Second Harvest

Our trip to second harvest heartland. We went to second harvest heartland during school to pack meals for people who don't have any. when we got there we went in and put our extra stuff in cubbies. Like jewelry, watches, phones etc. Then we sat in the lobby and listened to one of the workers talk about what we were going to be doing. They told us all of the procedures and rules before we went in to pack. The things we packed were apples and crackers. There were also other stations that made boxes, and put the boxes of food onto the conveyor belts as well. They next had us raise our hands to pick the jobs we wanted to do. They then split us up into those groups and told us what we were going to be packing. Lastly they went over some more rules which consisted of what we should or shouldn't be wearing. For example we had to have close toed shoes, no baggy clothing, and most girls put their hair up including me, just so it wasn't in the way. After they were done talking we headed into the packing station. When we got in there we washed our hands and put gloves on. Then they continued to talk about more rules and how we are actually going to pack all of the items. 

For the packing part, I was one of the many packing the apples. The instructor explained how to check the apples, how to box them, and how to close the boxes when one was complete. There were 2 crates of apples in each station. The instructor showed us what kinds of apples are good and what aren't. She held up 2 different kinds of apples, one rotten and one normal. She explained that we don't want to pack the rotten apples and that they should go into the compost bins on the floor, and that we only want to pack the good ones. She then picked up one with bumps on it and she told us that those ones were actually good to pack even though they looked funny. But after she was done with directions we started packing apples. There were 3 long tables with people on each side of them packing apples. There was boxes and scales underneath the tables that we used as well. After we had packed all of the apples, which was like 6 crates, we moved on to packing the crackers. For the crackers, we would pretty much do the same thing except we would have to cut the plastic off of the boxes of crackers and cross out the word organic with a sharpie on the boxes. Then just like the apples we would put the finished boxes of crackers into a big box and onto the conveyor belt. After we finished packing everything in our time slot, we went and looked at how much we packed that day. We were able to pack about 105 meals per person, and it was a very successful trip.