Today has been an exciting and busy day. Guess what, I didn't eat any proper meal until night time! Hah. But anyway today is kind of a day we've been waiting for since March. It's the the grand harvest 2k16 mwahaha. AKA the day where we harvest the flowers for Hari Raya. The biggest harvest of the year, and the biggest one so far! This year we succeeded and the universe seems to conspire with us.
Biggest record of harvest so far. 660 rolls of flowers! Last year was just a horrible 300 plus I think. This year I was a bit worried because the flowers have actually started blooming last week. I was so worried that we won't have flowers for today but nope, the flowers bloom at the right time and they are all huge. Okay there are still a few flaws and there are definitely things we can improve on.
Not sure why but we have a huge excess of yellow flowers this year. Which is weird cause I don't remember planting so much yellow flowers. I suspected it's because... These yellow flowers are supposed to be harvested last week. They're fit for harvest but since on Thursday we didn't harvest any, well, we have an excess amount of flowers today. But I'm pretty sure that they will be sold out.
The whole thing about the agriculture industry is that you can't control what you plant. As I said once, we don't make flowers, we grow them. At the end of the day flowers are living things. We try to control as many conditions as possible to ensure we have a great yield. For example pesticides used, fertilisers, when to plant them and so on. But well living things all have a life and just like us, we don't know how we will grow and what we will encounter along the journey.
Life, at the end of the day, is a mystery.
Just to give an example, for the past two years we didn't have a really successful grand harvest because of the weather. In 2014 the weather was so hot that the flowers bloom much faster. Same with 2015 where we were given 2 months of dry and hot weather, making them bloom faster. This year I was worried because it didn't stop raining since... February? The weather only made a turn like last week. It was so hot and sunny for the whole week last week. It started raining again in this week.
In 2014 we made a mistake because we counted the planting in months and weeks. AKA "16 weeks" before the harvest. In 2015 we realised this mistake and we counted the harvest in days and we've been doing it for CNY harvest too. Last year we even planted the standard flowers first (it's a type here called standard) because they take a longer time to bloom. But guess what, they bloom two weeks before the intended date of harvest! This is a really tricky business eh.
Nevertheless, there's a lot of things we can try to sustain and maintain to make the harvest a success. The rest is really about timing, weather and the plants themselves. This year's harvest is huge definitely. But there are still things we can all improve on and well that's what life is all about isn't it. Getting better every day, week, month, year and if you're a Buddhist, every lifetime.
Well I suppose I can breathe easier now. The whole month of June has been quite intense. Now that the harvest is almost done (we have 2 more days of harvest for the locals!), I can take things easier I guess. Whew, this Ramadhan is indeed a month of trials for me. My faith is tested and I'm glad I pulled through. Hari Raya is here soon and we're going to have a long holiday. Time to wind down for a while and enjoy some things I've been planning to do. I'm kind of excited to spend it at home!
Alright that's all for now. I suppose I'll blog more often since I'll be having so many off days heh. I wish all of you a jubilant month of July ahead! Can you believe half of 2016 is now gone :O
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