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Last week our Sean enjoyed good chats with Elsa at Gull’s in Leith, Sophie and the team at Dig In in Bruntsfield and Chiara at New Leaf in Marchmont. He also picked up plenty of Scot’s goodies along the way. A special mention too to another Edinburgh-based company that Sean sadly didn’t have time to visit whilst up north, Cyrenians.

Cyrenians do amazing work tackling the causes and consequences of homelessness. Just one of the many ways they receive support is through their veg subscription bags, helping to support the distribution of surplus food, delivering community pantries and cook clubs and offering free access to farming and rural skills employability training for young people at their Green Skills Centre.

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Good afternoon comrades,

Been a busy old week this end on a multitude of fronts. As highlighted above, Sean was lucky enough to get the opportunity to visit some of our pals up Edinburgh way last week. This was on the back of an invitation he had to join The Scottish Soil Association up at the Scottish Parliament to discuss their ‘Organic For All’ scheme. Apparently, it was a great event and better still “was the chats and pinting with our pals and some of the ‘soilies’” after it. If you work at the Soil Association, you’re a ‘soily’ we’ve learned : )

Also last week, Cathryn and I – with Marton and trusty cargo bike in tow – headed to MMU for the 4th annual SES Sustainability Festival. The festival promotes transformative action for socio-ecological sustainability within Manchester and beyond.

This year’s festival centered on nature and food, exploring pathways to a just and regenerative future. Among the highlights were talks by local schoolchildren, who are involved in local regenerative projects. From growing and selling their own fruit and vegetables to learning about and improving soil quality on their school grounds, it was fantastic to see just how proud they were of what they’ve achieved so far. A big round of applause to all the kids involved – they did an amazing job and gave us all hope for the future generations leading the way toward sustainability.

Before I get onto the veg news, it’s also worth mentioning a little more about the fallout of the new UK-EU deal that is currently being finalised as this will likely affect our imports.

Whilst details remain subject to negotiations and, should these negotiations be successful, Defra expects the primary impacts of this to be that:

• The UK will regulate consistently with the EU in relation to organic standards
• There will be no COI checks GB-EU and EU-GB, with the same benefits extending to   GB-NI movements
• The UK will participate in working groups convened by the EU, and have access to important data and systems.

For us, it seems like the fallout of this means that importing from Europe and sending veg to Northern Ireland should likely return to how simple and cost-free as it was before bloody Brexit – huzzah! The UK will also be involved in European decisions regarding organics too, which is also great news given that we’re not members of the EU currently.

Now onto the veg news:

First off, we’re absolutely thrilled to let you know that Gilchesters Organics is back on the list! With a new team behind them, Gilchesters take a simple and honest approach to flour and grains. Their stuff is 100% British, organic, and traditionally stoneground preserving nutrition and flavour through the production process. *These will be delivered as follow-ons for Monday customers and as normal for Wednesday customers.

• Returning from the UK are Middle Ground with kale, spinach, rainbow chard, short cucs, stir fry greens, radishes and a variety of herbs. Richard Rowan also returns with normal and round courgettes, spinach and broad beans.

• Elsewhere in the UK, Newfields has round and pointed cabbages, New Farm has broccoli and pointed cabbages, while Fosketts has pak choi and red radishes bunched and Trinity has green beans, broad beans and agretti.

• From the market gardens, Growing Well has rainbow chard while Kindling has coriander and mixed salad leaf bags.

• While there’s not much to report on for UK fruit at the moment, we have listed some Braeburn apples from Mole End.

• From Portugal, Vasco has yellow courgettes, padron peppers and peaches.

• From Spain, Biovergel has fennel, apricots, melon galia and small peaches, Gospa has verna lemons, Camposevenhas red peppers and Ecosur has plum tomatoes and pointy red peps.

• From the wholesalers, Fairtrasa has both abate and forelle pears, Zann has red beets, red cabbages, red sweet point peppers and orange pumpkins and Be Organic has black figs, flat peaches and watermelons.

• Our top pick outs from Dynamis this week are tri colour round courgettes, fresh red and white onions, blue heirloom tomatoes, giant red cherries and black watermelons.

• On the pantry front, Morgiel’s bee pollen, gherkins in brine and kale sauerkraut return, Ekolo have a wide selection of their juices available again and Fresh Flour have sourdough digestive biscuits and crackers.

• A very cheesy competition.. The guys at High Weald have excitedly revealed that they’ve made their 500th Batch of Brighton Blue. The cheese has been maturing in the Cheese Store and will be available to all customers from Monday 9th June. To celebrate this milestone, they’ve launched a competition where the Winner will have an Exclusive Tour of the Dairy and Cheese Tasting for up to 4 people and the 3 Runners Up will win a Cheese Hamper. To enter, you need to send them a photo of either a wedge of Brighton Blue or you enjoying a wedge of Brighton Blue from any batch to info@highwealddairy.co.uk; or tag them on social media!

• Luscombe promotion! We have a fantastic promotion running on our Luscombe drinks all through June & July. Starting with the cans, if you buy 3 cases you get 1 free. And on the 740ml bottles buy 2 cases and get 1 free. Stock up while you can!

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Not to end on too sombre note, but we came across this rather sobering article on microplastics and how they may not only be affecting our health but also the health and yields of our crops crops across the world. If you’d like to read more, we’ve linked it below.

• Beyond Human Health: Microplastics Could Be a Big Problem for Crop Farmers – Offrange

Speak to you all again soon,

Ell, Sean, Mads, Cathryn and all of us at team ON x

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SES Sustainability Festival at MMU 👩‍🌾

As mentioned above, here’s some pics from Cathryn and I’s visit to MMU. After the talks, it was back to the Organic North table for chats with other’s in the sustainability sphere. It was great to get involved and see all the other happenings going on in and around Manchester.

Also, we couldn’t not include a very proud Russ from Elov with his new and personally branded up food caddy.
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