The pack line! This is where it happens. The pack line is where the AMF Farmer team packs each of your custom CSA shares. It takes an incredible amount of organzation, team work, communication, and attention to detail; basically it is a lot of love that goes in to hand-packing each CSA share in this Harvie system. We joke that it would be so much easier if each custom share grew on a tree so that we could pluck them off and hand them to members as needed. But then we wouldn't have the fun of the pack line. It is a fast moving human machine. We play upbeat music to keep a good rythm. First, we set up a covered area to keep all the produce in good shade, then we set up a long line of tables orchestrated just right with the refrigerated truck backed up at the exact end of the table line. Two people stack all the crates nearby while 1 person prints the hundreds of labels on the special label printer, then 1 or 2 people stick a label on each crate focusing on keeping the proper alphabetical order. Next, 2-3 people read the pack list and start pulling out all of the bins and containers with all of the produce items paying careful attention to placing them in the correct order of the produce item-list which is also the same order that appears on each label. Then, we have a quick team meeting to make sure everyone knows about the details of the items on the list for the day (ie the produce keeps changing throughout the season from bunches to bags, or 2 for 1 items to meet the proper value, quality control, etc...). Now the packing begins... 1 person starts pulling each crate and lining it with a bag, taking care to keep the label facing out and passes them down both sides of the table, another person keeps bringing over more stacks of crates, and 4-6 people go down the line filling shares by reading each label, with a quick review of the label before folding the bag closed. The full crates get stacked again and a separate person loads these new stacks (now a lot heavier) into the truck reconfiguring the order some to make sure they stay again in good alphabetical order. The truck gets driven over to the Farm stand and unloaded again into stacks in the refrigerated barn (or driven to the Boulder or Denver location). It is a dynamic event and we do this 3 days a week for summer shares. We love hearing feedback from members who enjoy having preferences set in Harvie and having the ability to swap items at times from the convenience of their homes. We make a few mistakes as you can imagine, but overall it is a system with great integrity. This is a new system for our Farm this year and to be honest it is a lot more time consuming than we anticipated. In light of the circumstances of the pandemic however, we are grateful to have this safe easy pick-up option to offer our community.
New crop! Some members will see Ethiopian Kale, aka "Karate Cabbage" show up in their shares (we have no idea where the second name came from - Ethiopian Kale does not to our knowledge practice martial arts!). While this bunched green is neither a kale nor a cabbage and is milder than kale, it is very closely related to both and you can taste hints of kale, cabbage, and other mild mustard-family veggies. It can be eaten raw, cooked like kale or chard, or fermented.
