Citrus by the crate and dried fruit by the kilo, off the grading line eight kilometres north of Citrusdal. Orders close Wednesday at noon.
See this week's boxes41 200 cartons went out between March and September. Eleven of those weeks were navels, nine were Valencias, and the rest split between Eureka lemons, Star Ruby and whatever went onto the drying racks. The line ran forty-one weeks of the fifty-two. Two shifts a day from the second week of March, one shift from July, and nothing at all through December and January. 214 hectares under trees between this shed and the Olifants River, farmed by three families who have been putting fruit through here since 1986. Twelve cartons in every hundred never leave the district. They go to farm stalls, to the school and to people who pull up at the gate with a bakkie. The rest goes out on a Thursday.
Two shifts from the second week of March, when the navels arrive faster than the sorting tables can take them and the line runs from six in the morning until well after dark. One shift from July, once the Valencias settle and the packers can get home for supper. Forty-one weeks on, eleven weeks off. In those eleven the shed gets stripped, the rollers get replaced and somebody finally gets to the roof over the cold store. Sixty-two people on the payroll at the peak and thirty-one here every week of the year. Nobody is bussed in from anywhere, because everybody lives inside twenty kilometres of the gate.
Say which town, which fruit and how many boxes. The packhouse is on the R303, eight kilometres north of Citrusdal, gate open weekdays seven to four. Courier cut-off is Wednesday at twelve.
