Company Statement on Palm Supply Responsibilities
Holy Week is the most important week in the annual year of the Christian Church culminating with the death and resurrection of Christ. Palm Sunday plays an important part as the beginning of Holy Week to commemorate the procession honoring Christ the King with palm branches.
As a Church supply company it is important to understand the use of this product and the opportunity to provide palm in a responsible manner. This is a small niche/one time use product. It also happens to be an agricultural product subject to farming protocol. For many years we have taken on this challenge of processing and distributing this product. We work at controlling this process from the “field of growth”, to the “flock of people”.
Since the timing of Palm Sunday can vary by up to a month, this can present challenges to the distribution process. The source of palm is from the southern gulf coast of Mexico, the everglades of Florida, and the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. The source of palm strips is the Sable Palm Tree. The annual trimming of these trees facilitates future new growth and provides the source of the “head palm”. Since this is not a commodity product, it provides a good seasonal job sourcing the head palm. After cutting, the head palm is bundled and placed under climate control storage. Once we receive the head palm it is further trimmed and made ready for the “stripping process”. Stripping the palm is subcontracted to local churches as a fundraising project for the church community. The 4-5 week process of stripping has provided much needed equipment, funds for building projects, and supplement travel monies to attend World Youth Day festivities.
Once the palm is stripped, it is placed in plastic bags and kept under cold storage to preserve the vegetation until shipping. Since final shipping can’t be accomplished under cold storage, each order is shipped knowing the normal days in transit. We try and minimize the amount of time out of a controlled environment. The palm strips come with instructions on maintaining the beauty and integrity of the palm until it is ready for Palm Sunday Services.
We hope our palm strips and decorative appointments enhance the liturgical celebrations of Palm Sunday.