The Winter Harvest Handbook

Who loves a garden, still his Eden keeps,
Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvests reaps.

In the winter, some of the challenges in harvesting crops are different than during the summer. For example, we are often more concerned with keeping our fingers warm than we are about cooling the freshly cut produce. But efficient techniques and good tools remain just as important in winter as in summer.

Our harvest days are Mondays and Thursdays. We deliver our winter crops either late those afternoons or early the following mornings to stores and restaurants in our local area. When harvesting in winter from unheated greenhouses in cold-climate areas, it is often necessary to follow a flexible schedule on harvest days. After a below-zero night we often start late in the unheated houses because we have to wait until the interior air temperature warms above 32°F. Even on the coldest days we can usually count on a harvest window from 10:00 AM until 3:00 PM. Before 10:00 everything is still thawing and after 3:00 it starts to freeze up again. During midwinter having at least one cool greenhouse will pay for itself in efficiency. You can begin harvesting salad crops there in the early morning, then harvest in the cold houses, and return to the cool house to harvest radishes and turnips in late afternoon.

In order to be able to guarantee timely delivery to stores and restaurants some supplementary heat may be necessary on occasion. We have a propane-fired salamander heater in reserve for the occasional day when it is so cold and snowy and cloudy that there is not enough sun to warm the unheated houses above freezing. Those days are rare: we have fired up this heater on average only one harvest day each winter. We have never run the heater just to warm ourselves up, but occasionally we have been tempted. On bright sunny days, of course, the harvest window is wider and the temperature inside the houses is downright pleasant.

We dress warmly for harvesting in the cold houses. (I favor a vest instead of a parka.) We cut with small, sharp Victorinox knives (7 inches overall, 3-inch blade) and sharpen them frequently. We place the cut leaves in food-grade five-gallon buckets. If the sun does not warm the houses into the 50°F range, we endure the pain of frosty fingers. We have neoprene gloves available (the ones cold-weather kayakers wear), but I find even the thinnest are awkward to wear while picking. I usually wear one on my knife hand and leave the other hand bare. I soak the bare hand in warm water every time I return to the packing area with full buckets.

We’ve learned from experience to replace the inner covers as soon as we finish harvesting. Once the greenhouse temperatures drop below freezing, the light row-cover material quickly freezes to itself and is impossible to place back over the supporting wickets without tearing. The PVA covers mentioned in chapter 6 are stronger and less of a problem in that regard but, nevertheless, it is still the best practice to re-cover each section as soon as possible.

Since we sell fresh, raw foods we are meticulous about cleanliness. We scrub down the washing and packing area carefully with hot water after each harvest. All our water comes from a drilled well, and we have that well tested annually. Washing hands is mandatory at all stages of the process. We also wear hats or hairnets while washing and packing. For baby-leaf mixes we wash each of the salad ingredients separately. We have found it easier to spot any bad leaves or occasional detritus when there is only one shape and color of leaf to distinguish them from.

After being washed and spun dry, the individual salad ingredients must be mixed. Our mixer, which looks like a barrel made of wood slats with plywood ends, is 48 inches long and 36 inches in diameter. It is mounted horizontally in a frame so that a handle at one end can turn it. The barrel is divided into two halves, hinged on the long side, so it can be opened like a clamshell. We call it “Pac Man” since it looks like that computer-game character when open. After we have filled the bottom half (it will hold up to 80 pounds) the top half is closed down and latched. Then we turn it ten slow revolutions in each direction, clockwise and counterclockwise. Inside the barrel the ingredients are raised as the side goes up and gently dropped to the bottom again, resulting in a gentle but thorough mixing.

Originally our labor force consisted of two people—my wife, Barbara, and me. We liked the work because we were producing a high-quality, locally grown product, and we liked working together. We had no intention of making the operation bigger than the two of us could handle. However, we finally gave in to overwhelming demand and expanded production. We now have five employees in summer (fewer in winter) but we insist on maintaining the same high quality standards. In order not to expand the staff further, we are always looking for ways to become more efficient.

We consider and reconsider all aspects of the harvesting, washing, and packing operation. For example, we were able to cut by 75 percent the time required to drain and refill the sinks between washing each of the leaf types of our salad mix by installing larger diameter pipes for both filling and draining the sinks and by raising the water pressure. For the most efficient operation the sinks need to be in continual use. Therefore, we have one person begin washing as soon as the first buckets of salad are harvested. A little analysis always results in a simpler, quicker, and more pleasant way of doing any job.

Coupled with efficiency is speed of work. If you have done a lot of harvesting, you realize that it requires quick hands, a quick mind, and a no-nonsense attitude if you hope to complete harvest on time. The people you hire have to understand that and, if they are talkers, must be able to talk and hustle at the same time. I carefully explain to new employees what the job consists of, the importance of checking for quality and, just as important, the pace at which they need to work. I show them how they should have the harvest container as close as possible to the hand that is holding the harvested item so as to minimize hand travel. I will demonstrate specific skills, such as harvesting spinach leaf by leaf, to show that the more cut leaves they can hold in their hand before dropping them in the container, the more efficient they are. (On average, 40 percent of a harvester’s time is spent moving the hand to the container.) I will return a couple of times to quietly reinforce those messages. If they continue to work slowly I will harvest alongside them for a while to see if they notice how much more quickly my container is filling. Some don’t notice. I have been tempted to give them one more try by putting their pay on a piece-rate basis to help them understand that this is a business with other expenses involved. I dislike the idea of piecework, but it might be the only way to get the message across and/or to suggest, gently, that the work of small farming may not be something they are cut out for.

I have used quotes from Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress” for a couple of epigraphs in this book. But there is one additional line from that poem that comes to mind every harvest day and helps keep me focused. I often quote it to our crew. “But at my back I always hear, time’s wingéd chariot hurrying near.” The next harvest follows quickly after the one you just finished. Since you cannot harvest what you haven’t planted, the daily or weekly planting schedule has to be as much a part of your life as is the harvest schedule if you want to succeed. Harvest days and the demands of your customers are just as relentless as “time’s wingéd chariot.” In this business the products you sell cannot be created instantly but arise from work begun months before. The most important skill you can develop to assure bountiful and timely harvests as a four-season grower is to keep careful notes on seed-to-harvest days throughout the year and prepare from them a day-by-day planting calendar of dates for each crop. Once you can wrap your mind around that reality and learn to follow a rigorous planting schedule, time’s chariot will offer nothing but pleasant rides.

Even for the most experienced harvesters it is difficult to compete on price while hand-cutting mesclun with knives against the motorized harvesters of the large-scale producers. Thus, in an attempt to make the harvesting of baby-leaf salads more efficient, we have been working with other interested parties on different types of small-scale harvesters. Johnny’s Selected Seeds designed and sells a human-powered harvester for baby-leaf salads. Called the Greens Harvester, it consists of a cloth basket collector mounted behind a bow-saw frame that holds a scalloped knife blade. We have designed and are trying to perfect a battery-powered hand harvester for the smaller grower. The ideal tool in our experience would be light enough to use with one hand, easy to carry, adjustable for cutting at different heights above the ground, wide enough to cover one half of a 30-inch (75 cm) bed, and reasonably priced. Small growers would greatly benefit from such a tool, and I am sure that one will eventually appear. I encourage everyone to participate in making this happen.