Tag Archives: team efforts

Harvest’s end – 2016

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Harvest finished this week with a bang at Pine Island Cranberry, and we are all proud at what we’ve been able to accomplish this year: 32.6 million pounds of cranberries, with 1,278 acres harvested at an average of 255 barrels per acre!

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“We started slow because we were chasing the color,” says manager Matt Giberson, “but by the end, we had all three teams going seven days a week and we brought in a lot of fruit. On our final three days we were sending over 1.5 million pounds of clean fruit per day to the receiving station, which is a record.” He says the three harvest teams did an incredible job. “It was a safe harvest, too; nobody got hurt. And Matt Stiles did great for his first year as a harvest team leader. His crew started the earliest, and it’s tough to be the guys who are going from early September all the way to the end when the berries just keep coming at you. Long hours, lack of sleep; it all gets to you after a while. But he did a fantastic job.”

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CFO Joann Martin agrees: “24 bogs set records this year! Nadine #3 produced 523 barrels per acre this year, which is amazing.” She also credits the team for this year’s numbers as well as their meticulous attention to detail. “Mike [Guest] always does a great job with tracking the numbers at the packing house, and this year with the two bog side cleaners things are a little different. This was Vanessa’s second year working on the new equipment, and she did a phenomenal job keeping everything straight. Running the trucks out there isn’t always the easiest job but her attention to detail made all the difference.”

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COO Bryan vonHahmann is already looking ahead: “Now that we have the yield results as well as the less fun numbers for things like rot and debris, we can start to build our analysis. We’ll look at what we did bed by bed, comparing it to our application records: what we applied, when, how much. We’ll also look at other activities like weeding, bees, and pollination, then try to determine improvements. For example, if we had one bed that was good but the one immediately next to it was weak, why? How do we improve the weaker bed? It’s a question of taking the large amount of data we have and turning it into something we can manage from, then systematically applying what we’ve learned on bog-by-bog basis.”

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“Obviously we were really happy with the crop,” says CEO Bill Haines. “It was our second biggest crop ever, and third biggest in terms of barrels per acre, so I was really pleased with that. We’re pleased that our strategy of accelerating the renovation of our bogs is working; I think that’s the biggest impact we’ve had. The team worked really hard this year as always, and I’m really proud of the job that they did. And they deserve all of the credit for this crop. We have stuff to work on, and we have to continue to renovate; we had problems with quality and we’re not sure why. It’s probably weather related, but we’re going to work this winter to have a plan to improve on that. But the team did a great job.”

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*Photos courtesy Nadine Haines.

Winter storms

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When a big winter storm is in the forecast, the news pays a lot of attention to bread, milk, eggs, rock salt, and closures. On a farm, the work must be done whatever the weather, and our team needs to prep accordingly!

The number one priority every weekend is checking the water: checking for washouts, making sure nothing’s too high or too low, making sure there’s no water on the dam itself. Team members rotate the responsibility of doing a complete check of entire farm on Saturday and Sunday. “In order to make sure that gets done during bad weather as well, we need to make sure the main pathways are cleared,” says COO Bryan vonHahmann. “In order to do that, we sent the front loaders home with the guys, which meant once the blizzard hit, they were able to plow themselves out and start clearing the main dams. Then the other guys were able to go check the water, reservoirs, bogs, all that. And in the meantime the team just kept plowing. And plowing. And plowing.”

The Equipment/Facilities team also took some precautionary measures, making sure generators ready to go in case we lost power for an extended amount of time. They also made sure the heat was turned up in any vacant properties onsite, just in case. “We also packed the shop with equipment to work on,” says manager Louis Cantafio. “That way, we didn’t have to dig it out, or start it in the cold, or fill the shop with melting snow. We went over all the loaders, made sure they were greased and fueled and ready to go before the operators brought them home.” Then, once the storm hit, they had to start pushing everything. “All the dams where we’re running water had to be plowed,” he says, “but we also had to get all the egresses open and get rid of snow everywhere we needed to store incoming deliveries. It’s no small job, working on this place; the loaders started Saturday and kept on pushing until Monday.”

Another job well-done for one of the best teams around!

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.”

Winter is coming.

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Preparation for our winter projects has begun! Mostly, this means getting ready for the winter flood.

As we have discussed here before, drainage is a key element in Pine Island Cranberry’s water management program. In addition to having irrigation systems that reduce water usage, well-drained soil is necessary to keep a bog’s root system functional. Beds should be designed for adequate drainage, which is essential for good root development and aeration as well as prevention of conditions that can lead to the presence of Phytophthora, which causes fruit rot and root rot.

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 enough 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.

In addition to water management, our shop team is busy winterizing facilities and equipment by clearing out gutters and downspouts to prevent ice build up, shutting off the water supply to outside faucets, and draining all exterior water lines where necessary. They are also making sure to top off fuel tanks and perform other routine maintenance tasks in order to keep everything running as efficiently as possible!

Trommel

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Pine Island Cranberry has only been using our bogside cleaner for one season but our team is already figuring out ways to make it even better!

Our Equipment team spent a considerable amount of time over the past month or so working on a trommel attachment in order to increase the efficiency of the bogside cleaner. (A trommel, also known as a “trommel screen,” is a screened cylinder used to separate materials by size.)

The team took it on a trial run last week and were pleased with the results! “It did exactly what it was supposed to do,” says welder Fred Henschel. What this new extension is actually supposed to do is take in all the trash produced by the berry pump: berries that are too small, leaves, twigs…anything not supposed to go with the fruit, along with all the water it’s pulling up from the bog. “The problem before was, we were pulling in so much water it wasn’t separating from the trash enough,” Fred says. “We couldn’t entirely disperse the water and the trash truck would end up pulling away more than half full of water as opposed to full of just the debris.”

The team’s modifications made it possible to send clean water back into the bog and the debris into the trucks. It was also more efficient from a time and fuel standpoint, since instead of using three to four trash trucks per trailer load of berries, the gathering crew was able to load one tractor trailer with one trash truck. “It saved time on switching, as well,” Fred says. When it was time to switch out the trash truck, the team would have to stop the pump, pull the truck all the way out to the far corner of the bog, then back another truck all the way back in. Skipping that step allows the harvest to move much faster.

And in the true spirit of doing whatever it takes…”The guys were so excited to try it out that it couldn’t fail,” Fred says.

*Photos by Fred Henschel

Finish line: 2015

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Harvest comes to a finish at Pine Island Cranberry soon, and it’s been one heck of a ride!

We’re still using our traditional harvesting methods:

But we’ve also been working with new technology:

Last but not least, we’ve really enjoyed sharing how we love what we do!

As always, no matter what the final numbers are, we are growers…it’s what we do and who we are. And our team at Pine Island Cranberry will continue to do everything they do better every day!

250 days!

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Wednesday, our Pine Island team celebrated 250 days accident-free with a pizza lunch at the shop!

“We wanted to get together now in order to congratulate everyone,” said CEO Bill Haines to the assembled team. “It’s been 250 days since someone was hurt and needed to go get attention, and you should all be proud of yourselves. But this is also a reminder to keep thinking about safety and pay attention to what you’re doing all the time. If you’re running a piece of equipment, shut it down before you mess with it. Wear your safety gear. And remember to keep taking care of each other! You’re responsible for yourself and for the people you work with. If you’re two team members working side by side, remind each other to use your helmets, use your gloves…whatever equipment you’ve been issued.”

Our previous record was 365 days; when we pass that, Bill says, we’ll have another get-together; at 500 days, we’ll do something bigger. And as always, Pine Island has full faith in our team to keep doing whatever it takes, to take care of our crop as well as each other!

Working with the weather

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Careful water management is the key to cranberries, but weather is always the most unpredictable factor. Rain can be a blessing, but a heavy downpour can lead to bog flooding and have an adverse effect on fruit quality; the longer the flood, the greater the possibility that newly formed fruit can suffocate.

Heavy storms earlier in the week were certainly less intense than the Labor Day storm back in 2012, but Pine Island nonetheless had to spring into action on Wednesday to handle the three inches that came down in a relatively brief amount of time! “It came fast, so we had to react fast,” says COO Bryan vonHahmann. “But everyone pulled together and we got out there quickly.” It was, however, a learning moment for a couple of things. “We sent out a lot of people for whom this was a newer task,” he says. “So we know now to have tools set aside so we can issue them and get everyone on location as fast as possible. But we pulled together and got everything adjusted! The team really did a great job.”

Management is also making some plans for moving forward. One of the problems the team had to deal with was washouts. These can often be an issue with the newest bogs. Fixing dams is routine maintenance that a team (Jorge, Joel, and Waldy) had been working on prior to the storm, and while some of it held up, some of it didn’t. Bog Renovations Manager Steve Manning is considering several routes for erosion control, among them adopting the use of erosion control mats, similar to what highway departments use for roadwork. This may hopefully save us both time and money going forward by fixing the cause rather than repairing damages.

“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.

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.”