It's a Farm! (Part 2)

It’s Farm! (Part 2)

Today, we dive into the warehouse. The cold dark place where your flowers go after they get picked. It can be pretty disorienting to wander into the labyrinth of boxes, conveyor belts, grading lines and coolers. So if you start to feel woozy, just look for a clearly marked exit.

The flowers come into the grading line first. Here our staff decides what is a grade one, what is a grade two and so one. This determination is based on the amount of buds on the stem, the length of the stem and the over all condition of the flower.  When the line is running, you hear music blasting and the energy level is really high. Greenery is flying in the air, teams are working to be the most efficient and some dance moves are getting shown off.  The stems go down the conveyor belt being trimmed, bundled, and put in sleeves. 



When you step into the room, you notice a serious chill in the air. From the time the flowers come into the grading line, they are in a refrigerated atmosphere until they reach their final destination. This is called the “Cold Chain” and Sun Valley has the best cold chain system in the industry. The cold air is the way we control the production of ethylene. Ethylene is the enemy of the flower industry. It serves as a hormone in plants, and is present in any part of the plant which is showing color or damaged. As flower growers we want to keep the buds closed as long as possible, unfortunately, ethylene leads to the opening of the buds. Keeping the flowers cold ensures the flowers arrive fresh and open up beautifully when they reach the consumer. Ironically, in the fruit industry, ethylene is used to quickly ripen fruit for market. To learn more about the effect of ethylene on flowers, check out this informative post from the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture.

Sun Valley keeps an enormous amount of space refrigerated, and all but the most hardy team members are wearing sweatshirts, coats and hats all day long. The flowers are graded, bundled into the appropriate sleeves and replaced in water filled buckets. Then they now get "mapped."  The hard working folks in "The Cube" know where every stem in the warehouse is located.  It is impressive to walk up and say, "Hi, I need a 10 stem bunch of G-1 Freesia", and without even looking up Vicki and her crew will say, "Cooler 14, on the left, half way down, on the bottom."


Steve and Vicki in "The Cube" (Steve has thick skin...it's cold!)

Once the different varieties are mapped, orders get filled.  Here our great crew of team members package up flowers for ground transportation or air transportation...and of course it has to stay cold the entire time. 


Lilies and Irises get packaged very differently.

 The orders are boxed up on another production line, then sent into an even colder room.  This is the shipping dock.  From here, boxes of flowers are put onto refrigerated trucks for their journey to metropolitan areas all over the country or loaded into insulated boxes and prepared for the FedEx plane.

On the left "Wet Packs," on the right "Dry Packs." 

Arcata, California is a pretty chilly place.  The year round average temperature is about 61 degrees, it never gets above 80...ever.  However, after working in the warehouse for an hour or so, stepping outside into a chilly 53 degree day is quite nice.

It is ironic to me that flowers which seem to love the warmth of the sun, and constantly reach to the skies are so susceptible to warm temperatures.  The idealised vision of a flower farm, with warm sun shining as flowers are harvested from the field, is pretty far from reality.  We work really hard to guard our blooms from the sun, and handle them in the cold, so the end user can enjoy the flowers in the warm of their home.   

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-Lily

“The earth laughs in flowers.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson