Life on the pea harvest

Hi, James Young here. We'd better get cracking with the blog as things are moving on quickly and it's harvest day Eleven!

I'm responsible for all the team in Hull who are growing and harvesting the peas with all the farmers in the area. My team is out there coordinating the harvest making sure we get the right peas at the right time. This week-end looks to be exciting as we have very high temperatures forecast. That means lots of crop ready and it wont be at its peak for very long, so we'll need to be at the top of our game this weekend.

(out for now, but hopefully I'll be getting some pictures up and introducing you to members of the team)

Posted by at 5:57 PM | Permalink

I just wanted to set the scene for this pea harvest diary.

This is the 60th pea harvest that Birdseye has had in the uk--it started back in 1946, but we may touch on that later.

Most of the writing here is going to be from myself and my colleague James Young who is Agricultural Manager in Hull. There will also be infrequent posts by Dug and Raz who are contracted by the the company I work for to help me set up the blog and make sure the technology works.

My perspective comes from being in charge of the whole operation as Head of Agriculture. We also have another operation in Lowestoft and we'll mention Suffolk items when they crop up.

What I hope you'll see from reading this diary is the level of commitment, dedication, hard work and planning that goes into bringing home the peas (the UK's favourite vegetable).

You'll see that quality drives what I do, all the time, and we'll talk about quality issues later on.

We'll see as we go through it how dynamic the harvest is, how many different things can impact the management decisions that you make and how people, throughout the supply chain, from farmers to processing plant operators play such an important part and how they have to link up, hang together and understand what goes on.

This diary will probably last for Six weeks, and during these Six weeks we aim to produce the total volume of the right quality to last us through to our next harvest in 2007.

We'll do our best to make it interesting for you and look forward to your comments.

Signing off on Friday, Colin.

Posted by Colin Wright at 3:09 PM | Permalink

These sort of conditions make life very difficult for us as the crop matures very rapidly and we have to be quick in making the right decisions to maintain quality

Anyway, no doubt as we go through this diary following the pea harvest, the weather and its influences will be a topic we discuss often as it's always at the top of our minds...

We'll see how we go:-)

Posted by Colin Wright at 2:39 PM | Permalink

Wow, you Google yourself and you never know what you'll get...

Just found a piece Food Manufacture did last year called An eye for peas

This is how they say what I do:

Next time you throw a pack of frozen peas into your supermarket trolley, give a thought to the huge list of people that have helped to ensure that the peas are: a) in that freezer for you to buy in the first place and b) that they taste consistently good when you get them home. Indeed, it is a little known fact that on average, everyone in Britain eats nearly 9000 peas a year, so you can see how much effort is required from the people who supply them.

One of these people is Colin Wright. He is head of agriculture for Unilever Ice Cream and Frozen Foods and so he’s a pretty key person in the chain. He’s a nice man though, so he argues that everyone in the process: from agronomist, to farmer, to fieldsman, to agriculture manager, to factory worker, is crucial to the process of ensuring that every single pea is picked and frozen within two and a half hours.

Posted by Colin Wright at 10:30 AM | Permalink

Well, I've been asked by my employer to record my experiences on the pea harvest. Well, I'm not exactly standing around doing nothing, so I hope this blog tool doesn't chew up too much of my time!

They've given me a camera as well, so fingers crossed I'll work out how that works and get some pics uploaded...

Posted by Colin Wright at 2:58 PM | Permalink

Dug here, just experimenting with a picture for Colin. He’ll get a profile sorted out asap as well.

Posted by dug at 3:23 PM | Permalink

Hi, Dug here, I'm going to be helping Colin and James get their story out on this blog with some technical support.

Raz and I have sorted out most of the communications gear and Raz has gone up to Hull to show James and Colin how the system works. If you want to see how sexy raz is when standing on a train station platform, you can watch him on this short video

Posted by dug at 1:57 PM | Permalink