3 January 2002
The harvesting of romaine lettuce hearts is really quite fascinating. Here one crew of farm workers are hard at work tearing off the outer leaves and placing the hearts onto a conveyor belt. The lettuce passes under a light spray of slightly chlorinated water, then onto the packaging cart. The crew on the cart inspects the hearts and places them in a box, 48 at a time, for shipping to restaurants all around the country. The tractor pulling the trailer of boxes also carries the chlorinated water and pushes the entire assembly down the fields in "crawl gear" at a speed of a few feet per minute.
