked us a through a little bit of what the Facilties/Equipment team has been working on.

“Most of the equipment that we already own has already been serviced and put away ready to go,” he says. “We knew we were going to be jammed up late in the summer and coming into harvest to do the regular maintenance work, so a lot of it’s done.” Many of the projects the team has in the pipeline are also harvest-related, however. “We’re fabricating a lot of new equipment we didn’t have before, and modifying a lot of equipment we got last season. So we’re making improvements to the berry pump, which is a lot of work! We also have a new trash truck design, so we’re working on the ones we have already as well as building a fourth.”

The biggest modification is going to be for the gathering crew. Gathering is always a teamwork-intensive task: when it’s time to put the boom in, you need at least one person in the water as well as on the tractor, and sometimes more depending on the bog layout (trees, heavy grasses, etc.). Each end of the boom is then attached to a tractor, which slowly moves along the dam, corralling the berries. Some members of the gathering crew follow alongside, “sweeping” the berries and making sure they stay within bounds. Once that is done, both ends of the boom are connected to the boom reel, which is wound ever tighter as the berries are brought up the elevator onto the truck. This year, though, our team is making some changes: “We have two blueberry tractors we’re customizing for this,” Louis says. “With the current system we have a blower on the back of the tractor, which means someone has to drive the tractor, someone else works the blower nozzle, and when the berries are really thick and the grass is thick on the edge of the dam, we have the guys sweeping. That’s a lot of manpower. But we’re modifying these tractors with really high powered blowers; much higher than we have already. On the front will the hookup for the boom, and a single operator should be able to run one end of it. This means two guys should be able to boom up a bog on their own, whereas as before it was easily eight.” The idea, he says, is to have the driver hydraulically operate the boom so that when he comes up to a pipe gate or a corner, he can run it out from the cab and will no longer need to rely on extra crew to change it manually. “We’ll have one guy doing the work of four or five,” Louis says. “We’re not only going from eight to ten guys down to two, but they should be able to do it faster; they’ll be in the tractor instead of muscling hose/boom around edge of dam. It will improve safety and efficiency.”

As for the rest of the Pine Island team? “We’re doing everything we can to keep the fruit healthy until harvest!” says Bryan.

ACGA Summer Field Day – 2016

Posted on August 19, 2016 by stef

This week, some Pine Island team members were able to attend the annual Summer Field Day at the Philip E. Marucci Center for Blueberry and Cranberry Research, sponsored by the American Cranberry Growers Association (ACGA). The field day is an opportunity for various members of the cranberry community to visit the research center and check out ongoing experiments from several of the center’s scientists as well as those from outside the region.

This year’s topics included the most recent findings with various ongoing studies, such as the current work on breeding for fruit rot resistance, scald and heat stress, fungus, and pest resistance, as well as research on the return of toadbug in the region. And of course, there was the ever-popular “show and tell”, where growers can demonstrate some of the latest tools or techniques they’ve been using on their own operations.

Both veterans and new team members learned a lot, as always. “We got to see a lot of projects we’re already familiar with and how they’re progressing,” says manager Mike Haines. “Like Jim Polashock’s talk on Mycorrhizae, Cesar with toadbug, and Peter with heat stress. And I always like to hear from Tim [Waller]; he really digs into the background of both what he’s doing and why he’s doing it.” Mike also enoys the chance to hear from people from different cranberry regions: “It was cool to hear the research from Wisconsin on pest resistance in different cranberry varieties.”

“It was a good lineup of speakers on variety subject matter,” says crop supervisor Tim Bourgeois. “It was a great chance for me to get a broad range of info, considering this is my first year in the business.” He was especially pleased at the social aspect. “The NJ cranberry community is a close-knit group of growers, which is always nice. It was a good day, a great experience, and a chance to make some new contacts and some new friends yesterday.”

And, of course, we would be remiss in not thanking the staff at Rutgers for all of their hard work yesterday as well as Dr. Cesar Rodriguez-Saona for setting up such an informative program. The cranberry community is fortunate to have such a resource close by to help us do what we do better every day!

Pine Island Cranberry Co., Inc.

Haines & Haines, Inc.

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