The Weekend

Random pretty petunia bloom

It's one of those things non-greenhouse folks don't understand.  Just like the plants don't know it's Christmas, the plants don't know it's the weekend. In the greenhouse life you can't just say on a Friday afternoon "we will pick up where we left off on Monday".  It doesn't work that way.  Depending on weather, you can lose everything on the weekend.  

One of my first responsibilities when I joined the greenhouse team was scheduling.  At the time, we were a different operation and so we had fewer people and even fewer managers.  Michael and his then head grower would trade off every other weekend.  That's right.  Michael worked every other weekend for about ten years.  And then he would still go to work on his weekends off for a little bit to "catch up on office work".  It wasn't until we had Sofia that I started forcing him to take a day off.  That means that every two weeks he would take one day to stay home with his wife and child.  Some people say "well he's the owner, that's what owners do".  True.  But his head grower was not the owner, and he worked every other weekend for seven years.  It's virtually impossible to get people to work those kind of hour now.

Eventually we got smart and realized they had an assistant grower who was very capable.  We started putting him on every weekend Michael worked, and Michael could work in the office and "catch up" while his assistant ran the greenhouse.  That's when Michael started actually taking two days off.  I believe I was pregnant with Savannah by then.  

We started training more people to be a weekend manager.  There was a checklist for them to go through and make sure they checked everything.  It is hard to manage the greenhouse for a weekend.  Most assistants are over one area: one acre of plants, or the warehouse, or the production line.  On the weekend they have to be in charge of everything.  So you might be a great finished grower from Monday to Friday, but on the weekend you are in charge of propagation too, and you are the operations manager.  I think it's great training for our young growers.  However, as one young grower put it to me once: "We basically play let's see how many plants we can keep alive all weekend."

Making the schedule is always complex.  We aim to have our employees work one weekend a month.  We have about 15 regular employees to work with, so you need 4-5 managers, and 2-3 people per weekend.  You have to balance people's skills, personalities, language abilities, genders and occasionally personal drama.  We have had married couples working where they want to work the same weekend for transportation purposes, or different weekends for childcare purposes.  Then there different managers with different priorities.  Our previous head grower pointed out to me that when the warehouse manager was the weekend manager, the plants were in the worst shape on Monday morning but the to-do list was completely done.  When the head grower was on it was the opposite: plants were amazing but the to-do list was never complete.  

I feel very lucky these days because I have two permanent weekend employees.  One is someone who used to work here years ago, and came back wanting to work only holidays and weekends to supplement his income.  The other is an 18 year old high school student who worked all summer, and now works just weekends and when school is on break.  That is two people you can rely on to know what to do every weekend with some guidance.  It is actually really nice. One of them is fully bilingual too!

Pots on a table waiting for cuttings

In a perfect world we would use the weekend to clean and organize, and water plants to make sure they are alive.  As we get deeper and deeper into the season we use the weekends to do much more.  One of our permanent weekend guys is a sprayer, so he frequently takes advantage of having fewer people there to spray a needed fungicide or growth regular on our plants.  Frequently we use the weekend crew to clean the trays of plants that are set to ship that upcoming week.  This weekend they were filling gallon pots with soil and setting them on the tables where we will be sticking callused geraniums this week.  I know, I'm saying a lot of greenhouse words but if you keep reading this blog you too will be fluent in greenhouse speak!

My point is this: the weekend is never just the weekend for us.  Around Thursday of every week we are already looking at the weather and checking my previously made schedule (which I make for a whole month in advance each time).  Do we have enough people?  Is it raining all weekend? Do we have too many people then?  What else can we do with our staff if it's raining and we need to water less?  Who's the weekend manager?  Do we need volunteers?  Can we get one of expert irrigators to come in and help for half a day if it's sunny and in the 60s? Let's water heavy on Friday, and bring in an extra irrigator on Sunday, we have enough people for Saturday... Is it safe for us to leave the Davis compound?  Do we dare go all the way to Athens (45 minute drive)? Are we bold enough to go for a day trip to Highlands, NC (2 hour drive)? This is my life. 

The greenhouse life.

So if you follow me on facebook or instagram and you see pictures of the Davis family on a picturesque hike somewhere, or playing mini golf or something fun like that; know that it took so much more than you know to get us there. No wonder I take so many pictures!

Beautiful weekend!