Saturday, February 2, 2008
Full of optimism from the day before, although quite tired from lack of a full night's sleep, I drive north again to see how the farms are doing in Cayemve and Tabacundo. Today the farms are preparing the first Valentines' shipments that will fly from Ecuador on Sunday, and thence go by truck to Los Angeles, in 
time for sale for the weekend.
time for sale for the weekend. As I drop down into the deep gorge that separates Quito from the altiplano where the rose cultivation is done, the sun bursts through the clouds, and looking across the valley I can see the landscape defined in a chiaroscuro that is distinct to this part of the world. Certainly, the sun puts as mile omn my face becuase it really is needed to complete the harvest for Valentine's Day.
The first farm that I visit is Denmar, who have reliably supplied Mayesh for nigh on twelve years, week in and week out. At Valetine's Day they have debveloped a reputation in our company of always being tardy and disorganized, which understandably puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on the holiday.
So I was quite delighted to walk into a new and improved Denmar, with a revamped color scheme, logo and an altogether much more relaxed and functional attitude. The management has divided the three main functions, that of hybrid tea roses, spray roses and bouquets into three separate buildings, thus bringing calm and order to each unit. In years past all operations were done in one building, and the ensuing dodging and darting of bodies trying to execute their tasks made a rugby scrum look like a completed Rubrik's cube!
Lina Restrepo, the manager of Denmar gave me the dime tour, and the calm and professional attitude was striking. Even with the trying weather conditions, Lina had the roses ready for timely delivery to the airport. She was quite glad to see the sun, and even though it was partly cloudy, the resulting dry warm day is great for production.Another interestuing feature that she has introduced is a grading system that accounts for head size relative to stem length and proportionality of the stem thickness, so that roses which are long, say 70 or 80cm do not get graded as such if the heads are small and/or the stems are weak.
In the last two pictures you can see the scale that is used, again in the resplendent, alomost Miami Dolphin color scheme.
It is this continual pursuit to improve sustems and quality that really distinguishes the good farms from the rest, and the strides being made at Denmar are truly encouraging.
So far, so good! Time to move on to the other farms.
Today was another long day visiting plantations, reviewing cutting points, re-confirming for the fifth or sixth time if the flowers would be on time, and receiving assurances in the affirmative.
Growers indicated a few shortages, mostly of special order colors, but all in all it was a really positive day.
# posted by Mayesh International @ 4:40 PM 
