Growers – has anyone come up with a good way to regulate the flow of picking tray dumping into macros that give the leafers a fighting chance? Pickers seem to relish piling their loads on top of each other all at once, burying leafs so deeply that they are irretrievable, and no amount of exhortation, short of screaming, seems to deter them. Though I do appreciate it when a guy dumps a tray with 50 leafs into the macro and pauses to pick out 1 as a token gesture before dashing off.
After years of wrestling with harvest day issues, here is what has improved my process:
–spend the time in the vineyard the couple of days BEFORE the pick. Clear brown leaves from the clusters, and tear green leaves away from the fruit zone. This eliminates the availability of leaves to the picker. Get the raisined clusters out of there, shot berries, etc. Hopefully they are using shears and not those hooks! Those hooks just encourage the downward movement that is more likely to include shoots and leaves.
–put out the bins on the ground (we used to have them on top of a truck or trailer - tough reaching and sorting) so they are available as soon as a picker wants to use it.
–double up on your sorters. we had perhaps 10 guys picking and dumping, and 4 of us plus the supervisor doing the quality control. Just tell the guys to move to the next bin and move half your sorters over there. This year we had an intuitive flow (thanks Brian Tuite). Paying for that extra layer of help who works for YOU and not the Vineyard Management team is key.
–the supervisor was also manning the forklift, so we made good use of his body. This is the first year the VM team put a team leader out in the field. I did not get out there, because I did not have to!
–probably most important, remember IT IS YOUR PICK! Let them know what you want in advance, on that day, and follow up with comments to the VM Company’s top guy.
Pay by the hour, not the bucket!
I would love to pay by the hour, but have been unsuccessful in that quest. Except for once…years ago…and the pickers showed up and demanded way more money than was appropriate. It was harvest morning. I paid them that and ended that relationship.
Totally tongue-in-cheek Merrill. By the hour doesn’t work over here, though it worked really well when I was in Europe. Only the best fruit got picked, a lot of hand-sorting in the vineyard and no need for sorting tables.
Cheers,
Bill
I pay my small crew by the hour. But they aren’t a full time picking crew. They are local laborers Ive developed a relationship with. They aren’t nearly as fast as “real” crews but they know exactly what I want and the clusters are pretty much sorted in the vineyard.
Most of my contracts have the grower picking for me, but its sometimes hard for them to find crews for just a ton or ton and a half that I get and I pick earlier than everyone else around here so I cant really piggyback on other picks so often I just end up bringing my own guys in.
I am very, very fortunate to have Josh Clark Vineyard Management do my picking for me. This year was the smoothest ever, as I said. I am so freaking happy to have my vintage in tank.
We have our built our own trailers that are not like any I have seen. They are basically built for leaf pickers not bin dumpers. They are 2 bin trailers with a platform in the center and at both ends. We ask them to dump a few in each bin to fill them equally. We also have 2-4 (1-2 of the crew and 2-3 of us) leaf pickers plus tractor driver that fills in when needed and/or strips leafs. They do not really like them but its what we use so we don’t have to rent them so we wanted them for efficient vineyard sorting.
We also give beer(Coronitas are their favorite guys have 2 women have 1) and or food at the end of every pick for our winery as a incentive/tip. The first few times we did this they were in shock and disbelief so now we seem to get very good and motivated crews.
If we scream they don’t react well but if the the leaf picker or bin dumper yells “memos ohas” or “no megusta lechuga” it seems to work, I’m sure I butchered the spelling.
Your other option is to do more sorting at the winery.