“Efficiency is more important than diversity of items or markets.”

David Van Eeckhout started Hog’s Back Farm in 2003 at a farm five miles south of its current location. Prior to starting his own operation, David worked for several leaders in the local and organic foods movement, including Pennsylvania’s New Morning Farm; Stillwater, Minnesota’s, Red Cardinal Farm; and Delano, Minnesota’s, Riverbend Farm, where he spent three growing seasons. Despite David’s ample and broad experience, Hog’s Back Farm started small, and grew slowly, using his available capital to finance new investments in equipment and infrastructure.

In 2006, David moved the farm to its current location, where he has five acres in vegetable production at any given time, with about 20 acres in rotation. Almost all of Hog’s Back’s production goes to its Community Supported Agriculture subscription program, which currently sells 165 shares, almost all of them delivered to the Twin Cities. Hog’s Back’s focus on the CSA allows the farm to excel in that marketing and production model; occasional surpluses are sold through small natural food stores and restaurant connections.

In addition to David, Hog’s Back employees one full-time worker from March through November. During the growing season, David adds one additional full-time and two part-time workers.

Hog’s Back’s Thursday-only delivery schedule dictates the pace of the harvest and packing work on the farm, and requires some additional investment in systems and storage. On Tuesday, the crew harvest time-intensive crops, such as peas, beans, and tomatoes; on Wednesday, they harvest, wash, and pack everything else. On Thursday mornings, CSA shares are packed and rolled directly onto an un-refrigerated delivery truck.

In time for the 2007 growing season, David remodeled the thirty-foot by sixty-foot lower level of a stanchion dairy barn to serve as a packing facility. The stanchions were removed, and the floor and gutters were filled with sand to provide a level surface, then covered with concrete. Circular floor drains provide ample drainage directly to the outdoors. The packing area has a metal ceiling and fiberglass reinforced plastic (FRP, commonly referred to as “dairy board”) wall coverings, all of which are washable. Currently, about forty feet of the barns sixty-foot length is used for washing and packing operations, while the rest of the area houses farm storage and a household summer kitchen.

Raising the floor has presented some challenges due to the newly-limited ceiling height, including the need to cut the tops off of the used walk-in coolers David installed. Hog’s Back currently runs two coolers: the cold and wet cooler, with a temperature of 34°F, measures eight by fourteen feet; the cool and wet cooler, maintained at 55°F, measures eight by ten feet. Crops that must be kept in a lower humidity environment are stored in the packing shed. The two coolers have doors that are too narrow to accept a standard 40-inch by 48-inch pallet; David has built some narrow pallets, but they are not convenient to use.

Large openings in the northwest and southeast corners, as well as the truck-loading door on the south wall, provide for generous airflow and cooling capacity. David has plans to install doors at these openings. Product enters the packing facility through a ground-height door at the northwest corner; most crops are washed before they go into storage in the walk-in coolers on the east wall. CSA boxes get packed assembly-line fashion on roller track, stacked onto home-made metal carts, and rolled out the south door directly onto Hog’s Back’s dock-height truck.

Hog’s Back washes all of its fall root crops before they go into storage. The silty-loam soil tends to stain the roots, and Hog’s Back only delivers up until Thanksgiving, so the minor damage sustained during the washing process is more than offset by the ability to avoid dirt-stains on the roots. This does, however, create a large point load for labor needed at harvest time, making the speed of operations at that time of year extremely important.

Because Hog’s Back does not use wax boxes for packing outbound product, a large amount of space in the packing area is devoted to storage of a variety of plastic totes used for harvest, storage, and delivery.

Restroom and hand wash facilities are located in the farmhouse, which is less than one hundred feet from the packing facility. In 2009, the hand wash will have moved into the packing facility; in the meantime, the crew uses nitrile surgical gloves for bagging and boxing products.

Hog’s Back Farm does not have an extensive or expensive array of post-harvest handling equipment. Rubbermaid stock tanks, hoses, a brush washer, and a variety of tables provide the necessary tools to get their work done.

The rinsing tanks at Hog’s Back included several 100-gallon tanks, and two 50-gallon tanks. The 100-gallon tanks are the most used, frequently placed on top of an overturned 50-gallon tank to achieve an ergonomic working height (the 50- and 100-gallon tanks have the same footprint). The crew uses these for washing bunched greens, removing the greens, giving them a shake, and packing them directly into plastic totes for storage.

During the harvest season, Hog’s Back bunches all root crops to avoid the additional labor of bagging them in the packing facility. Bunched roots are dumped into a tank to soak before washing. To wash the roots, workers use a shut-off valve at the end of a hose to provide a pressurized spray – similar to putting one’s thumb over the end of a hose – to wash the roots. “I tell people to count one, two, three, while rotating the bunch in their hand, then set it aside,” David notes. Washed bunches are tossed into a rinse tub, then removed, shaken, and packed.

Many farms drain washed greens on a screen table to remove excess water, but Hog’s Back doesn’t. David notes that bunched greens, and bunched roots with their tops still attached, get packed into CSA boxes and shipped fairly quickly, so the decay that can result from standing water doesn’t present the same issues it might for farms selling into a retail store or warehouse.

Hog’s Back’s packing area has several tall tables, with wooden legs and PolyMax bench panels on top. The PolyMax bench panels are rigid, black plastic designed for greenhouse benches. They have fairly wide ribs, and a one-inch grid for copious drainage. Hog’s Back also has several shorter stainless steel tables for weighing and staging product. Some of these stainless steel tables are on wheels to make them easy to move into an optimal position.

The major handling investment that Hog’s Back has made is a used brush washer. Theirs is a much pared down model, with no in-feed belt and no absorber to remove water; workers wheel a stainless steel table into position to put a tote of dirty product on, and feed crops such as beets, potatoes, and winter squash through the machine. At the outfeed end is a slanted table covered with a washable, green surface similar to that found in the produce section of many grocery stores. David is looking at getting a circular sorting table and drying donuts to improve efficiency and storability of crops.