“We’re actually not even going to do deer processing now. “Meat lockers usually made a big living processing deer in October and November.”įor the immediate future local deer hunters will have to find other means of processing their prey. “I am hearing however, how deer hunters are having difficulty getting their deer processed,” Dinkel said. He is also an auctioneer on weekends and a former county agent with an animal sciences degree, has 250 employees and now more of them are looking to buy a half of beef, which they can have done right at home, said Dinkel, who grew up on a cattle operation and raised hogs. Also, it’s great for people who want to buy cattle by the half, or have one harvested. “It’s great to have that many more jobs, especially in the middle of a pandemic.
“We’re glad they re-opened,” said Allen Dinkel, Junction City manager. We had been at 35 employees before we re-opened the second plant. “With all the part-time help, we have over 50 employees. 26, even after hiring an additional 20 people.
“We’re still overwhelmed now,” he added on Oct. “We’re overwhelmed,” Dieckman said back in May, in the midst of the pandemic peak.
Milo meat locker full#
The new again facility, which was outfitted over the past few months with all new updated refrigeration systems, is now open and in full operation. Suddenly, the Clay Center plant was instantly booked up well into 2021, with a waiting list into 2022, as were other locker plants in the region and across the country. The need for increased processing space became apparent during the peak of COVID, when business at the Clay Center plant rapidly increased. That’s what it’s been like to own a beef processing facility, to get swamped with phone calls, then to open a second locker plant, and try to outpace yourself to meet public demand for beef during the pandemic.Īfter getting deluged with business and daily racing against the clock to accommodate beef customers, owner Brad Dieckmann at the Clay Center (Kansas) Locker Plant recently opened his second processing plant located just 35-minutes away in Junction City, Kan., called the Clay Center Locker JC Plant. We re-opened the other processing plant, and it’s still busy.”
“It’s overwhelming, it’s tough to catch up. What a treat to be able to retreat into my cozy, dry camper, make a cup of tea, plug in my computer, and settle in for an evening of writing.Beef carcasses are hung in the cooler at the new Junction City, Kan., locker plant, officially called Clay Center Locker JC Plant. That evening Milo and I took a long walk and as we were sitting down to dinner it started to rain. I walked into the camper and for the first time ever turned on its AC.Īt full blast, it had my trailer at meat locker temperature in about six minutes and I could turn it off and take a delicious nap. For some reason, I had to wrestle with the weight distribution bars when unhitching the trailer (looking back I think this was because the site wasn’t level) and by the time I had camp set up, I was a cranky, sweaty, mosquito-bitten mess. I pulled up on a blistering heat day, but the rain left a gift–clouds of droning mosquitos. For the past week or so the weather switched back and forth between torrential rain and blistering heat. I have to admit that I was grateful for the electricity. The happy babble of kids was replaced with bird song and the sound of crackling fires. My 18-foot camper was the little one on the block and my neighbors were mostly retired couples in a very different phase of their financial life cycle than the young families at Killbear.
Trailer at Grundy Lake has a completely different character. The general hubbub reminded me of family camping trips when I was little. I spent the previous two days at Killbear Provincial Park where I camped in the midst of a gaggle of young families-children tearing all over the place, dogs barking, clotheslines draped with beach towels, bedding, and underpants. My site in the campground named ‘Trailer.’
0 kommentar(er)
