Harald Friestad is asking Bama to stop importing once he’s ready to supply. That way, he’ll have access to all of Norway.
It’s the 10th of April, and the ground is still covered in snow after the long Norwegian winter. But Harald Friestad can only see the white horticultural fleece his employees placed over the recently planted Chinese cabbages; 10,000 plants were planted today.
Harald will start supplying the first Chinese cabbages around 17 May. In the first half of June, broccoli will also enter the market. “It’s a matter of honour to be the first to supply,” he says. It’s something he strives for every year.
“The first to supply is usually the first to harvest. But it could be different this year because of the cold,” he continues. He admits it’s a bit like a game of chance.
Stop importing
When his plants are ready to be delivered, import products are still in the shops. However, one phone call from Harald is enough to change that. “Once we tell Bama, the import stops. We’ll then have Norwegian prices.”
If he is the first to deliver in Norway — or one of the first — he’ll have an entire country as his market. “Quantities are much larger if we’re early. We can supply more and therefore have more income. That is because we can then supply to the entire market, until the east of Norway starts harvesting. After that we only supply to Rogaland and Agder. The sooner we start, the better, so we try to be as early as possible.”
New manager
Although Harald has worked for the nursery every summer for as long as he can remember, he was only recently made manager. Last year on 28th of December he took over from his grandfather. Now Harald is the one responsible for the lettuce, Chinese cabbage, broccoli, carrots, rapeseed, root parsley, parsnip and horseradish. The old has been replaced by the young. While grandfather used to walk around in a shirt, the 21-year-old is wearing a colourful T-Shirt during the interview. The living room is modernly furnished.
Grandfatherly knowledge is not disregarded
“I use his time schedule and habits. The only thing I changed is the amount,” Harald says. He scaled up the volume of various products. But it can be risky to be a pro-active vegetable grower. If he hasn’t supplied his Chinese cabbages by the time the East of Norway is ready to harvest, he’ll be left with large volumes. “It becomes too expensive to harvest then, so we won’t do that.”
Learned from his grandparents
His grandmother used to deal with the workers, while his grandfather took care of things in the field. Harald wanted to learn from both of them. The two years before he took over the company, he was at the farm every day, and followed both of them. His grandparents have now moved, although they’re always willing to help Harald out.
Now Harald is manager at 21, and he has five employees. From May until October/November, he’ll even have 13 workers. Most come from Estonia, the others from Poland. They come from three families and they recruit new potential workers from within these families themselves, before Harald conducts job interviews with them over the phone.
The employees live at the farm. Some even lived with Harald and his wife Rakel, although that wasn’t the best solution. That’s why they rented a neighbouring house that had long been vacant, and restored that.
Kringsjå
This year, Harald will grow 40 to 50 hectares of vegetables, including 350,000 Chinese cabbages and 1.2 to 1.4 million heads of lettuce. His grandparents supplied their vegetables under their own names, Odd and Helga Undem. Harald is now making labels with the new name, Kringsjå. He has two packing machines, so that the company can do its own packing.
Waiting for an education
In the past two years, Harald was admitted to the Vea, the green vocational school of Norway, to study agricultural management. He was disappointed both years when the training was cancelled because there was not enough interest.
“It’s annoying you can’t get a good education to work on your competences within this field,” he says. “But unfortunately, it is what it is, and I hope the training will happen at some point.”
Source: fagpressenytt.no