Online Ordering for 29th June – 3rd July (Week 26)
AG Harvest 🤩
Pictured above, some absolutely gleaming Red Radishes and Salad that we can’t wait to have a nosy at in the warehouse next week. We love working with small scale growers, and adding another to the list is always a positive for us!
Anyone got a spare fan?!
Not the easiest week to be as busy as very busy bees but that we are, and complain we won’t. The temps are of course worryingly high for many reasons but we’re continuing to welcome new customers and forge new relationships with growers at a pace and despite the dripping brows, that’s been really encouraging.
Before I fill you in about a few of these and some more new and returning growers and products, you’ll notice a warning message that you have to click before ordering this week, particularly aimed at all you guys who receive orders via pallet delivery companies. The temps being so high, please consider the more expensive chilled pallet option if you are after ordering more delicate items like spinach, strawberries and broccoli etc as these won’t fare well at all in high ambient temps overnight.
So back to the good news. A new box scheme in North Wales, a buyer’s coop in Huddersfield, a new grocer in Cheshire, a long-established community food initiative in Edinburgh, a farm shop in the Scottish Borders and our first ever Manchester primary school will all be receiving their first orders from us this week. We’re absolutely thrilled to make all of these new connections to such impressive enterprises/institutions and as a result, it’s enabling us to entertain working with more growers and suppliers.
The veg through from one of our newest Welsh growers, namely Awen Organics, yesterday looked really impressive. You’d be seeing their chards and turnips at the top of the list list week but we were too busy to pause yesterday and our usual in-house photographer, Ell is currently sunning herself on her jollies. Instead you’ve a couple of pics that have been sent through from our newest grower, Alice Griggs (‘AG Harvest’) who as the sun comes up, will be hand-delivering her first ever radishes and salad bags into us on Monday that have been grown near St Helen’s. Though very young, Alice has bags of growing experience under her belt and we were thrilled that she approached us with her mum last year to become a grower for us. This first week she only has 15 boxes of radish and 15 boxes of salad bags available. Let’s get behind Alice and support her by selling out everything she has this first week!
Behind the scenes, we’re holding conversations with more growers still to make sure that we’ve both an increasing amount of choice and a fulsome supply available to all you guys. More about those as and when we’ve made some more progress with them.
This week sees some growers return to the list too. We’ve Roddy’s Organics back with a very healthy offering of kale, courgettes, spinach, psb, cucumbers and spuds, Bagthorpe back with some of their first carrots of the season and Strawberry Fields also has some celery now too that’s looking tip top.
On the pantry items side of things that accounts for about 15% of what we sell each week these days, we’ve also some new lines for you. Catering blocks of cheese have been added from Calon Wen (listed by request from the school caterer that we now supply but obvs available to everyone), Pimhill have made some new granolas available to us and our Mads has just informed us that we’ll also be listing our Vinca wines in 1 Litre recyclable aluminium bottles.
Right, i’m halfway across The Peak District on me scooter in Monsal Dale (pictured below) so i’ll leave it to my colleague, Alphin to fill yous in on the rest of this week’s updates. I’m to Sheff for a few days, staying at one of customer’s (Regather) parent’s house for a couple of nights for the annual get together of UK Fruit & Vegetable Coalition | Food Foundation that’s also being kindly hosted at Regather too. We’re in the middle of some very important work potentially just now with Defra on their Horticulture Sector Growth Plan…in 38 degree heat it promises to be a fairly intense few days!
Veg updates:
- Starting in the UK. As mentioned above Roddy’s are back! they have some PSB, Cucs, Courgette’s, plenty Greens and some Spuds.
- Strawberry Fields have some Celery.
- Awen have extended their offering, adding some: Agretti, Mixed Climbing Beans, Beetroot and some Charlotte New Potato, amongst other bits.
- Flourish have added a range of Cucumbers and Courgettes.
- From Middle ground, we have some Celery and Chard.
- From Spain. Bioalgarrobo have started with their Cucumbers.
- Haciendas have the first of the Spanish Seedless White Grapes.
- Finally, the Dynamis picks of the day are: Red Borlotti Beans, Tomato Rose de Bernr and Dauphine Figs.
Signing off tday with a link to a Rick Stein show that I had on in the background this morning, which features one of our long-standing customers, the brill Soul Farm in Cornwall- enjoy!
Rick Stein’s Cornwall – Series 3: Episode 7 – BBC iPlayer
Sean, Mads, Alph, Cathryn and Team ON x
Pictured above are our new 1 litre aluminium bottles of wine from Vinca. These bottles are said to be the first fully recycled and infinitely recyclable wine bottles on the market in the UK no less.