PIC History: Floater Building

Pine Island’s facilities team is continuing to improve the shop area by moving on to the next step in our facilities improvement plan: removing the now obsolete “floater building” to make room for employee and visitor parking. The floater building has a long history: back in the 50s, before growers started adopting wet harvesting methods, most cranberries were harvested for the fresh fruit market. Even then Pine Island (then known as Haines & Haines) was concerned with efficiency and waste. “We always had a good team,” says CEO Bill Haines, “but no matter how good our scoopers were, a large percentage of fruit would fall through that we couldn’t access, and that drove my dad crazy.” Once the dry harvest was done, as now, the bogs would be flooded for the winter. Bill Sr. got some flat bottom boats similar to the Everglades airboats, and once the bogs were flooded, he would take the boat out onto the bog. The wash from the boat would shake the berries loose, causing them to float to the surface. The “floaters”, as they were called, were unsuitable to be sold as fresh fruit, and needed to be processed differently. In order to do that, Bill Sr. put up the “floater building”. Eventually, as wet harvesting became more widespread, processing the harvest shifted entirely over to the packing house, and the floater building became storage instead.

It’s a little sad to see the floater building go; it holds a lot of memories for some of our more long-term team members. “It used to be where we gathered first thing in the morning to go over the day’s assignments,” says GM Fred Torres. “It was always the same: Bill Sr. would walk in from his house, saying good morning to everyone, and Bill Jr. would have his binder open on the hood of his truck. Now it’s Bill Jr. coming in and I’m the one with papers on the hood of my truck.”

It was necessary to make some changes, though. “The building wasn’t originally intended for storage, which is what we’d ended up doing with it,” says Facilities manager Louis Cantafio. “The new storage building we’ve put up is a little more spacious, with better lighting and easier access. Plus with the newer shop building and the old office being converted into our new ICM [Integrated Crop Management] facility, we had a shortage of parking for both employees and visitors. Now, we’ll be more efficient, with more contemporary storage as well as improving traffic patterns with better parking for our staff. Plus, it will be easier for the big trucks going in and out.”

The demolition process was also a chance to test some of our newest equipment. Pine Island recently purchased a GoPro camera for training use. “It’s a great opportunity for new team members to see what fairy ring looks like, as well as pest or frost damage,” explains PIICM manager Cristina Tassone. “It’ll also be great for equipment training, so Junior [Colon] volunteered to test it for us!” The following video was taken while Junior was clearing debris from the demolition.

GoPro test – Junior Colon from Pine Island Cranberry on Vimeo.