— पांच हजार चार सौ पैंतालीस —
Big day yesterday: I went on the Wilcox Family Farms tour with a bunch of people from work—including Grocery Coordinators and/or Dairy Buyers from all sixteen stores, none of whom do I actually know—and that resulted in
a 68-shot photo album on Flickr. 58 still shots, and 10 video clips. Honestly more than I might even have predicted.
This was why there was no DLU (Daily Lunch Update) yesterday. I was busy! And, the evening was spent mostly on just the editing, tagging, and uploading of these photos and videos.
I actually keep
a collection of these photo albums, specific to tours I've gone on, of supplier locations, factories or farms. This now makes six; I hadn't gone on one since we did the field trip out to Lucky Hook Farm in Moses Lake—quite the one-way bus ride to that, three hours—back in October 2017. So, it had been six years. Of course, it likely would have happened somewhere sooner if not for the pandemic. You know how that goes. In any case, yesterday's tour yielded a record number of photos and videos, although that is hardly a surprise; it seems I find more and more things to record at any event the more time goes on. I'm just slaphappy with my camera.
It sure was fun, though. Noah had announced in his June 9 Grocery Newsletter to the stores that the Grocery Meeting on July 13 would be combined with a tour of Wilcox Family Farms. These meetings are usually with Grocery Coodinators and not relevant to me; I don't join them as a rule. But, I still responded that day to ask if I could go on this tour, because I had been hearing about the "mobile pastures" that get used out there for our PCC private label eggs, and was really interested in finally getting to see them. He responded,
Absolutely, let's get you out to the farm!
I can't remember why but the date was later rescheduled to July 27. That still worked fine for me. And, a lot more than just Grocery wound up being invited: in addition to store Grocery Coordinators and Dairy Buyers from stores, there was a couple of people from the Deli department (Michael and Benny); a few from Marketing and Purpose (Rebecca, Addison, Money; another woman whose name I can never remember); and in the end even Gabby, and Mel the Office Manager got a last-minute invite from Noah. All told, I think about 35 PCC people came to this thing.
I don't have a car, as everyone knows, and I actually had the option of hitching a ride with either Gabby or Noah himself. Gabby wound up picking up two people from the View Ridge storem an easie thing for her to do since she lives in the Lake City neighborhood; Noah lives in Wallingford but was still willing to pick me up at home, so I didn't have to go to the office first. He aimed to pick me up at 8:30 but was maybe ten minutes later than that. He wasn't driving anyone else so it was just the two of us in his car, driving the roughly 80 minutes to the farm, in Roy, Washington, which is south of Lakewood and a bit east of Olympia. It's a fairly significant drive. But totally worth it!
— पांच हजार चार सौ पैंतालीस —
— पांच हजार चार सौ पैंतालीस —
We met people from three of the five generations who have now operated Wilcox Family Farms from the family that is its namesake, and also some other staff—including a guy named Dale, who has been a longtime contact for me regarding cost pricing and promotions; he was openly pleased to see that I had made it. He even referred to how I "perform miracles" for him, which was an exaggeration but amusing.
They have
an onsite school bus which was used to drive us around their 1,600 acres of farm land, showing all manner of egg production: their famous (to us, anyway) mobile hen houses, and different egg production plants, separately for regular packaged eggs, or hard boiled eggs, or even liquid egg production. The final production facility saw where they washed, sorted and packaged our private label ("PCC") eggs, which we are
still very open about being supplied by Wilcox Family Farms (we have this transparency on all our private label prodcuts).
At one point we were in a giant room filled with huge stacks of eggs, all from one day of production. I asked one of the Wilcox guys there how many eggs were in that room at the moment. He said, "About thirty thousand dozen." Damn! That's 360,000 individual eggs. That's roughly the population of Cleveland, Ohio.
After all the touring was done, we were bused—plus a handful of people in a minivan, because we had slightly more people than the bus capacity—back to the old henhouse that is now converted into a museum. This was where we all gethered when arriving; where introductions were made; and where an introductory video about the farm was shown. Back there again, they had all manner of food set out for a barbecue lunch they also provided. They even had veggie burgers for us! I don't know what brand it was but my burger was legitimately delicious. They also had some sides actually brought from the PCC Deli, including my favorite, the smoked mozzarella pasta.
They also have
an old, one-room schoolhouse on the ground, moved there from its original location, which family ancesters used to attend about a cenutry ago. Inside it also a museum, including a jaw-dropping
1915 Rules for Teachers.
I walked to the far end of the schoolhouse to turn around and get
an interior shot, and I noticed a tiny, dead bird on the ground. I mentioned it, and this very young person from the Fremont store, the Grocery Lead there, immediately came over to talk to it, and take its picture. All righty then. I mean, I have plenty of odd behaviors and interests of my own, so, no judgement!
There is also a young man who works at the office named Addison, who works on our website and email. He's incredibly handsome and is probably somewhere in his twenties. The Fremont Addison almost certainly is too; that one maybe the younger of the two. Same generation, in any case. I just wondered: is Addision, like, the Michael of the nineties, or early aughts, for baby names? Hmm. I guess not; evidently it did climb to #50
for girls in the 2000s. How interesting.
Anyway! We also had pie for dessert. It was all delicious. I had a great time and was so glad I go to go, for both the tour and the lunch. We picked up another store staff person to ride with us back, and Noah drove us out of there at about 1:50, getting me to the office at 3:30. I had precisely one hour to burn through the day's emails, and that's how long it took me.
Side note on Noah's driving. That man does not dilly dally. Shobhit would have loved it. He's constantly losing patience with other drivers if he has to be a passenger, but Noah would have been a step ahead of him every step of the way. We were on a 45 mph road at one point and Noah was going 80. It was out in the middle of nowhere, so, whatever. Shobhit would have been delighted. Noah also very pointedly drives a stick; he even told me he somewhat recently bought this car and it was somewhat of a challenge even to find a car with manual transmission. But, he found it. I wouldn't have been able to drive that car if my life depended on it.
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Anyway, just a brief final note for the separate, final social engagement of the day: I had Book Club to go to after work, which I wasn't even sure if I'd have time for—Gabby had been concerned that traffic would make it a longer drive back. It actually wasn't too bad, and I even had an hour to work at the office, which really helped for my work load today. And I didn't want to miss it because we had scheduled Book Club yesterday largely based on my availability.
Mel is the one who mostly coordinates Book Club, though, and they had gone to the farm tour with a last-minute invite from Noah. Mel left their office key card at home and would not have time to pick it up in South Park and still make it on time, and so didn't make it after all. Kara was already unavailable; when Steve met up with me at Queen Anne Beerhall, we thought for a bit that it would be just him and me. But, after Mel posted to Teams about it, and I responded that Steve and I were there if anyone still wanted to join us, Deena sent the message that she was walking over, so she actually joined us for what I think was the second time.
We chatted a lot, and a little bit about books, but not a whole lot on another choice for reading. Also, Queen Anne Beerhall was far busier than we had ever seen it and it was really loud and hard to hold a conversation. That said, it was also Happy Hour and all three of us were seduced by the $7 Happy Hour price for their giant pretzel. I had one of those plus a Moscow Mule. Way more than I really needed after that heavy lunch, including multiple samples of different types of eggs.
When we left, Steve and I agreed that we need to choose a new place where it's easier to talk. I then caught the Monorail at Seattle Center, transferred to Light Rail, walked home from Capitol Hill Station, and spent the rest of the evening working on my photos and videos and/or watching this week's episode of
Hijack on Apple TV. The last episide airs on Wednesday next week and that's also the date my subscription expires,
and I'll be in Saint Paul. I'm hoping I can see it released late-ish Tuesday night and Shobhit and I can just watch it independently then. I want to see the finale, dammit!
— पांच हजार चार सौ पैंतालीस —
[posted 12:20 pm]
