ASPARAGUS BARN 101

ALRIGHT. I'm sure y'all are super curious as to how asparagus is packaged (even if you aren't, it's kind of interesting. I suppose.), so here it is!

1. Asparagus is brought in and laid out on the conveyor belt on the far right. Each spear is slotted, one at a time, into the slots. The machine moves really quickly, and each spear must be the same direction and only one per slot, so it can be tricky.

2. Each spear is graded (sorted based on diameter and height) by the machine, and then sorted into bunches. Each lane has one bunch size (ie. short-small, short-large, tall-small, jumbo, etc). The mini conveyor belts move the bunches forward once enough asparagus has been graded into each bunch.

3. The bunches then take each bunch and place it into the circular hole in their table. When they press the button an elastic shoots onto the bunch, and then the bunch goes onto another conveyor belt.

4. All of the small conveyor belts from each line drop onto one long conveyor belt. This is where I pick up the purple-elasticed bunches (purple = Costco) and weigh and tag each bunch. I then put the bunch back on the belt, where it goes to packaging. (While I'm officially on the Costco line, I'm kind of a floater, so I've done every job on the line)

This is what our scales look like. Pretty exciting.

5. This is the manual line, which means every single spear is graded by hand (it's less than fun). In the background is the last conveyor belt, where each bunch is placed into a box based on grade. The boxes are weighed and stacked onto pallets (aka skids) of the same grade. The pallets (once full) hold about 1400 lbs of asparagus. Pallets are wrapped with Saran-wrap-looking stuff (I actually have no idea what it is), and stored in the cooler until they're shipped.

TADAAAAA!