Wash Station

I took my camera to work yesterday. Working at a farm isn’t all field work. Processing the food for distribution and storage for later distribution is a big part of it too.

I wanted to try to show a little of what we do with the food after it comes in from the field.

Yesterday we had to fill one CSA pick up for about 70 people. We also had restaurant orders. We do restaurants on Tuesday and Friday. We have 5 CSA pick ups on 4 days, Monday-Thursday.

This is the wash station (WS) where we wash, bunch, bag, label, date, inventory and prep all the food we grow. All the food is harvested into either coolers or bins and brought to the WS in trucks from the fields.

At the east side of the WS we line up coolers and bins for CSA that day. Everything in this line has been processed and inventoried and is ready to load into the truck for CSA distribution. This is early in the day, there will be lots more added.

The west side is where we line up restaurant orders for that day. Every cooler is labeled for each restaurant. The boxes in back are restaurant orders too, they are squash and pumpkins.

Some of today’s harvest coming in.

All the root vegetables, beets, potatoes, carrots, parsnips get soaked to hydrate them and get most of the soil off.

Then they go into a barrel washer. Root vegetables go in one end, it is slightly angled and it slowly rolls the vegetables to the other end as it sprays and agitates them to get them clean.

This is Meg with the leaf crops, she is soaking chard to hydrate and revive it.

Kai is weighing the revived chard then she will bunch it for CSA, some of the chard will be bagged for restaurants.

I sorted, sized and weighed these onions for restaurants.

Here is Savanna with some beets for restaurants.

Some crops don’t get washed, they just get processed and inventoried until needed. This cauliflower came in from the field looking a little droopy and sad.