A few good things landing next week 🤗

First up, some autumnal treats from Billy Auger – 5kg bags of cobnuts are available again, husked or dehusked, plus the first of the lovely wet walnuts.

From a little further afield, we’ve got some bright pink Spanish dragon fruit from Campo, in four different sizes. Big, little, and everything in between.

Then there’s some lush January King cabbages from Newfields and bags of curly green kale from Chapel.

Good afternoon, you lovely lot,

The trees are still a deep green and it’s 20 degrees up north…it really doesn’t feel like we’re about to head into October. However, despite the second summer we’re having, the veg coming off our market gardens is deffo thinning out and domestically, you’ll see a fairly quick switch from salad lines to roots and brassicas on our list.

As you know, we source from all over the UK and many of our growers run farmshops, box schemes and farm shares. As the winds cool and the hours of daylight shorten, we switch from buying lots from these growers to selling lots to them. We treasure these symbiotic relationships that have taken decades to develop and they are the backbone to a lot of what we’re able to achieve our end.

To list a few things updates about things that are happening over the next couple of weeks:

• Our Cathyrn has been busy getting our finances in order of late. Most of you guys pay weekly and on time but for those that have missed invoices/ran up debts, you’ve probably already spoken to her to arrange repayments. With the help of our colleague, Ajay, we’re also about to launch a ‘pay now’ feature so you can pay for your orders as you place them. All new customers will be on those terms from the get go and many existing customers will use this feature too. If you would like this feature added to your account now, let us know and we’ll enable it straight away.

• Here’s a link to a news article yesterday that mentions some of the good work that one our pals, Hamish Evans who is one of the founders of Middle Ground Growers has been doing of late to protect the River Avon and regenerate the Avon bioregion. Truly inspiring and much-needed work and we commend Hamish and his colleagues for their achievements so far ‘Contract between humans and river’: Bristol Avon’s rights enshrined in charter | Environment | The Guardian.

• I’ve a few interesting engagements over the next week aside from veg-lift mornings. Thursday evening I’m away to wonderful Sheffield for this to explore with the local food partnership how we can collectively bring better quality food to more people Good Food Suppliers for Sheffield – Good Food Economy – Oct 26 | ShefFood Sheffield

• After the veg has been organised early Monday, I’m away to one of my fave places, Track Brewery in Manchester to talk alongside some of our closest pals (the Sam’s of Where the Light Gets in and Manchester Urban Diggers) about doing a similar thing to Sheffield here in Manchester. This is part of SCRAN as organised by our pals Sticky Fig Media and Eat Well Mcr SCRAN: A Manchester food conversation / Events | Sticky Fig Media. WTLGI were recently celebrated in the Observer- here’s the link Where The Light Gets In: Sam Buckley’s culinary creative …

• Lastly, and one I’m really looking forward to, next Friday I’m away to Beccles in East Suffolk to and share a lovely evening with our good pals at Hodmedod as they launch their new book Whole Food: a book from Hodmedod – Hodmedod’s Wholefoods written by two of their amazing inspiring founders, Josiah Meldrum and Nick Saltmarsh. I implore you to obtain a copy of their book and if you want a chance of joining us all at the launch, you’ve to sign up to be one of their pioneers here Hodmedod Pioneers – Hodmedod’s Wholefoods. It’s gonna be a top night i’m sure and I can’t wait to get my hands on my copy of the book.

Our Ell’s weekly veg updates: 

• Just before I get onto the updates, I want to let you know that Tomato Stall has officially finished for the season this year and this week will also be the last week you can order aubs and cucumbers from Haslum before they finish for the season too 🙁

• Now onto what’s new next week, Newfields has dirty carrots in both 12.5kg and 25kg bags, red Batavia lettuce, and all of their spuds in 12.5kg bags too.

• Elsewhere, Chapel has some red onions and orla spuds, Lynher some broccoli, Jan king cabbages, savoy cabbages and harlequin squash.

• Next up, Bedlam have loads and loads of squash varieties for us next week including some mixed gourds, crunchkin, delicate, fireball, kemon, wee be little and plenty more.

• Fosketts has some Futsu squash and Strawberry Fields some green kale, carnival squash, crown prince squash and thyme.

• Langton’s has some red beetroot, rainbow carrots, cavolo Nero, green kale and red kale and Awen has some kalibos red cabbage and white cabbage.

• Flourish have loads on again this week including rare mixed chillies, blushing queen onions, red Geneva onions, palla rossa raddichio, black futsu squash, blue Tokyo squash and unripe green cherry tomatoes but as always make sure you have a good peruse through their list.

• From our market gardens, Growing Well has some criolla sella green chillies.

• And for our Wednesday customers, Sheffield Organics has rainbow chard, green kale and perpetual spinach, Moss Valley has some leeks, green Batavia lettuce and speckled green and red Batavia lettuce.

• On the UK fruit front, Carey has some Red Devil apples and beurre hardy pears, Mole End has some cox orange pipping, russet and spartan apples and Oakwood some cox apples too.

• From Portugal, Vasco has some plum tomatoes and salad tomatoes.

• From Spain, Bioalgarrobo has some bacon avocados, Biovergel some kaki fruit, Bioandalusi some navelina oranges and Ecosur some courgettes, cucumbers and red peppers.

• From Holland, Fairtrasa has royal gala apples, limes, conference pears, ginger and turmeric and Zann some sprouts, romaine so caulis, nameko mushrooms, swede, bacon avocado and quince.

• From France, Uni-Vert has some courgettes, dalinette apples, inored apples, reinne des reinette apples and Bio & Bio some autumn royal grapes, red globe grapes and chestnuts.

• Our top picks from Dynamis are courgette flowers, doux des cevennes onions, green meat radish, Campari tomatoes, physalis, prickly pears and sorrel.

• To line your pantry’s, we’re topping back up on bits from Carley’s and Mr Organic so be sure to have a good look at what we’ve got from them as well as some cola & lime kombuchas from Equinox and some lemon juice from Sunita.

Last week I signed off with a cute video of some ‘useless dogs. It was popular so here’s another by the same film-maker about a deer that doesn’t know it’s a deer : )

https://vimeopro.com/weareantidote/ken-wardrop/video/51224120

Thank you for reading this massive newsletter,
Sean, Mads, Alph, Ell, Cathryn and Team ON x

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