Hamburg Again!

Do you know what a Hamburger is? It is someone from Hamburg, Germany, like Texan. In Germany fries are pommes and they are very popular. There sure is a lot of turbine windmills in Germany. Did you know that the sun rises about 4 am and sets around 10:30 pm here? That stints. Got to ride in a Porchse, wow. The maximun speed cars travel on the autobahn is about 135 mph. I like the autobahn.

The W family took me on a tour of a 1200 acre farm owned by CM, HW's sister. GM, WW's cousin will be coming to the USA in August to do a 1 year exchange student program in Denver. This is the same program how we met WW.

Ofcourse I found the farm to be really interesting. They grow iceberg lettuce, potatoes, bio-fuel corn, sod, and christmas trees. We actually witnessed the harvesting of the lettuce. They have about 250 acres in lettuce production. Each field is about 75 acres in size, and in a different stage of growth, ie. just planted, growing, and ready to harvest.

They use two machines each about 24 wind rows wide (75 feet) with 8 workers cutting, 8 workers wrapping, 2 workers packaging, 2 workers stacking, and 2 workers loading and driving the lettuce machine and tractor, all in a smooth operation. I was disappointed to see how much lettuce is wasted, only about 50% of the lettuce is good enough (size and shape) to be sold at market, the rest of the lettuce is left on the field. I tasted the iceberg lettuce in the field and I would to say that it had a better tast then any store bought iceberg lettuce I have tasted.

It was amazing to me how the lettuce is cut and right in the field it is packaged to go directly to the market. Unfortunately the reason for the high waste in the harvesting is that there is only a 3 day window to harvest the lettuce once it is ready. As the workers move thru the field the lettuce towards the end is less marketable cause the crown opens up.

Well my time is up here, going back to the USA,, Aufwiedersehen, Take Care, Jorge