New boxes from Oakwood 🍎📦

Oakwood are having a little upgrade! We received our first delivery yesterday in their new and improved boxes, which are much sturdier and do an even better job of keeping those apples protected.

We had a taste of their Victoria plums and Discovery apples yesterday – and they’re v delish at the moment!

Next week, we’re looking forward to their first Beth pears too.

Good afternoon folks,

It’s quite a short one from me today. We’re all just glad to finally see some water coming from the sky here in Manchester!

The rain has also brought a little visitor – as I’m working from home today, a young fox has taken shelter by my patio door. So far, it’s spent the morning curled up on a deck chair, providing plenty of entertainment.

Although it’s finally started raining, the long stretch of dry weather means the soil can become so dry it can struggle to absorb water when it arrives. This can sometimes lead to flash flooding, yet another worry and the last thing we need.

Hopefully the rain continues gently enough to give the ground time to soak it all up. The dry weather has also had an impact on our growers, so some suppliers won’t have greens listed this week simply because it’s been too dry to grow them.

On that note, Newfields will only have spuds for us this week, while New Farm and Staples are still unable to provide any cauliflower or broccoli.

First English Pears 

In better news, we have our first English pears of the season this week from Oakwood and Carey’s.

Oakwood has some Beth pears for us. Beth is an early-season English dessert pear, known for its exceptionally sweet flavour and soft, melting white flesh.

Carey’s has the classic Conference pear, with both regular and small sized fruits available.

New Juice & Passata from Cal Valls Pantry

Cal Valls juice has been popular since the day we listed it, with the clementine juice seeming to be the firm favourite.

This week, we’re adding two new flavours that we think you’ll love: pear juice and peach & grape juice. We’ve also added some of their passata to the range.

New Spud Supplier – Shawhill Organic Farm

Before we get onto the veg updates, we have a new spud supplier joining us this week.

Based in Kilmarnock, East Ayrshire, Simon at Shawhill has been studying organic horticulture and farming for the past 20 years. More recently, he’s been exploring no-dig and minimum tillage methods to improve their soil management.

We’ve got their Casablanca potatoes on this week – a highly versatile variety with thin skins, making them perfect for boiling, steaming or roasting.

Weekly veg updates:

• Starting in the UK, Royal Oak has some pak Choi and turnips, Lynher some runner beans, cav and red kale and Roddy’s some beetroot and red kuri squash.

• Elsewhere, Bedlam has some orange kabocha squash and Fosketts has added some 20kg bags of their washed purple carrots and crown prince squash.

• Next up, Strawberry Fields has some leeks, white custard squash and tarragon (both bagged and loose) and Awenhas added some Swiss chard.

• Flourish has both red shishito peppers and goat horn peppers and Terry Simpson has some bagged coriander.

• Dart Valley has some grey oyster mushrooms.

• Middle Ground are back this week with wide offering, our top picks are chicory, mixed colour courgettes, marrows, stir fry greens, mixed tomatoes and bambino potatoes but make sure to have a good look through their whole list.

• From our market gardens, Trinity has some scotch bonnet chillies, pointy red peppers and yellow plums.

• And for our Wednesday customers, Moss Valley has some chioggia beetroot, Swiss chard, chillies, kale and spring onions and Growing Well have some mixed cherry tomatoes.

• On the UK fruit front, as mentioned above we have the first UK pears. Oakwood also has some Seneca plums and Warwickshire droopers.

• Carey’s has some James greives apples, Lena apples and also some greengage plums and Marjorie’s seedlings.

• Augernik has some gunslebert cobnuts and lang’s tidlings cobnuts.

• From Portugal, Vasco has fennel, pardon peppers, gala apples and oranges.

• From Spain, Cal Vall has some semi-dried red onions, Bioalgarrobo some 6kg osteen mangoes and from Terra Rica will have some pointy red peps.

• From Holland, Zann has some cucumbers again as well as some 10kg bags of celeriac.

• From France, Uni-Vert has some lavallee grapes, Bio & Bio some cucumbers, mangoes, galia melons, peaches and nashi pears.

• Our top picks from Dynamis are camus artichokes, round courgettes, yellow cherry tomatoes, centennial white grapes, almonds in shell and dried apricots.

• Lastly, to line your pantry’s we’ve some spelt & pea fusilli and spelt & fava bean rigati from Pastifico.

That’s all from me today. Hopefully the rain sticks around, the ground gets a good drink.

Keep up the rain dances,

Ell, Mads, Cathryn and Team ON x

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