Online Ordering for 20th July – 24th July (Week 29)
Hael Natural Colour 🌼🌸🥒
We’re delighted to welcome another fantastic UK grower to our list this week. Hael Natural Colour is a ten-acre farm and natural dye studio nestled in the rolling hills of Pembrokeshire, West Wales, just next door to Awen Organics.
Founded in 2024 by Ffion Taverner and Rufus Biddle, the farm grows a beautiful mix of seasonal vegetables, herbs and edible flowers, alongside annual, biennial and perennial plants for natural dyes.
To start, we’ll be getting their baby red beetroot, cucumbers, baby fennel, kaleand spring onions – they’ll hopefully have some nice tomatoes for us soon too 😊🥬
Just another FULL ON week at Organic North!
We’ve ANOTHER new grower (as highlighted by our Ell above), we’ve just waved goodbye to Radio 4’s Food Programme who were visiting this morning for a chat and we’ve had a day of managing two supplier no late shows (shrooms and Uni-Vert). At least the kids have or are about to break up, which means a let up in demand and a bit of a brief respite for us this end.
After a 3-day meeting with UK Fruit & Vegetable Coalition | Food Foundation 3 weeks ago in Sheffield and 3 more days at Groundswell a fortnight ago in Hertfordshire, I was straight off to the Mendips for a few days with Home | Farming The Future (some pics below) last week. It was an intense few days in what feels like an intense month but I can’t complain as i’ve had the opportunity to meet and chat with some truly heroic folk from our sector, many of whom are really interested in what we’re doing up here in Manchester. So onward we go! : )
Veg Updates:
- Starting in the UK, Newfields has marfona spuds and bagged spinach, New Farm has red cabbage again and Pollybell some small cauliflowers.
- Next up, we’ve got some courgettes from Wild Country, PSB both loose and bagged from Bedlam and some loose washed carrots and the first UK sweetcorn from Fosketts.
- We have the first batch of squash from Strawberry Fields on the list this week including crookneck, spaghetti and a variety of custard squash.
- Awen has some hispi cabbage, cavolo Nero, peppermint chard and rainbow chard and Flourish has Turkish goat horn peppers, shishito peppers and seasonal salad bags.
- Staying in the UK, Lynher Growers returns with courgettes, round courgettes, green kale, baby leeks and some peas. Roddy’s also have a larger availability this week with french beans, beetroot, cav, yellow courgettes, peppers and potatoes.
- Middle Ground return to the list this week and have lots for us to go including chard, kale, mixed colour courgettes, stir fry greens, mixed colour tomatoes and a variety of herbs.
- From our market gardens, Growing Well has broad beans, erbette chard, short cucumbers, red kale and green kale and Trinity has some basil and mint for us to go at.
- And for our Wednesday customers, we have some Aztec broccoli and courgettes from Regather Farm and some lettuce and salad from Sheffield Organic Growers.
- From Portugal, Vasco has added some Hokkaido squash in both green and orange.
- From Spain, Bioalgarrobo has some watermelon with micro seeds, Biovergelsome ercolini pears, Anna gold plums and striped watermelons and Be Organic some star ruby grapefruit.
- From Holland, Fairtrasa has limes and 13kg gingers and Zann some red beetroot and guyot pears.
- From France, Uni-Vert has prima grapes, Bio & Bio some white vittoria grapes, red plums and yellow plums and our top pickles from Dynamis are pink onions, ribbed black tomatoes, blackcurrants and papaya.
- To line your pantry’s, we have unsalted butter from Netherend, chickpeas, passata and gnocchi from Mr Organic and almond butter, pumpkin seed butter and a new spiced Cornish beetroot chutney from Carley’s.
- We’re also stocking back up on Ekolo juices, ginger kombucha from Equinox, and strawberry jam from Hembridge.
Signing off this week with an ask of support from an institute of our sector, Wakelyn’sin Suffolk. These guys have been suffering financially and have launched a community benefit society in a bid to save their much-loved agroforestry research site and prevent it being sold on the open market. Lots of testimonials have been made by loads of our pals on their website- if you’re interested to have a read about them, here’s a link Wakelyns CCBS – Wakelyns.
Sean, Mads, Ell, Alph, Cathryn and Team ON x
A few snaps from last week’s trip to Fernhill Farm in the Mendips with the brilliant folk from Farming The Future. These guys have directed just shy of 5 million squid into the agroecological/organic movement over the past 7 years and I was meeting up with my colleagues there to discuss the course that we’re thinking of taking over the next couple of years. It’s a real privilege to be involved with these guys and once the work was completed, we all had so much fun singing and playing with ciders in hand. If you’re pals with any big philanthropic funders, please fire them our way : )