Kurt’s Field Notes October 12, 2024
Well, I survived the Food Safety Inspector, but it was a LONG day — a 9.5 hour process, without a break for lunch. If you’re just catching up, our farm requested a Harmonized PLUS GAP Food Safety Audit this year, instead of just the regular Harmonized GAP audit we get every year. This was a step up and comes with much more stringent requirements. It’s usually reserved for the big California farms who run massive amounts of wholesale product through the food system. Because we want to expand our wholesale marketing outlets and work with suppliers like Whole Foods and Chipotle, they require the Harmonized GAP PLUS audit instead.
The day began at 8:15 AM on Wednesday, as two inspectors from the FDA appeared. After signing in, they met me in my kitchen, where we spend the next 9 hours together, going through our Food Safety plan. This plan had been heavily modified by me the week before, using the audit checklist to make sure that each section addressed the specs in the checklist. There were over 200 sections in this checklist that we went through, one by one. Because it was our first audit run-through on the PLUS level, it always take a lot longer. This is because they take the time to teach you how to fix the things that don’t pass. They were looking at my SOPs for things like water purity, pest/rodent activity and intervention, what to do in the event of a product recall, traceability procedures, compost and manure on the farm, pre-harvest sanitation procedures, hand-washing facilities, where my chemicals were stored (and if they were labeled), flooding hazards and protocols, food defense (food terrorism), and more. Part of their inspection involved watching my crew actually harvest and pack fennel. They wanted to see the whole process — how the bins are prepped, how the crew dresses, what logs they use, how the product is cut, where it goes, how it’s packed and stored.
The good news is I only got 13 citations. It’s normal to “fail” on the first go around. So although we haven’t passed yet, our next step is to correct the citations and then submit them to the auditor, who will hopefully then give us the green light. Most of our infractions were easy fixes — things like “We want you to change your amendments log to include this column, too.” OR “You need to include a paragraph about XYZ in your portopotty policy that says ______.” All things that will take me a half day’s work to get done. So I’m hopeful that we will pass! The hardest part is done. Thanks for all your prayers. That was such a long day. My brain was fried. The other good part about all this is that my farm looks so clean! I threw away a lot of stuff I don’t use anymore. I cleaned up my workbench area. I cleaned out the upper section of the barn. I can actually find stuff now and move around. Corinna loves it.
The crew harvested sweet potatoes this Friday and Saturday. I use the plastic lifter bar (pulled behind a tractor) to scoop under the beds and “raise” them up. This makes it easy for the crew to pull the taters out. We then clip them since they grow in clumps. The potatoes are then gathered into a giant bulk bin where they will cure for a few weeks. We yielded about 12,000 pounds! That’s a great harvest, and you’ll get to enjoy some of them next week in the final CSA box. They always get SO big.
Aaron from Citizen Salmon Alaska stopped by with wife Sara.
We got a fun surprise this week when our fisherman from Citizen Salmon Alaska, Aaron Sechler, reached out to say he was coming through the area on a vacation. We were able to host him for dinner on Wednesday night. This is the first time we’ve ever met face to face. We grilled out on the Blackstone and enjoyed a night under the stars.
My boys and I have been doing all kinds of field prep work. We disked Dad’s sweet corn fields and our melon/squash area, so we can put that into rye next year. Glen did some “land-leveling” so everything is nice and even. This will keep water from pooling in the field in certain locations. I was hoping to throw up beds today for next year, but that will have to wait until later. Rain is coming.
We bought our crew airplane tickets back home to Mexico last week. They’ll be leaving the first week of November. They’re excited to go, I can tell. That means I’ve got about 3 weeks left to use my crew to “clean up” and close down the farm for the winter. This includes all kinds of activities which I’ll be telling you about next week, too. This week, we pulled up all the plastic from the melons and rolled it into giant balls. They also pulled out the drip tape under the potatoes. The pole bean high tunnel trellis came down as well, and we’ll be cleaning out those plants.
The exciter for the well’s generator came back this week. I had sent it off to be rebuilt, after discovering a mouse had chewed through large parts of it. We tried to install it this week, but the generator still didn’t turn on. That means there’s something else broken in the generator. I’m going to take the whole thing back to my dad’s shop this month and have to tear it apart in more detail. Maybe there is some more mouse damage that we can’t see. At least the generator unit I got from a local neighbor did its job for us for the season, and I’ve got some time to trouble-shoot.
Jed and Josiah maidened their giant 8 foot wingspan plane last week, AND IT FLEW!! I was so proud of them. They were ecstatic, jumping up and down. These two boys are best friends, and bring out the best in each other. I’m looking forward to seeing you at the Field to Table dinner tonight. It’s raining right now — sure hope it holds off for our dinner tonight. If not, we have a backup plan. Don’t worry.