Life on the pea harvest

Colin here, down by the river now between Easby and Richmond.

It’s funny though seeing all this water comes back into mind of course the very hot, dry pea season that we had and then the minute we finish that and we got into August it was followed by a very very wet period. In fact I think we actually recorded rain on every day of august at Lowestoft.

The problem that is giving us is lifting potatoes.

As we’re not able to lift regularly for our daily supplies because of the weather and it being too wet so we’re having to look and buy a little bit in terms of making sure we can get our supplies from elsewhere in the country and we get back onto good going, as it were.

Anyway, catch you later.

Posted by Colin Wright at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Well I’ve made it back. Almost seven miles. Absolutely superb countryside. Thoroughly enjoyed that walk, brought back a lot of reminiscing and cleared the mind and it’s just a good thing to do.

Anyway, that’s going to be me signing off now for a week because we’re actually off to Portugal. So I’m going to forget work. But when I come back there’ll be loads of things of interest on the blog. About the soya harvest in Italy. About our foreign office, we’re meeting them tuesday after I get back. We’re going to review that and we’re going to give that some direction.

We’ve got next year’s contracts to sort out. And we’ve got a buying department to set up. Anyway I’ll keep you up to date with what’s going on.

That’s all from me. I’ll talk to you in a week’s time.

Posted by Colin Wright at 9:42 AM | Permalink

Unfortunately I’ve got to the castle and the grounds are shut and I can’t go in which is a bit of a disappointment. But, here we are, that’s the keep. Described as the guardian of the day which is a very apt description I think.

Anyway catch you later.

Posted by Colin Wright at 9:10 AM | Permalink

I made it down to the falls now as you can see from the photographs. We’re about half way around and because we’re low down we’ve got to go all the way back up to Richmond Hill which is a bit taxing to say the least.

It’s always nice to come down here and just appreciate the force of nature. I guess in the job that we do, you know the whole thing with live and die and you know with nature, seasons and all the rest of it. There’s only so much you can do.

I suppose we always have to take that into account. But more often than not in terms of what we’re doing in agriculture, you’re always reacting to what nature is doing. I suppose that’s the fascination because we never know what happens next.

Posted by Colin Wright at 9:05 AM | Permalink

Back in Richmond now down by the river. I’ve taken a photo of the castle from the bridge and then I’ve taken a photo of the bridge and I’m continuing the walk.

Posted by Colin Wright at 8:58 AM | Permalink

This is a photo of the swell taken from the old railway bridge. The old railway long defunct thanks to Dr Beeching way back in the sixties or it could’ve been the seventies. Can’t even remember. (1963 -dug)

Posted by Colin Wright at 8:41 AM | Permalink

Well we’ve come down the valley a little bit and the photo you see now is actually Easby abbey.
This is actually where Anna and I were married many years ago. The church to the left, not the ruins I hasten to add.

I quite often like to have a walk down here and it’s quite interesting because you sort of think back to everything that’s happened since then and also thinking about the future. Plus the sale of BirdsEye which was announced at the weekend and I made some comment on yesterday.

I’ve had a lot of people ringing me up, you know suppliers and growers, wanting to understand what it means for the business.

Clearly I’m entirely optimistic about that. And I think in terms of the strategy it’s about growing the business both top and bottom line. It’ll be a little while before we actually get into the detail of the how we achieve that strategy and what the tactics will be.

And everybody that I’ve spoken to from the farming community they’ve been entirely supportive and they’ll continue to do their very best to enable us to have a very successful business. So I’m looking forward to getting stuck into that.

Anway, I’m going a little bit further.

Posted by Colin Wright at 8:27 AM | Permalink

It’s Colin. Thought you might be interested that I’m up at Richmond today on holiday where my mother-in-law lives. Anna and I came up yesterday so I’m on a perambulation this morning and I’ll just give you a little glimpse as to Richmond shire. That first Fell Tor you see is from the top of Richmond looking over at the Swale Valley. We’re going to make our way down to the river and then up to the falls and I’ll take a couple of shots.

I didn’t capture anything. I mentioned that we were racing at Alton Park last weekend. Unfortunately I forgot to take the blog camera with me so I’ve no photographic evidence.

But had quite a good outing really. Managed to finish second in my class. Particularly difficult practice cause it was so wet and then quite a well fought race. So I’m quite pleased with that

Anyway. Catch you later.

Posted by Colin Wright at 8:18 AM | Permalink

Hi it’s Colin, been having a few days off:-)

Quite a lot happening though as no doubt you’ll be aware the anouncement was made on Monday that Unilever has sold its frozen food businesses (which includes Birds Eye) into private equity (a company called Permira).

I think for me and our business there are a lot of opportunities as a result of this. Obviously I’m very disapointed having had 33 years with Birds Eye under the previous ownership—I’ve had some very good times and I’ve had a damn good career out of it…

Anyway I think the whole thing is now set up and there a lot opportunities.

But on a personal perspective I hope we are able to continue the bits that Unilever was committed to. Things like corporate social responsability and the sustainability initiatives so hopefully we can continue that momentum because the whole of the business will not survive into the the future unless it’s sustainable.

So we look forward to working under new ownership—it think it is inevitable there will be a lot of differences, but hopefully all for the good of the business, and personally I’m looking forward to it.

Still a lot of details to work out, we also need to make sure our commited suppliers are kept informed, which we will do… I’ll catch you later.

Tags: primera, unilever

Posted by Colin Wright at 9:20 AM | Permalink

Just a quick post. Celebration tonight, here we are. We’re actually at the Yarmouth Races just having a bit of a celebration with regards to the end of the pea season and the factory performance.

I could take a couple of photos of the management team at the Lowestoft factory with their wives enjoying the evening races at Yarmouth. Can’t say I am because we’re down at the moment. But there’s one more race to go!

Posted by Colin Wright at 7:42 PM | Permalink