46

The most hated number on Kibbutz Bar’Am. I guarantee if you ask any volunteer what their least favorite number is after volunteering for a month on Kibbutz Bar’am they will say “46″ without hessitation.

Now let me explain why. But, first let me explain what a Kibbutz actually is.

A Kibbutz is a collective community only found in Israel. It was traditionally based on Socialism and Zionism. It’s forms of income were mainly agricultural, and although those are still some of the forms used today, the more mainly used forms of income are industries. But there are many changes being made to kibbutz now-a-days, becoming privatized as well as other things making them slightly different then what they were founded on. Multiple kibbutz is called kibbutzim and a member of a kibbut is called a kibbutznik. in 2010 there were 270 kibbutz in Israel.

Now that we are all clear on the conscept of what a Kibbutz is. We may continue on with our least favorite number, 46. Our work schedule is posted every week in the bottom of the kitchen it includes every volunteers name and where they work. Instead of writing out each place of work which includes, Plastic Factory, Apple Packing, Dinning, Kitchen, Ramps, Members club, Cinema, and so on and so fourth. They just abbreviate it to numbers, like 130 for kitchen, 131 for dinning etc… well, as I’m sure you can guess the abbreviation for apple packing is 46. The worst thing to see on your work schedule!

 

As I mentioned above most Kibbutzim have some sort of factory that they use to export some goods to make the majority of their money. Well on Kibbutz Bar’Am it is an apple factory. Doesn’t sound so bad at first eh? Eat as many apples as you want, maybe make some apple pies. I could think of worse jobs, or atleast that’s what I thought before I started working at the apple factory. Which is actually called apple packing by the volunteers. This is because that is what the majority of your time spent there is. Just standing in one spot from 6:30am-4:00pm packing apples 5 days a week. I know this sounds bad. but, infact it actually is worse then bad! It is terrible. imagine with me for a second, that you are standing packing apples into a box.

Like this.

Maybe 8 per container, or 12 or just to the brim pretty boring and repetitive huh, but when you think it can’t get worse you just now imagine that someone comes up and starts yelling at you telling you that you are packing apples wrong! Think for a second, how possibly can you pack a box of apples wrong. Okay, sure you have to sort the bad apples out, natually. Then you must alleign the other apples so they are facing each other, now that is just stupid, because between the machine carrying your packed boxes, the fork-lifts carrying them around then the trucks driving over the windy mountains to take them to the store, (where they just unpack the apples anyways), they aren’t going to stay in the spot you put them in. Sorry, just doesn’t work that way Mrs. Apple Factory.

One other very funny thing that happens in the apple packing factory is the classification levels. There are 3 classes. Class A. a perfect apple you would find photo shoped into an add. Class B. Still edible. Class C. Shit that barely classifies as an apple, basically is used for making apple juice and things of that liking. Well, now that we know what the classification levels are I can tell you one of the jobs is sorting the apples that got put into the wrong line. There is usually 2 lines of Class A, 2 lines of class B and a single line of class C. At the beggining of each line is a person who examinines each apple to make sure it’s in the right class.

If not they put it on a separate conveyor belt that sends it to the next class level. Well, often I find myself sitting there sorting apples peacefully, to have one of the managers come up and say “no no no no like this, these are bad apples, these ones are okay.” I reply with “okay no worries” and switch my sorting to their specifications, shortly after a few minutes maybe a different manager comes up and says “Mike! What are you doing no no no no sort like this.” Not wanting to disagree with one of my bosses and point out the fact that I was told something different 2 minutes earlier I respond with “Okay yeah no worries”. A couple of minutes later the first manager walks by and exclaims “Mike! What the fuck! I just told you how to sort the apples!” Now at this point you prey that the second manager is in yelling distance to call them both over to discuss the actually bad and good apples. But if not, you just have to keep an eye out to who is walking past and switch your sorting style accordingly. This happens more then one would like to think. They will sometimes come over from across the room 10-15 meters and say “Why’d you throw this apple away! It’s good!” To which you just sorta stare at them with a blank look on your face since you are probably about to fall asleep since it is a sitting job and no one sleeps on this Kibbutz. Then they usually walk away shortly after and you go back to sorting your apples “wrong” That is life.

But at least we get some breaks in the day. let’s see. Breakfast, 8:30-9:10 minus the 5 minutes each way it takes to walk there, then a 15 minute break from 11:00-11:15 which you really can’t do anything but sit in the coffee room in the apple factory since the weather usually isn’t nice enough to go outside. then Lunch from 1:00-1:40. so overall a work day consists of 7 hours and 55 minutes with 1 hour and 35.
Now let’s do some simple math fun. If one packs a box of apples let’s say for shits and giggles that there is an average of 52 apples per box and this person packs sorta fast around 2 boxes a minute. That is 104 apples per minute. As mentioned above there is 7 hours and 55 minutes in a work day which is 475 minutes of packing apples at 104 apples per minute that is 49,400 Apples by one person. Let’s say that there is 4 people working per line and 2 on the class C (The Worst looking apples) that’s a total of 14 people at just shy of 50,000 apples per person, we pack around 691,600 apples a day. Those also have to be stacked by usually 2-3 people, that means those people are stacking 335,000 apples each. We know they do around 40 tonnes of apples a day, meaning each person is lifting 26,300lbs if they work there all day. Now Obviously there is a constant stream of apples or not everyone works as fast as I am suggestings simply because it’s depressing, knowing the fact that if you pack 120 boxes and hour or 2 boxes an hour you aren’t getting out of the factory any faster. There is ZERO motiviational factor. Besides of course not getting kicked out of the Kibbutz. To get the more realistic number of how many apples we pack a day you’d have to take off a few hundred thousand apples I think.

Here are some pictures I took of the apple factory! I only actually took these photos after I no longer worked there. Since, no one who has a day off from the Apple Facotry wants to be anywhere near there, or speak of apples at all!

The Conveyor belt that takes the boxes to us for easier access to move less and pack more efficiently.

A couple of facts mentioned above and new:

The apple factory approximately does 35-45 tonnes of apples a day. That’s enough to give every Israeli an apple per month
If everyone working stops for 1 minute, they loose $1,000. (Quoted from Guy one of the Managers)
The apple factory has enough apples, pears and kiwis in their fridges to last all winter long. If you figure they can do over 1 million apples a week that’s a lot of apples stored in some pretty large fridges.
There is an average of 45ish people working in the Apple Factory on any given day
The apple packing machine costs a few miillion New Israeli Shekels (NIS) around $500,000
Coffee is the soul of life of the Apple Facotry. Without free coffee machines, there would be no apple factory.

With love and thanks to the lord for no more apple packing for me! I say goodnight from Kibbutz Bar’Am, Northern Israel, 1km away from Lebanon our lovely neighbors, Israel, Middle East, World, Solar System, Universe and beyond.
-Michael Jacob Laucke
P.S. More posts to come
P.P.S Disclaimer: I have no problems with anyone from Kibbutz Bar’Am or any of the people who work in and/or manage the apple factory, you are all very nice and I miss you. I will come visit again soon.