Nose full of dust

It took us eight days and 14 hands to struggle through the Daffodils . Of more than a good thousand varieties, including seedlings, we had to count out the sold bulbs, break the mother bulbs (remove the chips) and bag the planting material.

Here are three nut balls from which we have broken off the chips. The chips will grow into beautiful round balls or double noses next year, the main balls will grow into nut balls again.

Extra dusty this year, because we didn't manage to get the bulbs from the land in reasonably dry weather. If the bulbs come from the land damp, more sand always sticks to them. You can safely dry the bulbs well in the shed and remove the sand in the mesh box, but that does cause a lot of dust. Of course, most of that dust ends up in the 14 nostrils of the seven Narcissus specialists who are there pooping. The air is getting clean again.


Karel hands out a box of daffodils.

The job is done, we can start the next job; packing the sold bulbs. All the Daffodils from my garden are sold in the Candy Store in Europe and via Qdaffs in America. The majority of the Fluwel Daffodils that are still available in the Fluwel webshop are grown for us by Jan Hein, they are counted and packed by machine. I have to mention here that you can no longer order from the Candy Store page on the Fluwel website and the Qdaffs site. The moment we start selecting the Daffodils we will stop selling. They will be available again from the beginning of January. The Fluwel Daffodils assortment is of course still available: you will also find almost 100 different varieties there.

A large and a small daffodil

All that fiddling for Candy and Qdaffs has to be done by hand. We have sold about 5000 bags in all shapes and sizes, or I should actually say: you bought from us. Sticker on the porridge bag, bulbs in, put in alphabetical order, order forms and order. What a nice job, that makes you happy, doesn't it? What is a 'porridge bag' I hear many of you thinking now, is that a bag to put porridge in? Everyone in the bulb world knows what a porridge bag is, the porridge bag is a concept, you really should know that. If you don't know, I'm really not going to tell you, you can order bulbs next year in the Candy Store or at Qdaffs, then you can see. I can give you a little hint; the porridge bag is made of paper.


Floor Manager Pracht

The real reason for the incredibly fast processing is entirely due to the incredibly good helping hands. Without shortchanging anyone, I will introduce a few to you. The very best is of course our 'floor manager' Pracht. She sits chatting all day and has an eye on everything; writing cards, throwing up balls, driving away piles, asking pointless questions, in short, a jack of all trades. And the good news; the speed of her hands is almost faster than the speed of her mouth.


Bregt can talk and knit at the same time, Pracht listens.

And then Bregt, of course 'Bregt meesterknecht'. Nobody, absolutely nobody, is better than Bregt. If we didn't have Bregt, we would still be sniffing dust. All day long, fat Daffodils fly through her slender fingers, what speed.

Karel and Arthur spend a good 10 hours a day selecting daffodils.

What was also new for me this year, is that son Karel helped day and night. Karel arranges everything; harvesting bulbs, picking up bulbs, getting bulbs from the land, you name it, Karel arranges it. And, I can easily run away to write a news blog, be late in the morning when I take too long to empty the mailbox again or have a quiet chat with a bulb grower friend who comes to deliver bulbs. Believe it or not, Karel also wants to get into bulbs in the future, just like me. He likes what we are doing and wants to do it later too. First, he will go to Groningen for a few years to learn something about business economics or something. No idea why he is going there to learn something that I think he already knows: if you work hard and spend less than you earn, you will have something left. But anyway, Karel is going to Groningen for four or five years to learn something he knows, so he probably has plenty of time to enjoy student life to the fullest.

The list of bulbs sold and the notebook in which we write down the number of each type that will be planted again.

Now that I'm talking about colleagues, it occurs to me that I could also write a news blog about my brothers next week or so. I could never have built that entire Fluwel store that is there now on my own, my brothers certainly contributed just as much, maybe even more. (Funny by the way, 1 brother - 2 brothers, 1 farmer - 2 farmers) Yes, I'm going to write a news blog about my brothers sometime, it's going to be funny.


Tutti Tulpi Romantico in the Velvet Garden at Keukenhof

Time to stop, I'm going back into the shed, just to see if everything is going well. Nonsense, of course everything is fine, Karel is here, I can easily continue chatting for a while. By the way, if you are ever in the vicinity of Burgerbrug, there is also a nice assortment of flower bulbs available at Land van Fluwel www.landvanfluwel.nl or at the bulb shop diagonally across from the shed at brother Sigge's house. The assortment is not as large as in the Fluwel web shop but certainly interesting to browse. The best offer this summer is a large bag of fat Daffodils for € 5, -, leftovers from my herb garden. Beautiful bag with really many different special varieties.


Floor manager Pracht in the lead with Master Servant Bregt on her wheel while making the Tutti Tulpi.

Also fun to mention is that this week we also walked the popular Tulip mixtures Tutti Tulpi and Tutti Tulpi Romantico . Mixtures of 50 bulbs of which each bulb is a different type. A delicious ratatouille of Tulips , party in the garden.

Now I'm really going to stop, thanks for reading.

Kind regards,
Carlos van der Veek