Our team continues to work on our winter targets for sanding and bog renovation, which in turn keeps our equipment team hustling! Says team member Ernie Waszkiewicz: “The weather can take a toll on the trucks; there’s a lot of hard starting. But that’s something we expect, so we can just keep clicking away on that as well as the rest of the routine.” In the meantime, team member Coco Mercado, who is acting as equipment supervisor while Carlos Baez is on vacation, is keeping track of service calls and making sure he and Ernie respond as quickly as possible.
The biggest ongoing project our equipment team is working on is prepping our old sand screener so we can send it down to CAC in Chile. Ernie, who is the lead on the project, has been putting 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 says. “We’re putting on new fittings, new hose, new valves…a different style that operates with toggle switches. Basically, we’re going over it and making sure everything is right and that it’s running well. We’re cleaning it up a little and retrofitting some return lines to make things as easy as possible for the guys down there.” Getting it to Chile is going to be a project in itself: “We’re going to have to disassemble it some so we can fit it in one of those overseas boxes! It’s going to be a challenge; I think we’re going to have to get it over to the platform at the packing house and load it from there.”
Prep for reno and fall planting is coming along as well. Lots of 4-inch underdrain has been delivered and is waiting for the next phase:
And welder Fred Henschel is working on the planting cages for the new wagon. “With the old cages, we needed someone to physically hook the chain to the top; this new design should work so that the person running the machine can just hook it up themselves with the equipment,” he explains. “Then we save time and labor; no one has to sit on the trailer and wait and they can be out there on the planter.”
The cages will be ready to go well before planting. The screener project is to be done by mid-month, and our team will keep doing whatever it takes to make sure it’s ready!