Sticks and Stones

This is the pile of sticks that we have removed from the almonds that came in from the field this year. We not only find sticks...over the years I have seen dead rats, a turtle, snakes, little rocks, big rocks, dirt, grass, sprinkler heads and string. Most of these things are removed by a "potato chain". The product first comes into the pre-cleaner, equipment that is purposed to separate the almonds from everything else. It travels across a large chain that has wholes the size of small red potatoes. The almonds (in the hull and shell) fall through the chain and everything else floats across and is taken put into this pile. Every time I walk by it I think about somores!



We still have a couple million pounds of almonds from the field that we have not run. They are all sitting out in the stockpiles, or big piles of 250,000 lbs of almonds covered in plastic and fumigated. The rain has been causing muddy conditions....but we are almost done!! On Saturday we should have all the product up off the ground and through the plant! I cannot wait to see what our total throughput will be....it looks close to 26.5 million meat pounds of almonds.




A month ago a USDA inspector walked into the plant and asked for a sample of our hull as it was being loaded into trucks to leave. Ahhhh!!! Auditors always show up at the worst moments and I still get a bit nervous. We sell our hull and shell off the almond to dairy farmers who use the hull for feed and the shell for bedding. It is industry standard to be under 15% fiber content. The USDA shows up to take samples and test the fiber levels to be sure you are not mixing the hull and shell. The results came back in he mail today and we passed the test!!




I am always walking by the piles of hull and shell and checking them for almonds meats and for shell in the hull pile and hull in the shell pile. We separate the hull and shell using air, shell is lighter than hull....and less valuable. The shell is what spikes the fiber levels too. As long as the air adjustments are correct then the hull and shell separate into their own piles.

I held a BIG meeting this morning to review and train the team on a wave of changes to the inventory tracking system. I was anxious about the response to the changes and hopeful that the complaint list would be minimal....and they were all really pleased with the outcome of the changes. I love technology and have really enjoyed managing this system....I feel like it has raised the bar for this company. Teaching people on the plant floor how to use a mouse through developing and deploying software changes to the database has been a real high for me....but I look forward to being in maintenance mode for awhile. Three cheers for a completed project!!


A good day at work....now I cannot wait to get home to my boys.