Lemonaid 💛🍋

This week we’re welcoming another fantastic drinks supplier to the list – Lemonaid!

These guys make honest soft drinks with no additives or artificial flavours. Every bottle is made using organic ingredients and is Fairtrade-certified too. We got to try the range a couple of weeks back and every flavour was delicious, so we just had to get them on the list.

Good morning Organic Northerners!

While we’ve been making the most of the recent sunshine, it’s been nice to see a little rain grace the land this week. As much as we enjoy the warmer weather, I’m sure the fields and crops are enjoying a welcome break.

Cathryn and Sean have left us to hold down the fort for a few days and are jetting off today on a well deserved venture around Vis, Croatia. That means you’ve got me (Ell) on newsletter duties this week.

As mentioned above, we’ve welcomed another fantastic drinks supplier to our ever growing list, so here’s a little more about them.

From humble beginnings in Hamburg’s St. Pauli district, Lemonaid has grown into a drinks company with a mission. Since 2010, they have donated 5p from every bottle sold to the Lemonaid & ChariTea Foundation, helping to fund social projects in the regions where their ingredients are sourced. To date, the foundation has raised more than €12 million for projects across the Global South.

From supporting education and creating employment opportunities to empowering women and young people, the foundation works alongside local organisations to help communities strengthen their livelihoods sustainably and independently. A company making delicious drinks while giving something back? That’s something we can definitely get behind.

Before we move on to this week’s fruit and veg updates, I wanted to link you up to an article about the challenges facing British farming, both now and in the not so distant future. While it paints a fairly sobering picture of what may be to come, it also highlights why the work we’re doing matters and why we need to keep pushing to create a resilient, sustainable and future-proof food system.

If you’ve got a couple of minutes to spare today, it’s well worth a read: https://observer.co.uk/news/opinion-and-ideas/article/british-farming-has-a-choice-bounce-back-or-bounce-forward

The all important veg updates:

• Starting in the UK, Newfields has green and red Batavia lettuce, Bedlam have the start of their tenderstem broccoli and Strawberry Fields has broad beans and purple kohl rabi with tops.

• Elsewhere, we see the return of Pollybell and they’ve got some broccoli for us to go at. Home Farm also has some true spinach available.

• As you’ll see at the bottom of the newsletter, Flourish are back on the list and they have lots of lovely stuff for us including Persian Thumbelina cucumbers, yellow courgettes, frothy wave lettuce, deep purple basil, flowering holy basil and also a variety of shiso and edible flowers.

• From our market gardens, Trinity has some fig leaves and lemon verbena, Kindling some fresh garlic and broad beans and for our Wednesday customers Moss Valley has some spring onions, coriander and Dill.

• From Portugal, Vasco has some pointed cabbages, fennel, raspberries and strawberries.

• From Spain, Bioalgarrobo has some pointy red peps, Campo some celery and Ecosur some cucumbers and galia melons.

• From Holland, Fairtrasa has some cripps pink apples and Zann some red peppers, yellow peppers, mixed colour honey drop tomatoes and rhubarb.

• Our top picks from Dynamis this week are the mini snack cucumbers, white daikon radish, sweetcorn, mixed heirloom tomatoes, apricots and yellow peaches.

• And to line your pantry’s, Oakwood have some Goldrush apple juice for us and Loving Foods have their cortido sauerkraut available again.

Lastly, before we sign off, we wanted to give a shout out to one of our wonderful customers, Annie’s in Totnes, who have been giving a little back to their community during this cost of living crisis. They’ve been surprising local people by dropping veg boxes straight to their doors as a little gift from them, and we think it’s absolutely mint.

Here’s a link to one of their Instagram posts – go show em some love. We could all do with a bit more of it, eh? https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZFEahVgYiF/?igsh=MWhyZ2U2Z3RpMWFpMQ==

Back to regular scheduled programming next week,
Ell, Mads, Alph and Team ON x

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