Emma's Confetti Harvest

Hi everyone! I'm Emma and during the summer I'm one of the Shropshire Petals Field Supervisors. Today I'm taking over the SP blog to tell you all about how your beautiful natural confetti is harvested by hand here on the farm.

All of our petals are carefully harvested by hand by a fantastic team of workers who pick the best flowers available. The whole field team also gets to experience Shropshire Petals outside of the field, so everyone understands just how important perfect confetti is. Ioana, who is the second harvest supervisor (and picking expert may I add!) even had our Summer Nights mix at her own wedding in Romania earlier this year.

How our harvest gets started

After a few reluctant bursts of English sunshine we kicked off the flower harvest in late June, starting with our Honey'B and Ginger Snap calendula petals. We then got to move on to our cornflowers (including Blue Bird and Black Tie) and delphiniums (Icing Sugar, Frosted Blue, Candy Floss and Raspberry Fool to name a few) as they all came into bloom over the following weeks and months. You can see just how bright and vibrant the calendula was when it was picked.

A typical day in the field

A typical harvest morning starts with a bright and early 6am start in the field where the whole team gets straight into full swing until normally 3pm or 4pm in the afternoon.

The field team is split into smaller teams of typically six people, this enables more of our beautiful petals to be picked efficiently whilst keeping everyone happy and motivated.

Our petals are picked come rain or shine, so unfortunately we've also had to deal with some predictable English rainy days which have made the long hours in the field a little harder. We have however been really lucky to have some lovely weather and stunning morning sunrises, whilst being surrounded by truly beautiful flowers (if we may say so ourselves) and glorious wildlife.

There are two harvest supervisors in the field (myself being one of them - yay!) and it is our job to make sure every member of the field team is happy and picking the best petals for your confetti. As you can see in the picture below I'm busy checking the crates of freshly picked flowers for consistency and quality (too busy to notice Ashley snapping away with her camera).

As field supervisor, I've also had chance to be hands on and pick some of the flowers myself which I've really enjoyed. It has really helped me understand all the hours of work and the process behind getting confetti from our field to your wedding.

Shropshire Petals is always trialling new flowers and looking for new colours to bring to your confetti mixes. A favourite of mine this year has been our new petal Burgundy Berry, one of our cornflowers which as you can see from my photo below the bees seem to quite like too!

Back to the shed until next year…

The harvest certainly has been hard work for everyone involved, but the beautiful natural petal confetti we have to show for it has definitely been worth it!

The flower harvest is all wrapped up for 2016, which means all the pretty petals are now being carefully stored ready for weddings in the upcoming months. It also means I will be back in the Petal Shed, speaking to our lovely brides to be on the phone, look forward to speaking to you soon!

Lots of love,

Emma, the field team and the SP girls in the Shed x