Dirty Jobs

Mike begins his day in Salisbury, North Carolina. He is there to learn how to make handmade coal fired bricks. Handmade bricks supposedly last longer than ones manufactured by a machine even though they are made with the same ingredients. They are made of dirt, water and sand and when they are handmade, no two are identical. Old Carolina Brick company is one of the smallest brickmakers in the U.S. and has been in business for forty years. They are the largest producer of handmade bricks. Every year they make about ten million handmade bricks.

Mike meets Mark, the assistant superintendent of the company. They are in the grinding room area where they grind the dirt that makes the bricks. Using a front end loader, they put twenty tons of dirt from the truck into a hopper. The dirt is then ground up into the right consistency to make the bricks. The dirt comes from Gold Hill, NC which is only about twenty miles away. Shale is also ground up with the dirt. Without the rock, the brick would be less stable.

"Magic dust" (magnanese dioxide) is added to the mixture. This chemical changes the color of the dirt from red to brown. Brown bricks are currently in higher demand than the red ones. A conveyor brings the processed dirt to Doc who is the mud mixer. He has the job of regulating the right amount of water in the mix. He can tell that he has enough water by the look of the mud smear on the shaft. Also if he takes some in his hand and he has sticky fingers, the mud is too wet.

The mud then goes into an extruder which forms it into a long continuous rectangular shape. It is cut into thirteen pound chunks. We meet Cedric who is a mud thrower. Mud throwers get paid by the brick. He picks up the mud and throws it in a hole (the mold). It first is rolled in a mixture of fine grain sand. The sand prevents the mud from sticking to the molds. Throwing mud allows natural air pockets to form within the brick. This allows moisture to freeze and thaw without cracking the brick.

The sand mixing takes place in a room with a hot fire. The fire dries the sand. They also mix the color in this room. Adding minerals like lime and red iron oxide to the sand adds unique color patterns to the brick when it's fired in the kiln.

After the bricks are hand thrown into the molds, they are taken by machine to where the excess mud is cut off. The wet bricks are then dumped onto trays and put in the drying room for 24 hours. The dryer runs at temperatures between 300-500 degrees. Every day 40-45 cars are loaded into the dryer. They gradually dry until they are firm enough to be stacked and fired in the kiln.

The act of stacking the bricks is called hacking. Each type of brick is stacked in a different pattern before it is put in the kiln. Even Mark the supervisor doesn't know how to do it because of the pattern changes. Mike meets Ruby, a brick stacking expert. She's been working at the brick factory for twelve years. The stacking pattern allows the heat in the kiln to distribute evenly among the bricks.

We then meet David who puts the bricks into the kiln to be fired. For the next 27 hours, the temperature in the kiln gradually rises to 2000 degrees. Then it gradually cools for eight hours to produce a hard weather resistant brick. David then has to monitor the temperature in the control room. Mike thinks this is the best job in the place because all David has to do is sit for eight hours watching gauges in a warm toasty room.

Cleaning the kiln is an important part of the firing process. They have to pull ash twice a week to keep the kiln clean. If the ash isn't raked out, it will pile up in front of the burner and it won't cook the bricks.

After cleaning the machines, Mike gets to see the finished product. The coal firing in the kiln gives the brick the black flashing within the brown color. He notices a big chunk of burnt coal ash in between the finished bricks which shows that if you don't rake, the ash accumulates quickly. The brick stackers have the job of stacking 20,000 finished bricks a day. Even the bad bricks can still make a profit. Old Carolina Brick company can still sell their clinkers at a premium because they're handmade.

Next Mike is at the Cape Blanco Cranberry Farm in Port Orford, Oregon. Cranberries are normally grown in naturally occurring wetlands or bogs. This 100 acre farm is entirely manmade. It took owner Ron Puhl nine years to build his farm.

Ron and Mike are standing in the middle of a cranberry bed. They are there to start the harvesting process in this bed. There are two ways to harvest cranberries. Dry harvesting uses a revolving toothed rake machine that looks like a reel type lawn mower. Wet harvesting typically removes 98% of the fruit. Dry harvesting only gets 80% of it. They wet harvest on this farm. They will pull the sprinklers and plug the drain from the bed up above to flood the bed they want to harvest.

Ron shows Mike a fully mature cranberry. When you break the cranberries open you can see the pigment going through the skin to the center of the fruit. Cranberries have four chambers inside which allow them to float. Ron was once a commercial salmon fisherman and urchin diver. When his first son was born, he decided to go into the safer job of growing cranberries. Unfortunately, the price of cranberries dropped and he had hard times for a number of years.

Ron shows Mike how to pull the sprinklers. They have a permanent in-ground sprinkler system. Apparently Mike didn't pay close enough attention to Ron so he has some trouble getting the job done. The sprinklers help irrigate the cranberry right up to harvest time. Flooding is a gentle way to harvest. Mike gets hollered at for kneeling down and squashing the berries.

Next they need to clean out the debris from around the pipe. He has to lie down in a bed of gorse (a type of evergreen shrub) that is very prickly and full of spiders. Once the pipe is cleaned and attached, he has to push it up vertically. The next step is to pull the drain pipe from the bed up above. They will gradually fill this bed from a higher field that has already been harvested.

Mike is given a pair of waders so he can get in the flooded field and pull out the pipe. The water is forty degrees. He is cautioned not to stand too close to the pipe or he could get sucked in. Mike breaks the pipe, but can still get it out. Once the vertical pipe is removed from the upper bed, water rushes into the lower bed. It will take about eight hours to gravity fill the bed below.

The next step is to separate the berries from the vine with a machine called a beater. The beater has a hydraulic motor for each of the drive tires. The head of the beater rotates and the winch switch controls the up and down movements of the beater head which varies the amount of pressure on the vines. The heavier the vines, the harder you need the pressure to beat the fruit off the vines. However, the harder you beat could possibly cause more damage to the fruit. It's a very delicat balance.

Ron beat half the bed earlier in the day so some of the berries have already floated to the top of the water on the unbeaten side of the bed. Ron starts up the machine. The tires make a good reference point for speed. The beater has a top speed of 17 mph. It's best to go at a walking pace to get the most fruit with the least amount of damage. It can take six hours to beat a bed that size. They know they're going in a straight line by following the stakes that are placed in the beds.

Once the bed has been beaten, they place booms into the bed. These will be tethered together and Mike and Ron will walk side by side through the bog leading the fruit to the elevator. Ron gives Mike some sticks to help keep from falling in the water. The booms are strung together. Mike has to put the pieces of the boom boards together one by one. He then puts rope into the hole in the flat part of the last board to drag the boom. The elevator looks like a set of stairs that go to nowhere. A truck will arrive to collect the fruit as it comes off the elevator. This two acre bed will yield over thirty tons of cranberries after a full harvest.

Ron's dad drives the truck that transports the berries. A pump sends water through jets that will push the fruit onto the elevator. As the berries are loaded onto the elevator, Mike pulls the boom and takes the boards off one by one. They're lucky to have a nice day for harvesting. Winds can gust up to 70mph and there are days with a wind chill factor of 15-20 degrees.

About 95% of cranberries are processed into products like juice drinks, sauce and sweetened dried cranberries. The remaining 5% are sold fresh to consumers. Cranberries destined for processing are usually frozen. These cranberries are going 17 miles to Ron's processing plant. Millions of cranberries are cleaned, sorted and prepared to be shipped all over the world.

Mike is first shown the inspection line. Mike meets Ron's wife, Mary, who is working the line looking for defective fruit. She recommends looking at just a small area of the conveyor belt and gently moving her eyes over it. She says they've had people that couldn't work for them because they had motion sickness trying to do this job. They remove any broken berries that probably got walked on out in the field. They also remove stems, grass and berries that are starting to ferment. Mike starts to spend more time squishing berries than inspecting fruit. After inspection they get boxed and shipped. Mike thinks he's too clean so he asks for a dirtier job. He's given the task of cleaning the floor.

Finally Mike learns how to make jam at nearby Misty Meadows Jams in Bandon, Oregon. They specialize in homemade jams and jellies. Tracy explains that jelly is made with the juice and jams are made with just the fruit. Mike dumps his bucket of cranberries into a machine that crushes the fruit. He has trouble opening the other buckets of fruit.

Once they are crushed, they are combined with cranberry juice and sugar and they let the mixture sit for ten minutes. Mike meets Hannah, the chef. She accidentally lets Mike burn his hand on some hot pectin that is added to the mixture. Pectin is a setting agent that thickens the jam. He thinks the pectin looks like mucus, but says that because he's still mad about being burned.

Mike then helps Corrina pour the mixture into bottles. There's no automated jar filling here. They pour the jam by hand into each 21 ounce jar with a pitcher. They bottle and ship over 100,000 crates of jam each year using this method. Mike overfills the jars and spills jam everywhere. Carrie is the capper. She gets to put the lids on all the jars. After the lids are on, the jars go into a hot water bath. This will seal the cap so it pops.

They make syrup as well at Misty Meadows. Mike learns how to make syrup from Sandy and Debbie. He gets to make up his own batch of cranberry syrup. He's better at filling the syrup bottles than he was at filling the jam jars. He thinks this is because it's a lot like pouring a beer.

Finally Mike meets Brenda and learns how to assemble the wires for the lids of the jam jars. He finds this job a bit confusing, even though it's supposed to be one of the easiest. Then he gets to label the jars of the jam that he made that day. He sees his jam has its own special Dirty Jobs label.