Newsletter
August 2007
We have a brand new receptionist, Estelle Biggs. She is the daughter of Hester November who is in charge of our quality control and packaging department for bulk cartons. Hester has been with us for 32 years. Estelle grew up on the farm before the family moved to their own house in Botrivier. We now have quite a number of 2nd generation workers on the farm in various work capacities.
Anne-Marie who has been Robert's right hand on the supplier side, will from now on visit our suppliers further afield and not just those in the Hermanus to Bredasdorp areas. We have appointed David Cilliers to coordinate supplier trips and to assist and eventually take over the administrative side. He is also taking on other internal administrative duties.
Richard, who took over from Willie Maritz as farm manager, is so far enjoying the outdoor life. We shall see whether he survives the cold and wet winter, which arrived suddenly although later than expected.
The late summer weather has caught us and our suppliers unawares and because of prolonged warm and dry weather, the Neriifolia crop ripened much earlier and quicker than expected. We have a shortage of Neribuds as a result. Investigation shows that it seems to be a problem throughout the industry. The farmers did not alert us to the problem, and it didn't help that unseasonal very strong rain in certain areas, at the onset of winter, kept farmers from their lands for about a week.
The area between Stanford and Hermanus which had such devastating fires, is recovering well, particularly after the recent rains, and the spring season should be spectacular. Of course, it will take another few years before the items we used to obtain from there will be ready for harvesting.
The Repens flower harvest is proceeding well but we have a major quality problem with cream flowers having many blemishes resulting in them having to be absorption dyed red. Resulting from this there will be a considerable shortage of this item but we expect to have sufficient red flowers. We are very busy as usual for this time of the year sorting, drying and packing to ship out during the months of July and August to catch the European Autumn season.
The rainy and cold weather is also causing considerable difficulties in harvesting and drying the Compacta and Susannae rosette crop resulting in some shipments being delayed by 2 weeks. Any items not shipped by the end of August will unfortunately arrive too late for the European autumn/winter season.
Our market is changing somewhat with more customers requiring poly-bagged items often containing only a few stems for retail sale to garden centres and hobby shops. These orders have stringent packing, labeling and delivery requirements which is quite challenging. The trend is for the products to be placed on the shelves of the wholesaler or retailer without any further handing or costs being incurred.
We are also selling more dried decorative fruit such as orange, grapefruit and lemon slices of which part is being packed into retail packs and the rest mainly in 250 or 500gram bags for the wholesale florist trade.
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