Bountiful Basket BIA (Las Cruces) Style

Ken and I went to Las Cruces Saturday to pick up 7 baskets.  In addition we wanted to visit Koeta - the dialysis gal we met last year.  She has had many, many hospitiliations during the summer.  We are not sure that will turn out that good.  They were working on her when we got there - we didn't get to see her.

The drop time changed Friday afternoon to 4pm.  I didn't encourage anyone else to ride down as I wasn't sure what we might face.  It's a good thing.  The pickup was packed.  Friday Ken took the MH spare tire out and we stopped at Carmen's (1 tostado and Ken's GC smothered everything burrito) and picked up a big 64 qt cooler.  Carmen had ordered 3 baskets. We took our 12 volt one and another one someone threw away from a Omaha Steak delivery.  In addition to 7 baskets we were picking up 48# of pickling cukes (no silly just to EAT - no pickles for us.); two flats of blackberries and a 30 gal garbage can for Dave to fill with squished cans and 12 bunches of Pro's Ranch radishes!  
This is the third sight I have visited in New Mexico and yes they do things different here - not necessarily wrong, just different.  This sight at the BIA is a small site when you need to keep the produce out of the sun.  They use more tables than we do in WY and I DO like that there are two places to checkout each time. (I'll probably send this one on to Whit/Sellenee.)

The truck was due at 4.  We got there at 3:45 and were able to each pack 1 box of broccoli.  The truck was unloaded.  It drives from Rozwell and they are attempting to fine tune the times a bit more.  I understand it was a tiny bit better this trip unlike two weeks ago.  Because of their size they are capped at 70 or 72 backets.  There is only about 8' behind me of usable space.


And the 8' is full of produce and extras.  They use more tables - A VERY Good idea for bagging produce/separating bananas, etc.!!
The pg one is the do-VSC.  The other one is the backup they are training to take over in a few weeks.

I think all the NM sites number their baskets and assign you a number.  Our numbers were varied for the seven: 7, 41, 62, 69, 39, 16, 26
First some of the blackberries were moldy so each clam shell was gone through,  Then there was the Brussels sprout decision - 12? 15? It was actually 19 and each basket was gone over three times just for that.  Then came the Bosc pear decision - 4?  Is there enough?  (IMHO) the decision to cut back to 2 was done prematurely - resulting in bosc pears to be gone through 3 times.  And finally the Asian pears - substitutes for grape tomatoes????  Asian pears were sent through three times also.  (Oh well, not my problem).  By this time it was about 5 pm and we still weren't done - extra brocolli for spaghetti squash and a few other minor glitches.

Notes for next time:
1. If Carmen orders 3 take her cooler THEN - it holds three baskets nicely!
2. Don't let Ken destroy the Steak Cooler - Worked for 1 basket.  The 12 volt cooler holds three baskets of perishables nicely.
3. Push hard this week to get a BU signed up!! We NEED to get the drop in TRC on the truck schedule.
4-22.  Repeat #3.

We sold cukes before we left the site.  There are cukes at the clubhouse to munch on and I foresee cukes/onions/vinegar at lot in our future.  Yum!