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Around The Vineyard
frequency, hand hygiene, use of sanitizer, avoiding a focus on cross training and determine how to
touching each other (shaking hands, hugging, etc.) reduce labor. One strategy was to adopt a crawling
Van and food sharing was immediately stopped. canopy in the vineyard. Therefore, shoot thinning
Equipment and properties were assigned to specific or leaf pulling were not performed. The strategy
operators providing greater comfort on sanitation. paid off yielding good quality fruit while utilizing
Affiliating a crew with a property and equipment a reduced number of field workers. This allowed
allowed them to develop a complete understand- the company to sell the produce at a discounted
ing of the safety processes and expectations. At price. What made the company successful was the
the same time the amount of contact needed was flexibility, change of farming practices, managing
reduced. Family units constituted a work group people, and communication. With the challenge
as people who live together do not present an of new COVID variants there is still uncertainty and
increased transmission risk while working together It is expected that the changes adopted by this
vineyard management will continue through 2021
Lessons Learned from Individual Speakers and beyond.
Sadie Drury’s management purchased thermom- Tony Bugica was quick to apply his knowledge on
eters for each employee to perform self-tempera- medical procedure as his background includes pre-
ture monitoring. Because her company employs med and EMT training. These skills became helpful
people living in two different states (Oregon and during the pandemic. Atlas Vineyard Management
Washington), there was a need to be aware of (Atlas) operations were decentralized and imme-
health directives from both states and communi- diately eliminated in person meetings. Whoever
cate this accordingly. The management planned could work from home did so. There was no knowl-
on secondary pandemic challenges, such as poten- edge on the use of masks and face shields but it
tial reduced labor. To circumvent this, there was was applied to the everyday farming activities.
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