Growing into the role

There were four people based in the packhouse in high summer and I was one of them.

Filled punnets of berries are checked for weight and quality by Iva, Gulyhan and Madalina, who have separate tables and scales at the start of the conveyor belt. The punnets are then sealed with a lid before travelling along the belt to a temperamental label machine and then landing on a turntable.

I stand next to the turntable and have the job of putting all the punnets into boxes. Boxes of ten punnets are then placed on a pallet, five to a layer, with 20 layers making up a maximum order of 100.

It’s a busy job and while the girls natter among themselves in Bulgarian and delicately place singular berries in punnets, I am constantly packing and lifting. I’ve also got to make sure they have a continuous supply of berries to weight and check, so I’m constantly bringing pallets of fruit in from the chiller to their station on top of my duties.

Sometimes the label machine has a funny moment, where the paper will break or run at a jaunty angle. I learn to sort this out in time but while I or Madalina grabble with the machine, the other two girls don’t stop weighing or checking and will build up an ever increasing supply of punnets to place on the belt when it’s up and running again.

It’s a good test of endurance, co-ordination, fitness and speed when this happens and you’re faced with dozens of punnets that need boxing. I quite like the challenge, actually, and it feels pretty good when you clear the last punnet and find yourself waiting for more to come through.

Thursdays are pretty busy as orders are taken for greengrocers and markets preparing for weekends and the end-of-the-week rush, but Sundays in high summer are insane.

I can’t remember the date but records tumbled on a Sunday in July when we packed between 700 and 800 boxes in a manic nine-hour shift. I also found myself making boxes and filling trays with empty punnets on top of my packing duties to meet demand, being a woman down as Madalina doesn’t work on Sundays.

Our reward was a can of coke. It doesn’t sound like much, but a little gesture like that or a sincere ‘really good job’ or ‘well done everyone’ from the boss can make a huge difference to how you feel afterwards. And boy, did that coke taste fantastic.

Weekdays are rarely as busy and the four of us often found ourselves picking or carrying out husbandry tasks around the sites when we weren’t in our whites in the packhouse.

I got my first experience of strawberry picking around a fortnight after I started. The place was Pheasant house, one of six glasshouses at the Redhill site and possibly the largest.

There’s more to picking than removing strawberries from the plant and putting them in a punnet. Every picker is given a trolley which holds two trays of punnets, the top being for “first class” everyday strawberries and the lower one for “second class” berries, which are usually smaller, misshaped or just don’t look as big, juicy and appetising as your archetypal Wimbledon berry. There’s also a bucket for overripe and mouldy berries, which have to be removed as they will continue to draw water.

You pick one side of a row, then the other side, and find the next available free row when you’ve finished. Sometimes there’s poles in the middle – the structural type, not someone from Poland – which can make progress slow and awkward.

So off I went and for ten minutes I thought I was doing well. True, I didn’t go as fast as everyone around me but I was happy with the quality and quantity of berries I picked. They looked fab and my Facebook friends thought so, too. However, Madalina wasn’t quite so happy, as she quickly picks up on my lack of speed and the fact I missed quite a few ripe berries on my journey down the row.

I also seem to have a knack for finding overripe berries in the middle of the growbags, although I do wonder if they’ve been left there deliberately by the “professional” pickers as they’re concentrating on filling punnets as quickly as possible for their wages, rather than chucking inedible ones in the bin for nothing.

Reaching through the plants to get strawberries on the other side – ie a side that someone else is picking – is frowned upon but does happen clandestinely. It’s not recommended though, as I learn from Ryan this practice has caused a few fights in the past. I’m surprised, given how naturally cool and relaxed Eastern Europeans can be.

Needless to say over the months I improve my speed considerably and by August I’m no longer the slowest picker on the team.

Nice: I half expected Borat to appear in the polytunnels given the Gypsy-esque music blaring from Madalina's phone.

Picking with the “professionals” is an interesting experience and dare I say it, one which made me feel a stranger in my own land at first. Not a word of English was spoken and the same mix of Romanian, Bulgarian, Greek and Turkish music constantly blared from Madalina’s phone.

Some of her music has a Gypsy feel and constantly reminds of me of Borat, while the Bulgarian rap doesn’t sound too bad. Apparently a lot of Bulgarian rap is also political and anti-corruption, a theme I’ll be returning to in this blog a little later.

I do make the packhouse team laugh, though, as on one occasion I mishear a song called 'Selina' and ask why the singer is crooning about gasolina. That became a bit of running joke.

There were times when I felt a bit lonely as this was so alien to my previous job. I loved office banter and consider myself quite a sociable person, being a (former?) journalist, so going from a social job to one where I found myself excluded from conversion because of language was tough for a while. I’m pleased to report things changed, but I would be lying if I didn’t have thoughts about quitting at times…