Almost the End...
Well, it's almost the end of the raspberry season. It started early this year, so it'll be finishing early too.
When I first started working, we ran the machine and the raspberries went into flats, which are later cleaned and sold as raspberries in supermarkets, etc. But now that it's the end of the season, we're onto barrels. What are barrels you ask? At the end of the season there are a lot of mouldy, and old berries that can't possibly be sold as they are, so we put them all into barrels that hold 400lbs. of raspberries. These berries are then used to make juice and jam. What you should know, is that about 17% "green matter" is allowed into the barrels. Green matter is anything from leaves and stems, to odd insects and other stuff that I wouldn't really want to drink or spread on my toast. I don't know how well the barrels are cleaned, but I'm sure that everything is sterilised somehow. Of course, this sort of thing happens with most food processing.