Mid morning
Hi it’s James,
It’s harvest day 14, mid morning. We’ve had a hectic start to the day where we meet and plan out the day’s activity so everyone knows what’s going on.
Still very busy, did a couple of big big days at the weekend, one or two more crops we’re collected.
The peas are maturing very quickly as we’re still getting the hot weather. We will be very busy for the next few days at least as the forecast is still warm.
Just taken a photo of a lorry load of peas if anyone interested in seeing what three tons of peas looks like when they arrive at the factory.
I’m going to tell you a little about the operational set-up Birds Eye have in place to ensure we produce the best quality peas. Birds Eye employ 5 Fieldsmen who constantly monitor all the fields in our 5 areas and report back. Using this daily information we can plan when to harvest the crops in the right sequence depending on their maturity.
The system to do this is to take a sample of the peas around 4am in the morning and run them back to the factory. The pea bundle is fed into a test harvester and a quality measurement is taken. We then send a sample of the peas back to the fieldsmen out at the crop who can then gauge the quality from the factory as well as at the field. He does this by looking at their shape, size and colour, eating them, and squeezing them to test their quality. He can then make the desicion as to excatly when to harvest the field.
Couple of pictures of a smaple bundle of pea’s going into the small test harvester.
