Tag Archives: protecting the environment

Quail release – April 2016

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This month, New Jersey Audubon once again arrived at Pine Island Cranberry for the second scheduled release of the translocated bobwhite quail program! Eighty-one quail, captured in Georgia by project collaborator Tall Timbers Research Station & Land Conservancy, were successfully translocated and released at the study site. According to NJ Audubon: “After receiving health screening testing and attaching leg ID bands and radio-signal transmitting collars to each bird, a total of eighty-one birds, (37 females and 44 males) were released in groups at the Pine Island Cranberry study site by NJ Audubon and initiative partners, Pine Island Cranberry, the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife and the University of Delaware.”

“We are very excited about this second release of wild Northern Bobwhite. These new quail were released into areas where Northern Bobwhite were released last year, supplementing the newly developing population,” says John Parke of NJ Audubon. “Having those birds from last year at the site only increases the likelihood of survival of these new birds in the wild since the new birds will integrate with them and thus be influenced in their cover and foraging choices, nesting area selection and predator avoidance response in their new surroundings. We did not have that luxury last year.”

The birds from the first stage of the release are doing very well! From the NJ Audubon update:

“Through the use of radio telemetry, University of Delaware graduate students…monitored the birds and were able to confirm 15 nests, 127 eggs laid; and 66 chicks hatched in 2015. The birds were tracked throughout the winter by the students and were confirmed to have over-wintered successfully at the study site. It was noted that the quail were utilizing the young pine regeneration growth areas for cover throughout the entire winter season. These young pine areas were the result of vegetation regeneration in areas that had been harvested previously as part of forest stewardship activities performed by Pine Island Cranberry to improve overall watershed and forest health.”

The newly released birds will be tracked the same way.

“We’re pleased with how this project has progressed; the first year went very well. We enjoy working with NJ Audubon and the other partners, and are looking forward to another great year,” says CEO Bill Haines.

*Photos courtesy of John Parke.

Another year!

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This week, Pine Island Cranberry celebrates the fourth anniversary of our website launch! It’s been another busy year, and our team has definitely been taking our core values to heart!

Whatever It Takes
We do what we have to do when it’s time to do it. We say what we have to say when it’s time to say it.

The best example from the past six months is probably how our team dealt with the extended power outage this past summer, as well as dealing with the massive January blizzard!

Continuous Improvement
We do everything we do better every day.

The best examples of this are the most recent: team member Matt Stiles’ creation of periodic lunchtime learning seassions, where team members get together to brainstorm on various topics, and our work with local members of the NJ Fire Service to learn more about control burning.

Protect the Environment
We care for the place we live, work, and grow.

This past year also saw the launch of our forestry website, which so far has mainly been used to chronicle the adventures of our translocated bobwhite quail. Look forward to updates soon with this ongoing collaboration with New Jersey Audubon!

Continuous Growth
We grow more acres and more fruit per acre.

Once again, our crop management team welcomed experts such as Dr. Joan Davenport to help us achieve our mission and our vision. Our team also shipped equipment to our affiliate operation in Chile, which in turn will help them increase their efficiency in reaching their targets. We also continued an ambitious bog renovation plan that now includes trying the new Haines variety from Rutgers.

We are Growers
We grow stuff. . .It’s what we do and who we are.

We also have not forgotten that first and foremost, we grow cranberries. Our team spent time with other growers at various meetings, as well as celebrating 125 years and five generations, still “growing” strong!

Provide Opportunity
We provide opportunities for people who have the drive to learn, develop skills, and achieve a better future.

Last but not least, this past year also saw us expanding our internship program as well as welcoming some fantastic new team members on board.

It’s been a great year for us at Pine Island Cranberry, and we hope you continue to enjoy following our operation as much as we do living it!

Core values in action

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Pine Island Cranberry’s strategic plan includes this definition of our Core Values (Whatever It Takes, Continuous Improvement, Protect the Enviroment, Continuous Growth, We are Growers, and Provide Opportunity): “Core Values are what we expect of ourselves and one another.” Nowhere were these more evident than when a problem arose on Monday night.

At 5:30 P.M., after most of our team had finished the day and gone home, a fuel-truck operator, out topping off equipment, backed down a tough dam…and got too close to the edge, getting stuck, and almost tipping over into the bog. This can happen with any one of our trucks, and in most cases, all it takes is a single operator on another piece of equipment to pull the truck off the edge and set things in motion again. Unfortunately, in this particular instance our team was not dealing with a dump truck with a load of sand, but a fuel truck with 2400 gallons in its tank. The operator alerted the equipment team, who immediately called out Junior Colon, our usual go-to in cases like this. Junior took one look at the scene, and immediately said, “Call Louis; this is going to need more people.”

“It was bad; the worst I’ve seen,” says Louis. “I mean, equipment goes off the dam, but this wasn’t a load of dirt; it was 2400 gallons of fuel. The big issue was: ‘What do we do if this tips over? What happens then?’ We had to come up with a plan for the worst-case scenario immediately, because if things did start to go bad, there’d be no time to come up with one later.” So while supervisor Carlos Baez worked with Louis to empty our second fuel truck into a 2000 gallon tank (that Louis keeps empty in building 0-3 for just these occasions) and Junior Colon and Mickey Mercado went to our current sanding location to “borrow” two excavators, Gerardo Ortiz started blocking off the water, and Louis called Matt Giberson to put two more drivers on stand-by.

“Louis called me and I drove out right away,” says Gerardo. “I saw the truck had started to go in, so the first thing we did was we close that canal so water couldn’t go to the swamp and spread out. Then we closed off the top to keep the rest of the water in place so we could do something with the oil if we needed to. We were worried if the truck went completely over that we’d lose the oil to the swamp and then from the swamp to the river, so we had to contain it right away. Luckily the dam was hard enough to support the truck; any softer and it would have been a different story.”

The dam had Louis concerned as well. “It took us a long time to empty the spare truck back at the shop, and then we still had to get out to the site to re-start and empty the one that went over. That’s a lot of extra weight; those trucks are top heavy. The waiting is tough; you don’t want to lose dirt. So while all this was going on we had Gerardo shutting the water off, we were planning to get a Crisafulli in, we were dealing with upstream water…all that worst case scenario planning, because if it did go bad there would be no time. Thankfully, it all worked out okay. But that’s the furthest I’ve ever seen the truck leaning over.”

About 9:30, four hours after the truck went off the dam, our team had the truck pulled out and were finally able to go back home. Carlos, Junior, Mickey, Gerardo, and Louis truly pulled together quickly, no questions asked, and immediately did whatever to took to solve the immediate problem as well as working out a plan to provide for several different outcomes and protect our water supply and our environment. “These guys are the best,” says Louis. “When things hit the skids, everyone here just puts their head down and leans into the work. They don’t ask questions; when you call and say you need them, they just say, ‘I’m on my way’.” Carlos agrees: “It was bad that we had to go out there at all, but it was good that everyone did what they had to do, and nothing bad came out of it.”

The next immediate step for our team, however, is making some changes so that nothing like this happens again. Or, as supervisor Matt Giberson puts it, “We need to figure out how to make it better. Louis is great at this stuff; when a situation comes up, he gets everything under control and takes care of it. He called me to have two additional drivers on stand-by, which turned out not to be necessary, but shows a lot of thinking ahead.” One of the solutions, he says, is to work out a re-fueling schedule that avoids sending anyone out at night. In addition, he and Louis worked out some other details that will help avoid incidents and still keep the equipment running smoothly. Some of these solutions include making sure that heavy equipment is moved to locations that are reasonably accessible to the fuel truck (without running it in reverse) and utilizing a bulk truck to fuel small equipment (some of which could be done during the day without shutting that equipment down or stopping it). Louis and Matt have also proposed adding small transfer tanks with 12 volt pumps to two or three crew leader or supervisor trucks that would allow fueling of small equipment without the use of the 5 gallon cans or a bulk truck.

CEO Bill Haines was pleased with the team’s efforts Monday night. “It’s clear the team members that came out Monday have our core values embedded in their hearts, even if they can’t repeat them word for word. They put three of them into action this week: they showed they will do whatever it takes by working in the rain and the dark to get the fuel truck back on the dam; they planned and organized to protect the environment in case the worst happened; finally, they are already looking for continuous improvement by changing our procedures so this doesn’t happen again. I’m proud of all of them.”

Learning through experience

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One of the late Bill Sr.’s favorite maxims about just about everything involving cranberries was, “Where is the water coming from, and where do you want it to go?” That can be one of the most challenging things to pick up when you are learning about Pine Island’s irrigation system. GM Fred Torres tells newer team members all the time: “You’re not going to learn how to do this overnight.” In practice, this means constant awareness and monitoring of where the water is coming from, where it is going, and how much stream is coming down.

Assistant Manager Mike Haines is beginning to learn all about this. “Jeremy [Fenstermaker] has been showing me the different ways you can direct the water,” Mike says. “There’s no one right way; there’s just figuring out the optimal way to get them flooded quickly so they’re not damaged by the cold.” Under normal conditions, the temperature steadily drops post-harvest; it is important to wait until the vines go dormant before starting to put the water on. Once they freeze and aren’t covered with water, the roots can become exposed, and we need to cover them as fast as possible.

Flooding starts by letting in streams from the reservoirs to canals and bogs. Strategic board placement (more boards in the southernmost bogs to catch the water) will get the ditches high and running down to start flooding from the bottom up. As the water level in the bogs begins to rise, our team begins adjusting the water level in the bogs by adding boards where they are needed. Once the vines are covered and the stream has settled, we adjust the level of the reservoirs to maintain the stream and keep the bogs flooded for the winter. Wells are shut down once bogs are flooded, and only turned on again if it is dry and reservoir levels are dropping.

“I worked very closely with Gerard at the beginning of the year to learn about the water system overall,” says Mike, “but that was just the beginning. I learned about where it was coming from, but am still learning where and how each system is connected.” The flooding is just about done, but he’s also working closely with Jeremy on adjustments: “Now he’s tinkering here and there so that we have the flow we need all winter but aren’t wasting water, which also helps us work more efficiently. It’s a lot of problem solving and math, but I’m really beginning to understand.”

New Jersey Audubon Quail Restoration Initiative

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Last week, Pine Island Cranberry was proud to welcome some of the members and staff of New Jersey Audubon for a tour of the harvest and some of the selected sites for one of our favorite projects: the quail restoration initiative. Bobwhite quail have almost vanished from the Pine Barrens, and Pine Island, along with NJ Audubon and Bob Williams of Pine Creek Forestry, hope to bring them back. According to NJ Audubon: “Northern Bobwhite, once a staple of the New Jersey countryside and common enough to be a game bird in the state, has all but disappeared. According to the Christmas Bird Count and Breeding Bird Survey data, the bird has suffered one of the most severe population declines of any North American bird: a population decline of 82% in the last forty years. This is primarily due to a loss of habitat from development, change in farming practices, change in habitat due to a lack of disturbance, and an overall loss of young forest habitat.” Over the course of three years, they say, “…approximately 240 wild birds will be captured on private land in Georgia, and transferred to the core of the pinelands where they will be fitted with radio collars, released, and monitored. The goal is to establish a self-sustaining population on this magnificent property.”

Eric Stiles, President/CEO of NJ Audubon, and John Parke, his Stewardship Project Director, are both very excited: “This project makes us feel that we’ve been bringing everything we’ve been promoting: sustainability, agriculture, habitat. This is all about the private sector taking it upon themselves to do great work and show how it’s supposed to be done out there on the landscape. This is all being done by agriculture: how they deal with water and disease and production, straight up to how they’re dealing with the forest. We need to take into account the cultural, social, and economic aspect; if we don’t, we miss a lot of useful info from people who have been out there working on the land, and they’re the ones leading the charge. Pine Island Cranberry, and what they do, is such a big component of how this state is going to be able to proceed as far as sustainability and natural resource protection.”

The first item of business, of course, was going out to see the harvest on a picture-perfect day.

CEO Bill Haines was glad as always to explain the importance of water to our industry. “The key to this business is water,” he said. “The protection of our water supply has protected this business from the beginning. We have 1400 producing acres, but about 14,000 acres of land to protect our water supply, which sounds more impressive than it really is. Back in the day, no one wanted it, so if it was upstream, we bought it. And because we have all this land, we’ve always done prescribed burning. This is where we grew up; this is where we do business. It’s important to us in a business sense, yes, but it’s also important because it’s our home. That’s how this family was raised: if you have a resource, it’s your responsibility to take care of it.”

The group was off to Sim Place to see the targeted habitat and how Pine Island’s forestry and stewardship practices are helping make this happen. While seeing the harvest always has an impact, it was even better to see the reactions to some of the native plant growth flourishing on the land.

Ultimately, it’s not just about restoration or protection; it’s about doing the stewardship work for the long term. “It’s not only good work,” says Bill. “It’s also fun. This will show that you can successfully manage a business in the Pines that not only doesn’t damage the environment but enhances it. It’s good for business, but it’s also the right thing to do.”

Corporate Stewardship Council

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One of Pine Island Cranberry’s core values has always been protecting the environment: caring for the place where we live, work, and grow. To that end, we have been working since 2001 with forester Bob Williams of Land Dimensions Engineering to create and implement a forest stewardship plan. Creating a specific plan helps us protect and improve forest resources by doing practices such as prescribed burning, thinning, and replanting with improved trees. We are improving the forest habitat while at the same time conducting all the necessary work to have a thriving, profitable cranberry operation.

This commitment to stewardship and careful attention to detail was a big part of the decision by New Jersey Audubon to ask us to become the first agricultural production company to join their Corporate Stewardship Council, a unique group of eighteen New Jersey companies united behind a common goal of environmental sustainability and responsibility in NJ. “Not only does Pine Island Cranberry bring an agricultural perspective to the Council, but its membership also brings with it the largest stewardship project to date in the Council. This project was also the first forest stewardship project to be part of the Council membership with a NJ Approved Forest Stewardship Plan,” says John Parke, Stewardship Project Director for New Jersey Audubon. “The work Pine Island Cranberry Company is doing through forest stewardship is exemplary. We commend Pine Island for being a model business that understands that the management of natural resources makes both economic and ecological sense. Thus, they are providing quality forest and farm products which help support the NJ economy, while protecting the future of New Jersey’s critical habitat and farmland. Meaningful and sustainable conservation is difficult to achieve without the knowledge and experience of people like Bill Haines and Bob Williams.”

The Council meets as a group annually with the NJ Audubon and representatives of the NJ DEP and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. This year’s meeting was held last Friday in Trenton. Bill was unable to attend, so he sent his daughter Becca Fenstermaker as his representative. Most of the meeting consisted of summaries and updates of projects from the past year and an introduction to new projects. “John was, as always, full of energy and enthusiasm,” says Becca. “The number of stewardship projects and members of the council have increased quite a bit in the few years since it was formed, and John was especially excited to introduce Pine Island to the council. And chatting with some of the other members was interesting because they share our commitment to resource conservation although their projects vary greatly in size and scope.”

Becca adds, “Eagle Ridge Golf Club’s president, Jerry Kokes, is truly passionate about wildlife, particularly birds, and has encouraged native plant growth and installed nesting boxes throughout his property. He showed me a number of beautiful photos on his phone and also impressed me with his bird calling. Keith Campbell, of Mannington Mills, spoke of his family’s commitment to not only improving wildlife habitat but also to improving the local economy by bringing jobs back to the area that had previously been outsourced. His company’s long-term (four-generation, with the fifth working on his MBA) outlook is remarkably similar to Pine Island’s. He sees that being a responsible business owner requires companies to work in partnership with other businesses and agencies to best serve the community and the environment that we depend on for our success.”

Ultimately, NJ Audubon’s goal is for this project to solve a long-standing land use conundrum regarding how to obtain and manage critical wildlife habitat patches suitable for meeting their needs as dictated by their seasonal behavior and daily routine without sacrificing the economics toed to agriculture and forest management in New Jersey. And partnering with a prominent conservation organization like the NJ Audubon is a natural extension of Pine Island’s core values of continuous improvement and protecting the environment.