Thursday, June 11, 2009

Floriculture













I thought I would do a light hearted post about the place I work in NZ:

How I started work here:

I want to share a little tesimony of God working in my life regarding this job. About several years ago I was wondering what I should do with my life? Where did God want me to go? What did He want me to do?
As I thought about it and talked with my parents we decided to pray. My mother prayed that God would bring along a christian man who was willing to teach me his trade. A few weeks later a friend who had been working there wondered if I wanted a job working for his brother! (I said nothing of this prayer to him, nor did I know really what his brother did) His brother was a christian and was offering an apprenticeship which I took up at a later stage. Praise God for His guidence! He is so faithful.

I am currenty doing an apprenticeship in Horticulture-Floriculture. My boss and I run the place together with the goal of training me to be manager one day. We are both Christians which is a huge blessing!

We grow standard cymbidium orchids...a beautiful flower. We have approximately 4,500 square meters of sheds and approximately over 30 different varieties or cultivars. Our colours range from pinks, whites, yellows and greens.
Flower season is just starting really...we are exporting 10 boxes of flowers a week at the moment (90 flowers). Once we really get our busiest we will be doing hundreds of boxes of flowers in a week. We export mainly to Japan, Europe and America. If you buy a cymbidium orchid it may be by a small chance one of ours :)

We do this starting in autumn through to the beginning of summer. Then the work changes and we get to pick up a hammer and nails and work on the sheds. We also split big plants to get more!
Boy, it gets hot during summer in those hot houses...up to 43 degrees and humid (we have misters cooling the place down).

The blessing in this job is I can spend a few hours a day listening to mp3's of commentaries on the Bible while I work :) Or listening to music...or even spending time in prayer with God... as long as it doesn't interfere with my work! LOL.

The car up the top by our packhouse is my Nissan Skyline...one of my fav types of car...6 cylinder, rear wheel drive, 2.5L with 190hp+. It is by no means the expencive version of race car they can be, but it is still quick. The skyline "godzilla" is the race version.
I recently did a manual conversion in it and put an after market pod filter on it... it is fun fiddling around.

2 comments:

  1. Dan,

    You have an insanely cool job; I'm quite jealous.

    I'm a civil engineer, so I'm stuck in an office 90% of the time. I always look forward to getting out on site though...

    I actually did some planting for the first time in years last weekend - some herbs, spinach, sunflowers, poppies and some climbing plants to go up the patio fence. The spinach has started to germinate but I think I drowned the rest1 We'll see...

    Regards,

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  2. Yeah I'm blessed! Give God the glory.

    When I was younger I hated the thought of working outside...I wanted an office job. My tastes have changed.
    Though I like thinking :) hence my blog.

    If you look at the post again I have put my testimony as to how I got there in italics.

    cheers,

    DB

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