Update on work

17-1-2014

    Everyone was told today that there will be no night shift tomorrow, and only day shift will work. The shift manager won't be coming into work (and for that matter, I'm not sure the head manager will be either) so Luke will be in charge. If anything goes wrong on any of the lines (which happens fairly frequently) then Luke gets to deal with it. I'll be here to, working wet-line. The wet-line supervisor for night shift quit today, so Luke is now official wet-line supervisor from now on. Since he may have to run all over the building tomorrow, I guess that leaves me to help supervise. 2.I.C again, for two lines now. 

   How are we to run two lines at the same time? We're not. Either wet-line will be running or dry-line will be, and one group of people will be shuffled around all the lines depending on momentary needs. Apparently from now on everything will be a lot more mixed up. Work forces are being consolidated, since there isn't a need for all the lines all the time now. A lot of people were layed off today, and a few quit. Most of them were people who have stated from the start that they had planned on leaving this time of the year anyway, but some of them were workers that just didn't make the cut. Apparently more and more people will be cut every week now, until there are just a few people left to help clean up everything, in detail, at the end of the season. I think there are only about two weeks left total, three if cleaning takes a while. 

   

Also promoted

16-1-2014

    Today was a lot different from every other day so far. When we showed up to work at 3:00 the team started with industrial grade, which we always do last, and the wet-line freezer was being thawed out and the belt hosed down, which is always done at the end of the night. I asked Luke why and he said, "because we're done."

   "What?" I thought. It's only 3:45. We can't be done already, we just started. Instead, I said, "Okay," and started with cleaning. 

   Midway through hosing down the freezer floor (under the giant belt that has to be at least 10 meters long) the wet-line supervisor, Ash, came in and said the head manager wanted to see me. Apparently he wanted me and Luke to learn how to run dry-line. So I found Luke and we walked over to the next big room over and we started to learn how to run the machine (another belt) for dry-line. After a little while the head supervisor found us and asked me who was more clever, me or Luke? I pointed to Luke. He said, "Okay, Luke will be supervisor, you'll be his 2.I.C. (The Kiwi way of saying second in charge)." 

    Holy cow, I just got promoted. And it was a big step up! Dry line is the most prestigious of all the lines, because it's for the grade A fruit (the stuff the big stores pay big for) and the stores can reject it so we have to be a lot pickier, and a lot more stringent, on what gets through and what doesn't. Everything that gets turned down by dry-line goes to wet-line, and then the packing house from there. To call it the packing house is misleading because it's just another big room in another part of the same building, but since the building is shaped like a C, with the freezer in the middle, you have to walk outside and back in to get there. 

     Anyhow, I was saying that dry-line is fairly prestigious. Everyone working in dry-line has to be paying attention to their task, everyone has to be aware of what's going on with everyone else, and everyone has to be good at what they're doing. That is not at all the case with the wet-line. Not even a little. Everyone in wet-line knows that the fruit we sort through is either going to be mushed for juice, or it's going to be frozen and then sorted through again in the packing house. People stand around and do nothing, and for a while nobody cares. The people who are grading on the line stare down and slowly pick out a bad berry here and there, bored, never reaching outside of the 8 inch bubble right in front of their face. That does not fly on the dry line. On the dry line, you must be quick, efficient, and alert to more than just what's in front of your face. Even just being a grader for dry-line is admirable; it shows you're fast, effective, and smart. Here I had just gotten promoted to supervise this line! To be a supervisor, you have to know how to do, and be good at, every job on that line. Since the machine is fairly complex, and since there are controls at both far ends of the machine that sometimes have to be operated at the same time, there are two supervisors. Hence, both me and Luke. 

   For the next few days Luke and I will be trained by the day shift supervisors for dry-line. And then we'll be on our own. I don't know for how long, but I'm assuming for the rest of the season (aka a few weeks). I have no idea what will become of the wet-line. I don't know if we'll be running both in the same night, or just have some nights on wet-line and some nights on dry-line.

    For those of you who have been keeping up:  yes, Luke is now a supervisor for dry-line and the 2nd in charge overall. He holds two spots at the same time. Go Luke! 

Ooh! And today... I got to learn how to drive the fork lift! Happy day!

Promotion

11-01-2014

    Luke got a promotion! First thing this morning the owner walked up to us and told him. He was swept right into it, and I barely had time to say, "congratulations!" before he was off and learning his new responsibilities. 

    Luke is now higher up than all the line managers, and is right hand man to the shift manager. The order is now: the owners, the head manager, the shift manager, then Luke (2nd in charge), then the line managers. It makes a lot of sense to me because Luke can do a lot more than the line managers know how to do, like drive a forklift, but he's not as experienced as the head manager, or even the shift manager, so even though he has awesome mechanical intuition, I think the shift manager may know more. At least when it comes to these machines. If the topic was about cars, well then I'd put my money on Luke. 

   If the shift manager ever needs a day off, Luke will be able to fill in no problem, and I think he's already looking forward to that day off. Today our line manager was off, because it's his dad's birthday, so Luke was our line manager. It was a lot different with Luke overseeing things, like we were short handed, because Luke couldn't do the normal jobs he used to do since he had new tasks at hand. Therefore, I loaded most of the day, and started to do a lot of the things that Luke used to do. I've even helped unload a truck or two, which entails weighing the fruit brought in by other farmers and keeping track of how many kilograms or fruit were brought in per trip, and overall per year. I'm still not driving a forklift, but it doesn't seem like such an impossibility to learn anymore since there was talk today of teaching one of the other line workers - someone else like me - to do it. 

A Day Off!

Luke finally writes on the blog…

A day off!! After what feels like many years of grading on the blueberry line, loading lug after lug (6 gallon plastic crate) of blueberries onto the “wet-line” belt we finally get our first day off in quite a while.  How did we spend it you might inquire?  Mostly sleeping would be the answer. By the time we rolled off the bed today it was after 2 o’clock in the afternoon! Mind you we didn’t go to sleep until almost 5am, getting off work at nearly 4am plus some time to clean up before walking back to our new home. 

Now you might have noticed that I said we rolled OFF the bed instead of out of it, or out of the van since that is where we had been sleeping… but recently we received some new accommodation! Greg and Allison (the amazing owners of Blueberry Country where we are currently employed) were gracious enough to ask us if we wanted to move inside somewhere.  Perhaps they were growing tired of seeing our silly little Honda Odyssey van sitting up on the hill outside their home?  So we are currently living in some old offices inside one of their big warehouse style blueberry processing facilities.  It is a beautiful…er…spacious living area.  Actually quite nice compared to the van.  About a 12 by 30 foot room split into 2 separate rooms, shelving on most walls (since it used to be a product development office and was chock full of parts and files), 3 windows (although one is boarded up and the other has no glass and just goes into another room) and a super cool bed we made out of 2 desks slid together and an assortment of pads, blankets, and camping mattresses.  I say we rolled “off” the bed because its over 3 feet off the ground, being desk height.

After a few mornings in a row of people basically kicking the door open looking for things in random places (the people that moved out come back to look for things to bring over to their new location quite frequently), we figured it was time for a lock of some sort.  The outside lock was easy, accomplished by a simple padlock.  This kept our things secure when we were away, but that doesn’t work from the inside, with the lock being on the outside of the door.  So on the inside I had to get a little more creative. It just so happened that we have attached shelving on either side of the door with some strangely placed cutouts already in them, using those cutouts I was able to cut a removable wooden plank with a few spacers so it slides into these cutouts and rests firmly against the inwardly opening door.  It looks like something out of a castle to crudely secure the entry but it works! It should keep out all but the burliest of intruders.

So our new accommodation is much larger than the van, and drier, but still provides no amenities really. We still have to walk a ways to the bathroom; no water or anything like that.  So it’s really just like the van but much bigger and much louder with the giant freezers not 4 feet away from our window.  But we are extremely grateful for this being offered to us. Who would have guessed that our quick “stop in” to see the blueberry farm we had heard about would include job offers, work extensions, and free lodging!

So for our day off, after we woke up, we took care of a few errands – like creating these locking mechanisms – and made some lunch before heading in to Hamilton to see Anchorman 2 at the movie theater.  I think Carolyn and I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes stupid comedies, as we both do!  Back to work tomorrow for another 12 or more hour shift of grabbing smushed blueberries off a slow moving conveyer belt!

Work

1-3-2014

    Hey, that's the first time I've gotten to write "2014". 

    We're busy here, working at the blueberry farm. It seems we're very useful, especially Luke with all his experience driving tractors and four-wheelers before, not to mention his mechanical and electrical know-how. We've been asked to stay the whole season, which would be sometime in February. I don't know that I want to stay too long into February, but we're both willing to stay through the end of January. We were given the choice between working here, in Ohuopo on the North Island, or in Southland on the South Island, but we like it here and we don't want to rush to the south island and miss good stuff on the north island, so we're staying here. 

    We work a lot. We typically work 12 hour shifts but Luke has worked up to 17 hours. Or I should say nights, since we work through the night. The shortest day we've worked was actually a day, and it was actually a timely 9 hours, but it was on a Sunday which everyone normally has off. We haven't had a day off yet. Soon we will, though.

    When we're not working we're usually sleeping. We get into town every couple of days to get groceries and supplies, but otherwise we don't do much else. 

   Work is not hard, it's just tiring. It's factory line work. We stand at a belt and pick out squishy blueberries from the hordes of berries that move past. Sometimes we load the front of the machine with the blueberries, sometimes we run around with bins of sorted blueberries and put them where they're supposed to go. Where they go depends on the quality of blueberries in the bin. Eventually they will either be frozen and packaged, or mushed and juiced for jellies, spreads, and ice cream. The green ones get composted. Luke gets to drive the fork lift sometimes, and he also helps unload the trucks that come and deliver loads of blueberries. He knows as much, if not more (probably more), than our supervisor. Our supervisor's supervisor and the owners work with Luke more frequently than not, because he's just so handy. Me, I just mostly work the line, and pick up odds and ends chores to break up the days a bit. I have a great advantage in what I do, in that I'm not at all afraid of spiders, or any bugs in general. That's good because there are bugs everywhere. Or course, Luke isn't afraid of bugs either. I guess no-one on the wet line (our particular belt) is, or we wouldn't be working there.

   Our feet are sore, our backs are aching, and our fingers are stained blue and brown. At a certain point, even lemon juice doesn't work. We end our days soaked because of all the hosing down we do for cleaning, and I'm usually cold because I hose out the freezer every night. But I actually like it. The freezer never feels that cold, and on Christmas I was elated to be in any sort of cold at all. It made it feel more like Christmas. 

    We live on campus of the factory/farm here, and we have been given free reign to use the bathrooms and shower whenever we want. Hot shower. We use it every day right after work. By then everyone else has left, except the manager (the supervisor's supervisor), but by the time we're done showering even he's gone. We lock up. 

   It's kind of nice to be able to use the amenities when the place isn't full of activity. Night shift isn't so bad. Plus, night shift is where the long hours are are at, and more hours mean more money. That opens up a lot more options for us, like maybe we can go to Australia too, or scuba dive in a world class spot, or ski out west (in the US) on our way back home. Or just stay in New Zealand longer. We'll let you know when once we decide.

Big Day

23-12-2013

Big Day:

    Wow, what a day! We had a bit of a late start this morning, due to staying up late last night. We stayed in a holiday park and ended up camping right next to some Irish folk, although two of the three now live in Brisbane, Australia. Since the two boys have been friends since primary school, they decided to meet up for their Christmas holiday in New Zealand, and the girlfriend of 5 years tagged along too. They were very friendly people, and we stayed up until 2am swapping histories and telling stories. We've gotten used to going to bed not long after dark- it's just the camping way- and getting up with the sun around 6, but this morning we slept in until about 9:00. 

   Once we did finally drag ourselves out of bed, we decided to make use of the free wireless offered at the campground to call family while it was still a reasonable hour in the states. We're eighteen hours ahead here, but it's easier to think of Michigan as six hours ahead, just a day behind. It felt great to catch up with hellos as Christmas closes in.

    After that we took hot showers again, just because we could. We had no idea when the next opportunity for a hot shower, rather than a cold one, might come along. 

   Mostly we just dawdled around this morning. We had rough plans to go explore the Piripiri Caves and stop by a blueberry farm on the way. It wasn't just any blueberry farm, either; it's a farm owned by some friends of Luke's grandparents, whom they met years ago when they were traveling through New Zealand. We planned on inquiring about possible job opportunities, since we've heard that there's a large need for fruit pickers and a lot of farms are used to hiring people on holiday. That means they're used to having people work for only a few weeks, at most. Of course there's always the option to work longer if you can, but you don't have to. 

   All our plans for today were mostly to fill time on our way to our destination for tomorrow. We planned on blackwater rafting through the Waitomo Caves. It's a massive, cavernous cave system that has some of the best displays of glow worms in New Zealand. We were just waiting for the confirmation email.

    So, finally we left the holiday park (aka campground), just after lunch. Luke was driving and I was navigating. I was looking at the map, figuring out the best way to get to the blueberry farm, when something caught my attention. It was a spot of color that wasn't anywhere else on the map, so I looked closer. It was a symbol of a rolling film camera. Underneath it was written "Hobbiton, The Shire". Holy cow, I just found the Shire from Lord of the Rings! We had to go! It was already on our list, we had just assumed it was on the South Island. Apparently not!

   I quickly showed Luke and we immediately detoured to see what was there. Would it just be a hill with a sign? Would there be a house that looked like the ones in the movie? Would it be all gated off so we'd have to pay an absurd charge just to see a hill? We would soon find out!

   We followed signs off the main road and topped a hill to see a barn-like building, half labeled "cafe," and half labeled, "store."  People were milling about everywhere, but nobody appeared to be actively doing anything. Well, hmmm. There was nothing recognizable so far, but we pulled in and parked anyway. We'd come this far, might as well really have a look. We followed the signs to the entrance (the parking lot was under construction and it wasn't as easy to figure out where we were supposed to go as you'd think) and noticed several large busses all painted and labeled "Hobbiton".  Either they were making a way bigger deal out of something than they should, or there was some sort of tour. Turns out there is, in fact, a tour. We got the last two tickets on the next available bus, and it was only a twenty minute wait. We idled around the shop while we waited, since it was right by where we were supposed to be for the busses. I was hoping to find a half-pint glass for sale, but no such luck. Just t-shirts and posters, mostly. Not even the trilogy on DVD, only the most recent Hobbit movie in Blueray or 3D.

   Soon the bus arrived and we hopped on, wondering what they'd show us. We drove down a wide, winding dirt road through a major sheep farm as the driver talked about what was where during the filming. Animals were all kept in their cages over here, dining tents and costume-and-design tents lined the side of the road over there. It took an hour and half to do the makeup for one hobbit.

   Apparently the government paid to have the road done, since there was a large amount of heavy traffic in and out every day from the film crew. They must have had the foresight to see that it would someday be a popular tourist destination, and realized they'd easily make the money back and then some. 

    We weren't on the bus long when it pulled up to a parking lot and dropped us off. Ahead there was a wooden gate in a messy hedge of bushes and small trees, and a sign that read "toilets."  Interesting. I hoped that wasn't all there was to it.

    Good thing it wasn't. To my surprise, the Shire was right through the gate, just as it was in the movies! The spacial arrangement of things was a little different than the sense of things in the movie, but that was to be expected. We walked down the same path the Froto ran to when he went to meet Gandolf when Gandolf was late, and he said, "A wizard is never late. Nor is he early. He always arrives precisely when he means to," but then he cracks into a smile and laughs. For some reason that's a scene that stands out in my memories of the movies. 

    All over the nearby hillsides and valley there were little hobbit homes. Some were smaller than others, but they were all little. There were little gardens, little benches, and little clothes lines with hobbit clothes hanging up to dry around a number of the homes. There were all sorts of props and garden details in front of every house. Chimneys poked up all through the hillsides, and eyelet windows peaked out of the sides of hills. Through the windows you could see curtains, small vases, books, kitchen things, and other small props. Every round door was painted a bright color, with the most common color being bright blue. Every hobbit house had a small patio area in front, most had a bench too.

    It was just like in the movies. I was surprised that there was so much detail, and that it was more than just a smoke and mirrors set. Not to say each hobbit house was a real house. If you opened up a door or looked closely through a window, you'd see nothing but a wooden wall about 6 feet back. The guide opened a door to demonstrate, and explained that for the first few years of tours there was nothing here but near bones props. It was built back up later, for the tourists' benefit, to look like it does in the movies. The town area was also added, which includes a quaint stone bridge next to a working water wheel, a pub, and a few more props from the movie, mostly from the scene of Bilboa's eleventy-first (111th) birthday party. 

    As part of the tour everyone got a free drink at the pub. You could chose between a stout, a pale ale, a hard cider, or gingerale for a non-alcoholic option. I chose the hard cider. Luke chose the stout. The hard cider was delicious, but after trying Luke's, I wished I'd gotten a stout too. It was rich and creamy, like a good cup of hot chocolate; dark but not bitter at all. I wish I could have bought a case to bring back to the states with me. 

   We had the option of buying food there too, and the prices were cheap! Especially compared to everywhere else in New Zealand. I got a muffin that was full of berries and chocolate chips. Luke got a cold meat pie. It was made with lamb, the filling looked like balogna, and there was a layer of clear, gelatinous meat juice between the filling and the crust. It looked like it would be gross, but it tasted great. Think of leftover pot roast wrapped in pie crust. It'd be basically the same thing, only it's a little more appetizing to think of it as leftover roast with a crust.

   After the pub we scrambled for a few more pictures as the tour wrapped up. We passed the toilets again and then found ourselves back in the parking lot, waiting for the bus, which took us back to the terminal by the shop. All in all the tour probably lasted two hours, but the time flew by. Suddenly we were in a rush to get to the blueberry farm office before they closed!

   Luckily, we didn't get too lost, and it only took us about a half hour to get to the blueberry farm. Even though we did go to the wrong farm first, they're both within a mile of each other. And with another bit of luck, we found who we were looking for right away. He happened to be with the manager who does the hiring, and after some conversation about what we were looking for and what we'd done in the past (or was it an interview?), they told us to camp around the farm tonight and we could talk more tomorrow. Then we were handed two big buckets and told we could drive to certain rows and pick blueberries for ourselves for free! I have no idea if they do that a lot, or if that was really special, but I think it was awesome. Blueberries just don't taste right if they're not fresh off the bush, and it had been a while for me. The blueberries in Washington don't have the same taste as Michigan blueberries. I was glad to find that New Zealand blueberries do. We now have two full buckets of blueberries. Actually, I should amend that to one and a quarter buckets of blueberries, since we had blueberry pancakes for dinner, with blueberries for dessert, and as an appetizer. And I still plan on putting blueberries on my cereal tomorrow morning. 

   On our way back towards the office, the owner came zipping over to us on his dirt bike and asked if we could start tomorrow and work through to the new year. We said yes. What do you know- all the sudden we're employed for a little while. 

   What about Waitomo caves? Well, the "confirmation" email turned out to be a declination email instead. Apparently they were full already, and I don't think they operate on Christmas or Christmas Eve. The timing couldn't be more perfect. We'll just do the caves when we're done working here. 

   Now we're all tucked in, freedom camping on a grassy hill above the farm, by our host's request. There's even a shower for us to use in the bathrooms here. A hot shower. I'll say, again, what a day. 

   

A few photos for those who don’t use Facebook...

Beach Cooking!