The management team at Fraser Valley Gleaners.
The Gleaner managers Carl and Elaine G
Assistant Manager Jonathan
Floor Manager Jake M found his purpose after retirement as the fork lift operator and at 84 years still works 5 mornings a week.
Here is a little overview of our last week at the Gleaners. Most mornings we have done two different jobs - one for variety and one in order to make it easier for our bodies. We have prepared onions by cutting the ends and peeling them. Other jobs has been scraping dried product off the pans and washing a batch of Teflon sheets which rounded out our pre-coffee break activities.
Forty thousand pounds of onions were donated. Once perfectly good but now had become mouldy so they were not saleable. We peeled them and then they were good for dehydrating.
All labels get removed so that the compostable material is clean.
The pan washing here is different from what we had experienced before. It appears to us that the group of men who do this task have made it their domain. First the Teflon is removed and then the big tank is loaded - pans standing on end and allowed to soak overnight. The next day these pans are washed with an enclosed pressure washing machine. The pans are pushed through the washer on rails and then stacked to dry for the next days use.
Thursdays became our Teflon washing and drying day.
They had a shortage of barrels and a long list of orders waiting so they started early with the mixing of soup mix and we were able to be part of this four times this week and once last week. Each soup mixing time lasted 1 1/2 - 2 hours. So far we have filled 25 pallets of soup mix. Each pallet has 24 boxes with each box having 12 bags of soup. This has been a rewarding but tedious task with a wonderful team of young and older volunteers.
This soup mix will be going to the island of Vanuatu near Fiji in the South Pacific. A 40 foot shipping container holds 40 pallets.
This post ends our two months of gleaner experiences. We will be taking a break for Christmas and then plan to resume our blogging in mid January. We will be flying back to be with our families. Merry Christmas to all.
Microsoft has been reminding us for months that we can upgrade to the new Windows 10. This week their tactic became more aggressive. When I started the computer a large ad came up with options of "upgrade now" or doing it later. So I wanted to do this in the future when we were at home and had help available in case I needed it. But as I clicked on later it started it's download, not giving me any other options. This forced us to learn new stuff, knowing we needed to publish this post now.
