As with most things, what we experience when we receive a finished product or what we see in simply looking at something on the surface rarely shows what happens behind the scenes. The work, the moving parts and the zillions of steps that it often takes to get things done in order to arrive at a desired result are not necessarily immediately obvious.
Take sculpting for instance…At the beginning, the statue David was a block of nothingness; a chunk of earth. No shape, no hint, no form or template, no instructions marked out in dotted lines…this means that the sculptor had to know what was going to be, as Michelangelo (Renaissance artist and final creator of David) did; claiming that “freeing the human form hidden inside the block” was his job. From the roughing out, the refining and the final stages, the steps and the painstaking work are exhaustingly phenomenal in results of the finished product.
With this in mind (although we had nothing to do with the integral design of these – they are just one of nature’s masterpieces), we thought it would be fun to go behind the scenes of what it takes to get the gorgeous roses pictured below looking like they do and staying this beautiful for a long time.
Allen:
“Flowers are cut with the stems left long and soaked in buckets of water for about 2-3 days. When they are ready to go into the freeze dryer we cut most of the stem off, leaving about one inch.
The machine is prepped by setting the machine’s temperature to -80 degrees Fahrenheit. Once that temperature has been achieved, the buds are placed evenly on racks and put into the machine.
Click here for a very scientific explanation of the freeze drying process.
After the vacuum starts its job of removing moisture, the temperature is increased a little each day for about three weeks. The machine has to be defrosted every few days as the ice builds up from the moisture that is being taken out of the roses.
After about three weeks when there is no more ice build up the roses are ready to be taken out.
The trays are then removed and the roses are put into airtight containers to store until we need to use them.”
Maybe now when you receive a wreath with stunning, freeze dried roses nestled in fresh leaves, you’ll know a little bit of what happens behind the scenes here at Creekside Farms and a few of the steps it took to have them there, sitting pretty and frozen in time.
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