Games vs Machines
It's tough being a picker!
The way we stay motivated when picking all your food in the fields is to make it a game. Otherwise its quite solitude picking away with the occasional glance up to look at the view or a plane going overhead. Although Ilmars the Picking Manager tells me I should never look up... just keep picking.
Us Brits do well when we make picking a challenge based on portions per hour picked and who is the best picker that day. People surprise you. Like Ethan last week became a picking machine when we made it a fun challenge to see who could pick the most potatoes.
As a reward for fast picking the chef in the Field Kitchen uses some left overs to feed the team with or sample his experiments for the week ahead. This weeks experiment was spaghetti squash. It's my favourite veg at the moment.
The reality of picking by hand and trying to make it a game does have its limitations. If you look at the posture it takes to pick quickly in the picture then not many people could keep that up for long and if we could find an old machine that is gentle on the crop then we must find it. But for now making it a game is the best way to do it.
