Online Ordering for 6th July – 10th July (Week 27)
We’ve got some lovely produce arriving from Flourish next week. Both their heirloom and cherry tomato boxes always look like real showstoppers, bursting with colour, alongside this, we’ll have in some fragrant boxes of fresh lavender.
Our other top pick next week from Flourish are the Turkish goat horn peppers. They’re perfect if you’d like to try pickling at home, or for a tasty meze style dish, char and blister the skin, sprinkle with flaky sea salt, and serve up with your favourite picky bits and dips.💚
What a scorching week eh, folks,
Yesterday went really smoothly at base, which was very welcome after an intense week both in the warehouse/office and out on the roads. In that time we’ve welcomed two new faces to the team, Danny and young Solomon who will give us some extra muscle in the warehouse and another driver option for deliveries. Both lads seem to have hit the ground running so far- i’ll try and grab them for a photo tmorra to share with you next week : )
After an intense few days in Sheffield last week discussing developing the ‘organic/agroecological horticulture sector growth plan’ as part of the UK Fruit & Vegetable Coalition | Food Foundation at Regather Co-operative Sheffield | Food, Farming & Landscapes , I got to share a few pints with one of our long-standing orderers of veg, the brilliant Gemma from Home – Beanies It was a rare opportunity to shoot the breeze about all things veg and a great night was had. Unfortunately I was too tipsy to be thinking of photos but I did take a few of the trip, which included a hangover busting breakfast at the amazing Home | TONCO BAKERY ONLINE SHOP so have popped those below.
Today i’m away down to the brilliant Groundswell Festival 2026 and will be there for a few days meeting and greeting some of the great and the good of the veg world. I’ve a couple of speaking engagements this year too alongside our pal, Andrew Cowanfrom Bury Council who we work with to supply his schools. In one of the gigs, Sessions 2026, we’ll be flanked by Helen Browning, the CEO of The Soil Association which is pretty amazing, eh! I’ll be sure to take some snaps and I look forward to sharing a pints of cider with as many of you guys as possible at the Ripe | Low-intervention natural cider made in Cornwall, UK stand where i’m likely to be residing after all the talks, seminars and more formal chats are out of the way.
On the veg front, the extremely hot weather has been playing havoc with some crops. As a result, cucumbers are in short supply right across Europe and are therefore also pretty expensive. Closer to home, our Billy Augernik has some dessert gooseberries but he’ll only likely have them for one or two weeks at most for the crazy heat.
Continuing on the fruit side of things, unexpectedly, Carey has some surprise cherries for us this week (woop!) and their plums aren’t far behind now either. On the veg front, Brickyard have some purple caulis available (these were great last year) and Flourish have listed loads of new lines too. These include speciality and heirloom toms, goat horn peppers, rainbow chard and lavender- some pictured above. The rest of the veg updates below as per…
Veg updates:
- Starting in the UK, we’ve some spinach, spring onions and turnips from Newfields, large broccoli from New Farm and french beans and short cucumbers from Roddys.
- Next up, Bedlam has some Swiss chard, Fosketts some green beans and Strawberry Fields some juicing celery.
- Staying in the UK, Haslum has plum tomatoes on the vine and as mentioned above Flourish have plenty of new lines this week so be sure to have a good look through.
- We had the first radishes and salad bags from A G Harvest yesterday and they looked great. For next week you can get mangetout, spring onions and we’ll have a very limited amount of UK grown raspberries from these too – woop!
- From our market gardens, Middle Ground has some rainbow chard and rhubarb and Trinity some french beans and fresh wet garlic.
- And for our Wednesday customers Regather Farm has some broad beans, Moss Valley also has some broads beans as well as some green bats, green onion with tops and mint.
- From Portugal, Vasco has added some beetroot, celery, fennel and padron peppers.
- From Spain, Biovergel has black plums, Ecosur has cucumbers again as well as some plum tomatoes and Thaymin has some black plums and watermelons. Be Organic also have some large 15kg boxes of clems, oranges and lemons.
- From Holland, Zann has beech mushrooms, galia melons, mangoes and canary melons.
- From France, Bio & Bio has some green and black figs as well as some white peaches and our top picks from Dynamis this week are green chillis, bunched white onions, black zebra tomatoes, blackcurrants, golden plums and redcurrants.
- Lastly, we’ve got The Garlic Farm back on the list from this week. Grown on the Isle of Wight, we have both the maddock and rhapsody varieties available.
That’s all from us this week. Hope it’s a top one!
Sean, Mads, Ell, Alph, Cathryn and Team ON x
A few snaps from last week’s trip over to Sheffield with the brilliant UK Fruit & Vegetable Coalition | Food Foundation. We were kindly hosted by Gareth at Regather (I even got to stay with his lovely parents Pete and & Lonnie for a couple of days) and set the veg world to rights over 3 days in 32 degree heat!
I then got to celebrate the completion of our work with our lovely team over a few drinks before meeting up with our pal, Gemma from Beanies and a lovely grower called Matt who grows on the same site as Moss Valley and Sheffield Organic Growers. It was so lovely to meet up with them both and share goss about our different but overlapping veg worlds.
The inevitable hangover was cured at the best bakery in Sheffield, our pals Tonco. This time I got to meet the lovely chef-owners Flo and Joe and they expressed so much love and respect for what we’re trying to do over here in Manchester, I was really moved. Whilst trying and probably failing to graciously accept their kind remarks, I was keen to point out that anything we achieve from our base on the other side of the Peaks is only on the back of the collective loyalty of our large and growing number of customers and suppliers. We owe everything to you all and it’s something we never lose sight of…so from all us, Thank you x