Online Ordering for 10th August – 14th August (Week 32)
Our tomato game has never been stronger! 🍅
We’ve had some really impressive UK tomatoes coming through the warehouse over the past couple of weeks, and Awen Organics are the latest to join the line up.
Grown in Pembrokeshire, they’ve some beautiful mixed 3kg heirloom boxes alongside some rainbow cocktail punnets. They’re also bringing us some more leafy greens this week, including perpetual spinach and rainbow chard🌈
Good afternoon folks,
The land’s looking more than a bit parched out there, eh. We’re hearing the same story right across the country- folk are crying out for some rain. It’s certainly not straightforward making a living farming and horticulture these days.
Paul Behrens, a professor in environmental change at the University of Oxford recently said it looked as though this year’s yields would be almost as bad as that of 2020, the worst on record, ever! Harvests in 2024 and 2025 were also among the five worst. “One bad harvest, one warm year, that’s weather,” he said. “But three of the worst harvests in the last five years? That’s climate change.”
As bad as this year’s harvest is proving to be, Behrens warned against seeing it as a “new normal”. “This will not settle down,” he said. “Until we get our carbon emissions down things will continue to get much, much worse.” Really sobering words as I’m sure you’ll agree.
To allay some fears for the short-term at least, we’ve never had more growers on our weekly list and there are a few more still vying to get on there too so for now, we’ve got you guys covered. In more good news, this week sees the return of our much beloved grower, Cheryl from Royal Oak Farm, Lancashire. It’s been a testing 12 months for Cheryl and we’ve doing our best to support her but more on that next week. For now, she’s go the first of her lovely broad beans and as every year, I’m sure they’re gonna be popular with you lot.
Brunswick Food Festival
Last Saturday, Ell, Holl and Nick headed over to York for the food festival at Brunswick Organic Nursery, and what a lovely day it was!
They set up with plenty of fruit and veg tasters, along with lots of refreshing drinks to keep everyone hydrated. Either side of us there was a lucky dip and an olive oil tasting, where our Cal Vall Extra Virgin Olive Oil proved to be a real crowd favourite. 👀 They were also treated to some funky tunes from 10,000 Pairs of Hands, which made for a great atmosphere throughout the day.
Brunswick grow an incredible range of their own organic fruit and veg themselves, alongside topping up with a selection of produce from us in their shop. Nick delivers there every Thursday and is always telling us how friendly the team are, so it was brilliant to finally visit and see it for ourselves.
A huge thank you to everyone at Brunswick for having us! You’ll find some snaps from the day at the bottom of the newsletter.
Weekly veg updates:
- Starting in the UK, as mentioned above Royal Oak is back! It’s great to have Cheryl back on the list, she’s starting small with some 5kg boxes of broad beans.
- Elsewhere, Newfields have bunched red and golden beets as well as some leeks. Bagthorpe have their first bags of yellow onions and alouette spuds available.
- Next up, Caerfai Farm are back on the list with some orla spuds and Fosketts has 20kg bags of washed rainbow carrots.
- Strawberry Fields has some harlequin squash, Turks turban squash and mixed squash.
- Flourish has some mixed aubergines, romanesco courgettes, yellow courgettes, corno di toro peppers and Japanese fushimi peppers.
- Terry Simpson is back this week with leeks, spring onions, coriander and curly parsley.
- From our market gardens, Trinity has added green, striped and yellow courgettes and AG Harvest some perpetual spinach and damsons!
- And for our Wednesday customers, we have some genovese basil from Growing Well and Regather have added some little gem lettuce.
- On the UK fruit front, we have more of the first damsons from Augernik and Oakwood as well as some yellow gage plums from and Carey have added some of their first discovery apples.
- From Portugal, Vasco has some yellow peppers.
- From Spain, Terra Rica are back on the list with some red and yellow peppers. Ecosur is also back on the list with cucumbers, tomatoes and white seedless grapes.
- From Holland, Zann has yellow watermelons, Williams pears, cantaloupe melons and some kiwi berries (always a fave).
- From France, Uni-Vert has some Akane apples, danlas grapes, muscat grapes, Williams pears and red Stanley plums and Bio & Bio has some black figs, emek pomegranates and red globe grapes.
- And our top picks out from Dynamis are corne des Andes tomatoes, rose de Berne tomatoes, golden apples, chasselas pink grapes and Mirabelle plums.
I’ll sign off this week to a link to a new podcast series that our mate, Liv from the Soil Association has started in conjunction with the Organic Grower’s Alliance. It’s a great first episode and we even get a mention from the lovely Bee Laughton from the Landworker’s Alliance for our work on the government’s new Horticulture Sector Growth Plan- enjoy! : )
https://youtu.be/-tmztwnu6O0?si=Awh7UeW_T0IefqfQ
know any rain dances?
Sean, Mads, Alph, Ella and team ON xx
A few snaps from our day out at the Brunswick Food Festival! 🌿☀️
If you’re ever over York way, we’d definitely recommend paying these guys a visit. Tucked away just outside the city, not too far from the racecourse, it’s a little haven.
They grow an amazing range of their own fruit and veg, with a top up supply from us in the shop. They’ve also got a fantastic plant nursery, a lovely café serving plenty of delicious treats, and one of the most welcoming teams you could hope to meet 🤗
A big thank you to everyone at Brunswick for having us – we had such a lovely day!