Cranberry Harvest

We wake up in the morning as the fields are being flooded for the cranberry harvest. The flooding has been going on for 2 days now and has reached the level where the beaters will go in and knock off the berries from their vines.








Here is one of the beaters moving back and forth over the field and you can see many many cranberries floating on the surface.






The breeze has moved the floating cranberries to one corner of the field. It is this breeze which decides where we will move the equipment to extract the berries from the field into the trucks to transport them to the receiving site in Richmond.

The men then lay out booms and begin to move the berries toward the receiving auger that pumps them into the trucks.


The cranberries are building up to several inches deep now and a bit difficult to pull.



Here we have 2 foremen keeping a keen watch on the workings making sure no mistakes occur.


As the berries get loaded into the trucks they are washed with jets of water to eliminate junk that was floating in with them such as sticks, chaff, grass clippings etc. This junk gets pumped into this truck for removal.


In the background of this photo you can see the lift that pulls the berries up to the truck and in the foreground is a tractor running a pump for the water jets.


The cranberries going into the delivery truck.


A close up photo of the cranberries


This series of photos on the cranberry harvest concludes my "Life on an Organic Farm" web blog attached to my web page for 2008. Watch for our next series on our travels to Mainland Mexico when we depart Yuma Arizona around November 3rd.

Larry and Betty

Last day for our fifth wheel trailer

I just had to add one more item before the cranberry harvest.....

Good bye 5th wheel. Today was our last day in the 5trh wheel trailer and now it is off to winter storage. We are now living in our camper and adjusting to the smaller size.



You have heard of "blue boys"? That term used to describe the blue septic tote tanks used for dumping your black water that come in sizes up to 30 gal. Well this is a "white girl" and can contain up to 200 gal. Here is a photo of Betty is going to dump this tote tank! What a farm girl.
Check this out Mairo, Val, Julie, Sue, Lynette, Marilyn and Sherry.


There is our camper in the back ground, with Betty doing the last white boy trip. We only need to dump it twice a year....not bad eh?

Roberts Dance

Well, the video was not my problem but the website problem. Anyways, it is now back working.

Let me introduce you to Robert, our shop manager. Robert loves to fix broken equipment and is happiest when he is working in the shop rather than in the fields where he works when there is nothing to fix. Today I am bringing in a broken piece of equipment for repair and Robert gets very excited and likes to do the "Broken Equipment Dance". This is a bit like a little strip dance where he removes his "pink mechanics apron", gets in a frenzy and starts the repair job.

This is the first step.


You can see the smile on his face for the second step


Now he is getting really serious for the third step.


To watch his disgusting little dance, press the play button on the photo below.




And now a note on this blog site. I am near the end of my contract for this year and things are winding down. It is now time to start preparing for the Mainland Mexico 2008 winter trip.

We are almost ready to move our 5th wheel into storage. Today is move day and after a few last minutes jobs we complete the move this afternoon. We are already living in the camper where space is much less (but we are getting back into the groove) and finding things we forgot to pack.

The last farm crop to come off are the cranberries and it is a pretty sight. The next and last item on this blog will be the cranberry harvest.

Betty and I will start up the Mexico trip section on our Web Site around November 1st when we are in Yuma. It will be actual web pages, not like this blog which I find restrictive on what I can do.

Stay tuned......

Potatoes: washing, sorting and packing

Potatoes can be taken directly from the fields or from our storage sheds to our washer/sorter/packing facility located at one of our partner farms. It is this facility that does all our potato work for the 3 partner farms under the Fraserland Farms group. They are washed coming off the truck, go through sorting processes and then packed either in boxes or bags for the market. After being packed they are trucked to our farm for distribution to the market. Our farm does all the shipping and receiving and pressure cooling of the products.

This video shows the potatoes coming off a truck into the washing line.




This photo below, shows the 50 pound boxes being readied for shipping.





...

Potato harvest is under way....storing potatoes

Once the potatoes are harvested in the fields, there are 2 locations they can go.
Some potatoes will go into cold storage where they will stay over winter and which we will remove a little at a time for market.
When they are taken out of the storage, they will go to the washing and grading line. From there they will be packed either in boxes or bags for the market.

The video below shows the storage of the potatoes. They are piled into special sheds that have fans which blow cool air through the potatoes as they store through the winter.

It was quite dim in the storage shed when I took this video so please excuse the dark at the beginning but it will lighten up as it goes on.









...

More on this .....story.

Here is shot of our dedicated pickers. These young fellas have been especially chosen for their honesty and have promised never to reveal the secret location of the source of these organic pet rocks.

Short movie below showing the pickers.




This bucket contains an example of some of the gems located in the bucket along with some trash that seems to make its way into the hoard.








The following movie will show how we gently load the little gems onto our transport which will take them away to be washed and sorted, wrapped and boxed. A certified organic rock statement will be included and then its off to the wholesalers.

Sorry we cannot sell these sought after pets on line. We have a very strict contract with our distributors that we can only sell to them.

Let me tell you a story about this harvest.

One of the best kept secrets on the organic market is that we are one of the world's largest supplier of "Organic Pet Rocks". It is during this time in the early fall, after Labour Day, we send some equipment and our selective, trustworthy workers out to our secret location to harvest them. I would really get into trouble if any of the upper management found out I was secretly taking photos of this process. However, I have decided that this is a story that needs to be told and taking the chance that I may not have a job next year, I am going ahead and letting you in on this secret.
In the distance you can see the 3 tractors and their implements that are used is locating the organic pet rocks, softening the soil around them, pulling out the ones that are too large and sifting the ones that may be the correct size.

Off to the right is the dump truck that we load the rough gems into for sorting and washing. I am driving the front end loader used to collect them.





This implement has large steel fingers that can dig into the soil and pull up any pet rocks deep in the soil. It will also pull up the large ones that re too large for our sifter.










This movie shows a bit about digging up big organic pet rocks.



Next the disker goes over the soil a couple of times chewing up the dirt lumps into smaller clumps so they don't get caught up in the soil
sifter.










Here we have the soil sifter working the top 4 inches of soil or so. It filters out the rocks and lays them on top of the soil behind it for easy pickings by our crew.








To be continued.....



...

Cranberries are comming along well

As I continue to mow the cranberries, I came across these red berries growing over top a white drain pipe. I thought it looked neat and would make a good picture, hence here it is.














One thing I have problems with this blog method is interacting text with photos. It is difficult to place the cursor where you want it and the program puts it only in certain spots. In this case I wanted to text to be beside the movie below but cannot do it.

This movie is not the greatest, I wanted to show the cranberries on the edge as I drove by but it turned out kind of shakey and blurred. It took 20 min. to upload it so I decided to leave it on rather than start all over again.
Take it for how it is.

The sun is finally back.........at work again.

Here we are, the sun has finally come out and along with a good wind last night the land is starting to dry out again. The grass along the cranberry fields is getting long and since the potato fields are still too wet for me to spray, I will be mowing the dikes for the next 2 days.
This will be the 2nd last mowing before harvesting. We do not like long clippings getting into the water when harvesting.
Click on the video below to watch the movie.


As I was mowing the dikes, I came across a mama barn swallow feeding her 4 babies happily sitting on a sprinkler head.

The harvesters are getting back to work, I will see if I can get some shots of them for the next blog.

Rain, rain more rain.

Wow, its been a few days since I did my last entry. We have been getting too much rain and it is making it difficult to get into the fields. The potatoes are starting to die down fairly quickly are are being topped. The potatoes that will be going into winter storage are left in the ground 3 weeks after topping to allow them to build up tougher skins for handling. The beans for processing are being harvested by huge machines that strip them off the plants and into a bin. We are getting rot in some areas of the beans from too much rain, it can spread fast if not harvested soon enough. I am having a hard time getting my spraying done between showers. The odd time the sun comes out and things feel better.
We are getting excited about our winter trip to Mexico, doing planning and talking to the other members of our crew. We are planning of leaving Canada about the 8th of Oct. and tour around the states for a while on our way to Yuma. There we will stay about 10 days. I have a side awning to put up on our camper, solar panels and some work to do on our tow vehicle. We will be grouping up there with the others and hope to cross into Mexico around the 7th of November.

Why are the geese on the move so early?

This movie was taken at 8 pm and every night around this time the geese are on the move from the fields back to their night camp. During this time of year the many fields of peas and beans are being harvested by the mechanical harvesters. These machines leave or spill a fair amount of peas etc on the ground. It seems these geese know all about it and are happy to clean up the residue. They come from all around to enjoy the feast.

In the morning they fly back to their favourite field for more goodies......getting a good fat build up for the winter.

Our portable water tank

Here is our portable water tank on top of Betty's car. I think it is about 40 US gallons. It works great! It is something like a small water bed bladder but a hose connection at the bottom and a overflow vent at the top. One downside is that they did not build in tie down attachments. I covered mine with garden netting which gives me lots of securing spots and also protects the bag to a certain extent.






Here is a photo of Betty watering her plants using a hose and gravity. I have a pump I can hook up to the bag to pump the water if I need to.

We use it to resupply our water tank or fill our camper.

This will come into good use this winter in Mexico.






...

Routine operations

Things are pretty much on line and running smoothly on the farm. As you an see the corn is growing quite tall now, it still will grow another foot or two prior to being ready for harvest.

Nothing much new to report except the routine stuff.

Keep in touch for new updates.

Imature Eagles

I was mowing the dikes around our cranberries yesterday and I came upon these 4 young eagles hanging around just like 4 teenagers. They were this years brood, 2 from a nest by us and 2 from across the field.
I was fun watching them interact, one would try to intimate another, they would bustle and preen and show off.
I wonder what their talking was about...what mamma fed them last....who knows.

various shots around the area

..........................................................Our camp home by the cranberries.


















..........................................................Secret tunnel under highway10 between fields.

..........................................................One of our neighbors looks on while I work.

..........................................................Eagles seem to be everywhere.

Feeding the cranberries

The cranberries have reached the stage where they are growing very fast and need all the energy they can get. Here we show how we fertilize the crop with the least amount of damage. If we were to drive equipment over the vines it would not be good. Adding fertilizer to the irrigation would not insure an even spread and there would be pooling of too much in one area and not enough in another. So far, this expensive method proves to be the best.

Click the button below to watch the helicopter.

The helicopter sets the hopper on the ground, a bag of fertilizer is loaded into the hopper and away it goes. In 4 min. it will be back for another.



This is a field map of the cranberry fields.


Bog 4 and 5 are coming on line for the first time this year.

Bog 6 should have a small crop next year.

Bog 7 was planted this spring and it will be 3 years before its first small crop.

MAL will be changed from a regular field this winter into a cranberry field. It costs about $40,000 / acre to convert a field into cranberries.








...

Update on the cranberries

REMEMBER the cranberry flowers.....

This photo was taken on June 20th while the bees were hard at work.













This photo was taken a month later.

You can see the berries are forming quite nicely.

They will start to turn red shortly as they continue to grow in size.








So..... You are wondering why Larry put my picture and my helicopters picture in with the cranberries.

You will have to check out the next article to see........










I can make my helicopter stand still..











...