A day in the life of a Waimarino carrot

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 15, Issue 689, 3 June 1997, Page 10

A day in the life of a Waimarino carrot

By

David

Squires

Have you ever wondered how that wonderful, sweet, crunchy, orange carrot you had with your meal last night got to your meal table? Well so did I.

I have lived in Carrot Country for three years, without knowing how Ohakune came to get its name as the Carrot Capital of New Zealand. Curiosity finally got the better of me while visiting friends living on a nearby farm. Ken, my ex-neighbour and his family, moved to Karioi to work on a sheep and cattle farm which is also into carrot growing. Ken said he would soon be harvesting carrots using the new 'Same' tractor and harvesting unit and invited me along. A couple of days later he rang me early in the morning. I felt quite excited as I drove out to meet him and his partner, James, who drove a second tractor to load the bins of carrots. The field to be harvested was close to the pulp mill on the way to Waiouru. I joined Ken and James in the truck used to take out the empty bins to the rows of carrots, where the harvester stood waiting. A cool breeze blew down from the slopes of Mount Ruapehu away to the east. Dust swirled up from the patch which had been harvested earlier that week. The bare earth looked clean and rich where it had been criss-crossed by

tractor tyres. We quickly got under way with James driving the big green John Deere6400, and Ken and me in the air conditioned comfort of the red Same harvester. It was like climbing into the cockpit of a plane, with heaps of dials, buttons and displays, allergon o m i c a 1 1 y placed around thedriver.Completing the plush interior

was a radio cassette stereo. The powerful diesel started easily, and soon settled down into a comfortable throaty purr. Ken explained how the computer-controlled revs of the engine were set to maintain the speed of the unit, and engaged gear. We moved to where the rows of carrots stood waving in the breeze, ready to be lifted. The digging guides and shoe which lifted the soil were lowered into the ground by hydraulics at the push of a button. Ken lined up the guides to make sure the thin row of carrot tops would pass between them, to be grasped by the two moving belts which would then hoist them in a continuous row up. to the cutters which cropped the heads from the carrots. . The carrots then fell onto a moving belt which fed them alongside the cab of the tractor into the bin sitting on the front end. I was surprised at the apparent ease of the process as carrots were smoothly lifted from the ground. Of course, nothing's that easy. The guides had to be kept at just the right soil depth, as well as making sure the row was followed carefully. Every attempt had been made with the design of the controls of the Same 1 00.6 Tractor by Italdesign Guigiaro to minimise fatigue, and give maximum efficiency from the powerful engine and hydraulic systems. The harvester is designed to work at 4 kph, but can do a maximum of 7 kph when the conditions of the land permit.

We occasionally stopped to lift the digging shoe over rocks below the surface to avoid shearing off the shoe. With typical Kiwi ingenuity, Ken had replaced the heavyduty shear pin holding the shoe in place with a piece of No 8 fencing wire, to avoid the shoe getting bent, and losing time taking it to be repaired. The tractor was fitted with an Asalift carrot lifter and topper, and a front-end bin shifter designed and built by Garry, the owner, which provided a platform for the empty bin while the full one was removed. It was fascinating watching this take place. The John Deere tractor, driven by James, drove backwards in front of the Same harvester at a synchronised speed until the bin was full and the harvester stopped. It then quickly placed an empty bin onto the front-end bin shifter, and removed the full one, taking it back to the truck being loaded with bins for the packing shed. If you see two tractors doing a kind of waltz in a field, now you will know what they are doing.

When the 22 bins on the truck were full, we returned to the carrot shed to unload the bins into a hopperfeedingthe washer and packing line. Here I was introduced to Sue, the joint owner of the enterprise, who was workingonthe carrot sorting line with five other staff. The carrots were packed into 20kg bags

and stacked in bins for delivery to Auckland in refrigerated trucks for the New Zealand market. Some are exported to Japan and other Asian markets, the Pacific Islands and Malaysia. The carrots are graded for size and sorted for blemishes which buyers do not accept, despite the carrots being perfectly edible. Reject carrots are used as animal fodder on the rest of the farm, so nothing is wasted. I had always thought it was a waste to see carrots being fed out to stock. Carrots are planted from September to November and harvested from February to September, depending on the weather. The rows are planted according to whether the crop will be harvested in winter or summer as different harvesting methods have to be used when early frosts burns off the tops and wet weather saturates the land, making it more difficult to gather in the crop. Carrots have a high nutritional value and, apart from the. old adage about eyesight, they are also said to have other health-giving properties. I heard one story of a young woman who gave her father carrot juice every day, because he suffered from cancer. Apparently it didn't actually cure the cancer, but he did throw away his glasses! The next time you sit down to your favourite carrot cake, or roast dinner with carrots , you will know that the chances are they were grown in the rich volcanic soil around Mount Ruapehu and harvested fresh from the ground for delivery to your table.