Trail Mix

17 Jan 2013

I haven’t looked forward to a Friday for a long time, but this whole workin’ business is wearing me out and I need the weekend to recover.  We worked hard today.  Kory was repairing trays again all day while Kaleb and I were in the soup plant processing trail mix.

One of the staff members here just deals with procurement and distribution.  He attends all the big food shows on the West coast and makes sure food producers know about this place.  As a result, a lot of food gets donated here and they have to figure out what to do with it.  When they started getting freeze dried fruits, they figured they could combine it with some nuts and have trail mix.  I guess a local almond farmer is a Christian, so he brings 10% of his crop every year right to this Gleanings place as his tithe - talk about Biblical. 

Today they set up a conveyor belt about 10-12 feet long with eight people standing around one end.  A bunch of homeschoolers are here now so they had all the kids stand at a bin full of one kind of fruit or nut and spread a scooper full of it out in a line along the conveyor belt.  Each person added a layer of their product and by the time if fell off the end, it was fairly well mixed.  I was on the falling off edge most of the day, catching trail mix in a quart sized baggie.

Kaleb enjoyed trying out all the different jobs.  Even the different fruits created a different experience as some were stickier than others.  Some of the retired men went around and kept everyone’s bins full so the line didn’t stop.  One woman controlled the on/off switch and two people were bagging.  A few older women were taking the bags and pressing out the extra air so they’d be kind of vacuum packed and a few other kids were loading the bags in these huge drums.  One kid was pre-opening the baggies so the process would go quicker for us baggers.  If the bags were too full we had to dump stuff out and if they weren’t full enough we had to grab a handful of the overflow and put it in.  I wanted it all to go faster than it did,  but I could do 2-3 bags in the time the other woman could do one, so I felt pretty good about my output.

Being hunched over all day doing a repetitive task made me glad I have a college education.  The freeze dried strawberries pretty much disintegrated as they moved down the line so anyone near the end of the conveyor belt was covered in a fine red powder by day’s end.  I was blowing black snot yesterday after sweeping up the warehouse and today I was blowing red.  I’m sure I breathed in at least one serving of fruit while doing the job.  My hands and clothes were coated in that stuff as well.  I was worried when I did laundry tonight that I’d create a soup in the washer with all the potato powder from a few days ago mixing with the strawberry powder from today.  But we filled, I think, 8 barrels today and there were about 130 bags in each one, so we were crankin’ it.  Now I’m tired.  I’m really tired.  I even took a nap in the sun at lunchtime today as just lying down was all the encouragement my body needed in order to rest.

Kaleb had a blast trying to set a fast pace on whatever task he was doing.  The other boys didn’t quite catch the same enthusiasm he had towards the work, but after the day was done they all ran around together outside til well after dark.  It’s so nice he has kids to hang with.

Work is over tomorrow at 1pm so it’s back to Dani’s we go.  She got a new hot water tank today so I can at least do more laundry at her house.  All our clothes are filthy but I guess it’s nothing compared to what it’s like around here in the summertime when they process peaches.  They said the kids just leave their shoes and clothes behind and later in the year they pressure wash everything and send it off to Haiti.

A woman I talked to today said she’s been to the conference center in Mexico where we are headed next week.  She said it’s like a five star resort, so that will be a different experience.  I guess Kaleb will have to wait until we go to the orphanage on the Baja in March before he sees real Mexican living.   But a resort sounds pretty good to me right now, even if I do have to work everyday while I’m there.

There are so many seniors here that just bounce around from one ministry to another, volunteering time each year at their favorite spots.  I guess there’s no point in sitting home and growing old when there’s still so much life left to live.  I’m sure we’ll be back at this place, too, but next time we’ll bring along some of Kaleb’s friends.  This place is too cool not to share.