October 17, 2007 : Pac Filling

Every year in Mid-October we have a special event that we call Pac Filling. We pick a day, usually a Saturday, and try to line up about eight people to help fill all the pacs and small pots into which we will plant the petunias, pansies, geraniums, tomatos, peppers, echinacea, and everything else that we sell in a 4" or smaller pot.

Ken has already assembled the empty pacs and pots into their trays, and Ken, Paul and Nick have screened out the lumps from a big pile of the highest grade peat that we have. They add some 0-45-0 superphosphate fertilizer, but otherwise our greenhouse mix is straight bog peat.

This year we were helped out by two hard-working high school kids, Ben and Lucas. Also helping were Eric, Paul, Glenda, Ken, Nick, Emily, Marion, and Cindy.

The whole system was designed and built by Paul many years ago, and would take tens of thousands of dollars to replace with modern equipment. A seemingly rickety conveyor chain that he salvaged from an old combine is hooked to an esoteric geared-down electric motor to feed the empty flats underneath a stream of peat that comes from a homemade hopper. In this picture Nick is standing up on the hopper poking down the peat with a stick. Ken is on standby if problems arise or if some flats need a little extra peat. Ben and I are off camera stacking the filled flats onto pallets. By the end of the day we feel like we've done something.

It takes about one and a half days to complete the operation. We finished up on Monday with four people.