Harvest is still going full steam ahead, with three crews working seven days a week to bring everything in and our fourth crew cleaning up behind them.
Our Green harvest team was out at the north end of the home farm this week, finishing up at Mule Island. Green Team supervisor Jeremy Fenstermaker is working with picking crew leader Rick Zapata again this year, but the gathering crew has a new leader in Waldemar Blanco. Waldy is a fourteen year team member who has done many things during his tenure here. He is an experienced member of our frost team, worked round the clock during the terrible Labor Day storm last year, and in general is a team player, flexible and ready to go whenever a job needs to be done for the crop.
The gathering team has a tough job. Once the boom is placed in the bog, each end is attached to a tractor, which slowly moves along the dam, corralling the berries. It can be more difficult in some places than others, depending on terrain. Sometimes the ground is uneven, and the boom can push back and some fruit escapes. Some members of the gathering crew follow alongside, “sweeping” the berries and making sure they stay within bounds. It looks really simple but it’s tough to get the hang of it; a lot of guys want to move quickly but it actually gets done faster if you slow down. You only move as fast as the tractor; your body should be slow but your arms should move fast. Once that is done, both ends of the boom are connected to the boom reel, which is wound tighter as the berries are brought up the elevator onto the truck. While part of the crew is pulling the boom tighter, the other part of the crew is setting up the elevator in order to remove the berries from the water and load the trucks bound for the packing house.
Communication is key to all of this, which is why it’s important to have good leaders. Waldy was an excellent choice for this position, having served as the second-in-command when Jorge Morales ran the Green gathering crew last year. “It’s a little different this year,” Waldy says. “I’ve worked on crews with different leaders, but it’s always been with guys who’ve come back year after year. This year, we have some new people. It’s a lot of work to teach them the routine at first, but now everyone knows what they have to do, and they do it.” The weather can make things difficult, he says. “Every year when we get to one particular area, it rains for a week! It’s always something. But we do what we have to do.”
Harvest team supervisor Jeremy Fenstermaker is pleased with Waldy’s work. “He’s been on a gathering crew pretty much since he started here,” Jeremy says. “He has a good sense of what needs to be done, and he does it. He was a natural choice to step up, and he’s doing a good job. The guys respect him, too. That counts for a lot. If your team knows what they need to do, it goes like clockwork.”
Waldy is a great example of someone who does whatever it takes to help Pine Island Cranberry achieve our mission. He works hard, does what needs to be done when it’s time to do it, and has stepped up to fulfill a leadership role and enable his team to hit their targets every day. Team members like Waldy are the kind of people who are helping Pine Island Cranberry do everything we do better every day.
