Online Ordering for Monday 22nd Dec (Week 52)
Organic Merriment, Sprout Bhajis & a Death in the Afternoon!
Snaps of our annual Christmas celebrations at one of our lovely customers – and one of Sean’s all time fave pubs – The Castle in Macclesfield. 🎄🥳
We got merry in one of their cosy side rooms, drinking and eating aplenty. While all the food was incredible (and we definitely ate our body weight in cheese), it was the delicious sprout bhajis that stole the show. As Cathryn perfectly put it: “a revelation!”
It was probably time to call it quits when wine glasses full of Death in the Afternoons started appearing on the tables… Hemingway’s tip is to drink three to five of these slowly – but I don’t think we got that memo. 😬
Season’s greetings everyone!
Remind me to never make light of named storms coming across from the Atlantic. We missed last Wed’s shrooms for them bobbing up and down in the Irish Sea, unable to dock and this week’s bananas ended up washing up on Sussex shores after falling off their container ship! 😯
A stressful week was at least rounded off with a fab work’s do at The Castle pub in Macclesfield on Friday and we collectively overindulged to replace the memories of the week with ones of laughter, lovely food and absinthe-based cocktails. 🤭
The perfect preparation for our busiest week in our history! 😅 Yep, we’ve beat last year’s record by a few pallets and have sold over a quarter of a million pounds worth of organic fruit and veg in one week! More than double our regular week, we’ve had to hire vans and draft in some emergency extra muscle. We had a chef from my local pub, Isaac with us on the tools yesterday (eek, I think we broke him) and for our busiest warehouse day ever tmorra, from 1am we’ve drafted in soldier Charlie (another lovely youth from my local) who’s on leave from the forces for Christmas. Tmorra’s gonna be TOUGH! 😭💪🏼
New Year’s Price list info:
The list that has just gone live is for our last warehouse day of the year next Monday. Please note, on MONDAY 29TH DEC, (not the regular Tuesday), WE WILL BE RELEASING OUR LIST FOR OUR FIRST WAREHOUSE DAY IN THE NEW YEAR WHICH WILL BE MONDAY 5TH JANUARY.
THIS WILL NEED COMPLETING BY 3PM ON TUESDAY 30TH DEC AS WE NEED TO ARRANGE ORDERS AND TRANSPORT BEFORE NEW YEAR’S EVE THIS YEAR.
I’d like to thank all you guys again for your continued and loyal support for all we do here in Manchester. We’re a small but tight team who very much appreciates the job we have of sourcing and delivering so many amazing growers’ produce to all you guys. This last year has been a big one for us. We’ve grown significantly, added to our growers and suppliers roster in a big way and for the first time in our history, we’ve had our first opportunities to enjoy getting more deeply involved in our sector more generally.
As a quick round-up, representing work this year, I’ve had the opportunity to attend meetings at both Holyrood and Westminster, I’ve visited regenerative agriculture festivals in Stevenage and Northern Ireland and even presented up in Fife and at the largest agricultural conference in the world down in Oxford – that was scary both times! Our certifiers the Soil Association also recognised us on a trip that Adam, Ella and myself made down to Bristol in the summer at their bi-annual BOOM (best of organic market) Awards as ‘Organic Champion of 2025’ no less – this was lovely to receive.
Looking ahead in to the New Year, I’ll be working down in Oxford again with Sustain at the annual Oxford Real Farming Conference in Jan and towards the end of the month, our Cathryn is going to be consulting for the Better Food Traders for a week too. Thereafter, amongst shifting the veg, we’ve got LOTS of projects to be going at. These will include software developments, increasing our customer and growers base and looking deeper into securing a new long-term premises. I’ll be sure to keep you guys posted as ever each week on here of any developments.
Theres no fruit and veg updates for you this week as we’re keeping the list as tight and predictable as possible for the all important last shift!
So on that note, and on behalf of all of us here at Organic North, we hope you all have a joyful and healthy Christmas and we wish you all the best for 2026. Big up the organic massive! 😊🙌🏼
Sean, Mads, Alph, Cathryn, Ell and Team ON xx
As Sean mentioned above, once this Christmas week is out it will have been the most veg we’ve ever shifted – ever! 🤯
These photos are very much post shift, tired but happy faces – and while our poor backs will definitely be grateful for a rest over Christmas, we’re incredibly proud of the work we’re doing with such an amazing team behind us. 👏🏼
Of course, none of this would be possible without you lot – thank you so much for continuing to work with us, support us, and champion good food. It really means the world and we can’t wait to see what 2026 brings. 🎉