[ HAWAII AT WORK ]
CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARBULLETIN.COM
For Curtis Asberry,
the chickens
came first
But he’s still working with the eggs
as a warehouse managerI'm the warehouse manager for Cackle Fresh eggs. I've been doing this about 10 years.
We get our containers in from the mainland, three to four 40-foot containers per week from California. About 98 percent of the eggs we distribute are mainland eggs. The 2 percent of local eggs are from the Big Island. Some customers just prefer the island eggs.
Right now we're working a half day because of the dock lockout. My crew is coming in about noon. I have four guys under me. (This) week, if things don't get better, we're not going to have anymore eggs to pack. I'm going to have to have them doing clean-up or maintenance or something.
The eggs arrive in 30-dozen case boxes stacked from the bottom of the containers to the top. We move them into our refrigerator. Then, as our orders come in each day, we send them out.
As a distributor, we have our own customers and we are always looking for more.
My wife is a local girl. I'm from Miami, Fla., which is kind of like here. We met when we were in the service. When I got out, I became a house husband for a while and she stayed in. Then after Desert Storm, she got out and she moved us back here.
We lived with her brother in Hauula at first. One day I just walked up to the farm and asked for a job. Cackle Fresh still had chickens back then.
I was ranch supervisor when we still had the chickens. We got rid of them about five years ago.
The birds stink, but the lice was the worst part. When you walked in the house and looked at your shirt, you could just see them crawling all over. So you had to spray for that.
It was too expensive to raise chickens, the feed costs were real high. I was ordering 24 tons of feed three times a week. We had to order more than that when we had the baby chicks in. We had 10 houses in production and we had more than 20,000 birds in each house. It wasn't cost-effective to keep the chickens.
So I became a delivery driver after that. Then I took over the warehouse about four years ago.
I like what I'm doing now. When I used to deal with the chickens, my wife used to make me take my clothes off outside and shower outside. She didn't want me in the house smelling like chickens.
Hawaii At Work features tells what people do for a living in their own words. Send submissions to: business@starbulletin.com
