Shakespeare

Dear readers,

I wandered Lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and Hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd.

A host, of golden Daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and Dancing in the breeze.

You’re right, these words were not written by Shakespeare: it was William Wordsworth who had a love for Daffodils. Shakespeare is just the name of the onion that has been planted around our Fluwel warehouse in enormous quantities. That was noticeable, I can tell you that much.

What a smell. You have to imagine: Around our Fluwel warehouse, there were 11 hectares of land available, and this year, they were completely full of these darling onions… every hectare has about 26.000.000 of them. Sven proudly told me that in total, he had over 50 hectares of them, and they were starting to get really good at growing them at this scale.

Sowing these onions requires some practice, as you have to be very precise. They can’t be too close to one another, they don’t want to be too deep but too shallow causes problems too, and if it rains too much, they are usually not very happy either. Sven also told me about their assortment, which was a project in and of itself. The aforementioned Shakespeare does really well here in North Holland, but if you were to plant Stuttgart here, you may be disappointed. That one is usually planted more towards the east, closer to Germany.

I’ll clarify what I mean by onions: we are talking about those small onions you buy at a gardening centre to plant in your own garden in order to grow them out to proper onions. Those small ones are grown here, and then distributed all over the world to be nurtured and raised into big onions at their final destination. If you have some experience with them, you may be familiar with Stuttgarter and Sturon, but there are dozens of varieties. And Sven is a true onion-professor who knows a lot about them all.

Dream Team plantuitjes

Back to our onion-surrounded warehouse. I went over there to see the Dream Team, and they were also wondering where that smell was coming from. We went outside to look at the harvesting of the onions with tears in our eyes… maybe not because it was such a beautiful sight.

Dream Team plantuitjes

As Sven has told us that one hectare contains about 26 million onions, we can calculate that we are surrounded by about 286 million of them. And if the wind comes from the right (or wrong) direction, you can enjoy the smell of all of those onions all at ones. At some point, it feels like you can literally taste the air. But it was short lived: within a day, all of them had been miraculously collected from the land and had been taken away to be processed.

Freesia Field

Another story that is exactly the same but completely different is this field of Fresia. Because of the warm weather of the past couple of weeks, we could enjoy a phenomenal scent for days. It was wonderful to see, every time I passed the field, drivers and cyclists had literally stopped to smell the Fresias.

Karel Hefstruck During all of this, we are also busy at Fluwel, the warehouse and the office are in their busiest times. Everyone is working on big orders from not only everyone who ordered at the web site, but also some large American customers who sell the Dutch flowers in the United States. Everything seems to fly by, but that is what this time of year always seems to feel like.

Fluwel Schuur inpakken

This counting machine is making great hours, filling an endless number of bags to go all over the world.

Pracht and Guus

Pracht and Roos have the best job in my opinion. They are in charge of the Fluwel Special Narcissus and QDaff. No machines, just small varieties that have sold just a handful of bulbs to the real enthusiasts among us.

Fluwel Schuur lekkernijen

The most important part of any work table, the snack basket.

Fluwel schuur Lian

Many people forget that the flower bulb industry also comes with an enormous amount of paperwork. Lian is happy today, because she just got a stamp of approval from the national flower bulb inspection services. That means that the bulbs have been deemed safe for transport to other continents.

I’ll have to get back as well. I know the Dream Team does perfectly well without me, but I can’t let them finish those snacks on their own. I’ll see you again next week!

And as a last note: it’s Friday as I am writing this, which means we will go out for lunch to Land van Fluwel with everyone working. I’ll include the menu in case you are ever in the neighbourhood, this is the perfect place for a lunch break :)

Kind regards,

Carlos van der Veek

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