I’m glad to be heading back down to Oxford tmorra for the Real Farming Conference. Last year our pals Kiloran and Hannah from Sustain invited us to rattle on about how as a company, we’re trying to help make organic food more accessible to folk.

This year they’ve kindly invited us back to help run a workshop on Friday morningabout the challenges involved in getting organic food into schools and the like. If any of you guys happen to be down there and fancy a natter, it would be great to meet you down there. Around the conference, if I’m not in St Aldates Tavern I’ll likely be in The Plough decompressing with medicinal hot toddy in hand.

Happy New Year, organic pals!

I hope you’ve all managed to enjoy some time to yourselves, swerved the dreaded festive lurgy and are raring once again,to put your shoulders to the organic wheel 💪🏼

As for things this end, I was really glad to see our us grow well last year – as we have consistently for the last 15 no less – get us! 🥳🤭 For the potential that I see our wee company harbouring though, it still doesn’t feel like we’re out of first gear yet. We’re well-staffed on the veg-flinging front just now, but internally, the jobs list remains enormous and to tradition, we’ve never enough hands to make sure that the load is whizzed through quickly enough.

It’s deffo slowly getting better though and there’s a multitude of meaty projects for us to be working at this year. Our running aims are to improve the service we provide to you guys, make our jobs lumping the veg about this end better and hopefully have more of a social impact as a company too. I’ll be sure to fill yous all in, as and when, we’re able to make the breakthroughs.

Fruit & veg updates:

• Starting in the UK, Royal Oak are back for the new year with a full listing, they’ve got beets in all colours, loadsa cabbages, carrots dirty and washed, celeriac, kale, leeks, parsnips, swedes, spuddies and sprouts the list goes on.. so be sure to have a good peruse of all your staples.

• Elsewhere, we’ve got some casablanca sprouts from Chapel, red cabbages from Pollybell and Lynher makes their return too with kale, baby leeks, parsnips, spuds and spring greens.

• Great news for all you squash lovers, Strawberry Fields are running a reduced price on theirs at the moment to make sure they all get shifted so stock up while you can.

• Lastly on the UK veg we’ve got all the usual suspects from Farringtons including hiba, valor and valor bakers spuds as well as some extra caulis coming in from Riviera.

• On the UK fruit front, Oakwood has some lovely apples for us next week.
  • Ashmeads Kernal – a highly esteemed old English dessert apple known for its intensely aromatic, complex flavor profile that blends sweet, sharp, and unique “pear drop” or citrus notes.
  • Spartans and Winter Gems – both well balanced varieties – tart/sweet and juicy. The latter is similar to a cox orange – one of our all time best selling apple varieties

• From Spain and Portugal, Bioalgarrobo has some flat beans, Ecosur some small cucumbers and Vasco some kiwis and mandarins.

• From Italy, JWE has some herbs for us to go at including coriander, dill, sage and thyme.

• From Holland, Zann has some gala apples, Moro oranges and mollar pomegranates.

• From France, Bio & Bio have some mandarins with leaf for us to go at, Uni-Vert has some flat parsley and our top picks from Dynamis are blood tarocco oranges, lemons with leaf, chantecler apples, pilot apples and radicchio.

• And to line your pantry’s, we’ve some spelt conchiglie from Pastifico and loose leaf green tea from Nemi.

That’s about it from me this week but I hope for a healthy and prosperous New Year for all of you.
Sean, Mads, Alph, Cathryn, Ell and Team ON x

Scottish miso, slowly made 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Slow Sauce is a fermentation project that began rooted in tradition, adapted to place. They make small-batch miso and shoyu using Scottish-grown gluten free oats and British peas, aged in oak barrels in the hills of Aberdeenshire.

Founded by fermentation obsessives Robin Sherriff and Jonathan Hope, Slow Sauce is part kitchen experiment, part agricultural rethink. They take the classic Japanese method of koji fermentation and reimagine it with the ingredients that we have here – creating something new that’s still deeply respectful of where it came from.

It’s miso, but not as you know it. It’s sweet, savoury, punchy stuff. Slather it on toast. Stir it through porridge. Sip it hot in the morning. Dress your salad. Glaze your veg.

They ferment slowly, seasonally, and seriously. No short-cuts. No imported soy. Just well-grown ingredients, wild weather, barrels, time, and care.

If you have any problems, please ensure you are logged in and click this button again.