Return of Flourish! 🌸🌱

We know plenty of you will be excited to hear that Flourish is back from next week! There’s loads of new stuff on there and plenty to choose from but pictured above: chervil, nasturtium leaves (in punnets), and bunches of ranunculus butterfly flowers… which, let’s be honest, are looking v pretty.

Calixta and her team down in South Cambridgeshire always deliver top-notch produce, and we’re very glad to have them back. 🤗

Good afternoon fine people of organics,

We’re chuffed to be able to welcome back some returning suppliers this week like Terry Simpson and Flourish as well as returning lines like the aubergines from Haslum. But before I pass back over to our Ell for the full weekly updates (we share the newsletter writing responsibilities most weeks), here’s a little of what’s been going on over the past week.

In short, a lot of political stuff:

1) I’ve a meeting this afternoon with Defra as part of the UK Fruit & Vegetable Coalition | Food Foundation about the support that we’re hoping to see from our government for agroecological growers in the new proposed organic action and horticulture plans. We need to increase domestic production of organic veg for environmental, security and health reasons and alongside an elite crew of some of the biggest names in our sector, we’re hoping to try and persuade the government to help via policy changes and funding.

2) Campaigners are stepping up their work against the criminal amount of toxic glyphosate that is being sprayed in conventional agriculture systems. Here’s a link to an article to educate yourself some on this topic Campaigners demand action to break UK’s ‘addiction’ to controversial herbicide | Herbicides | The Guardian

3) Our much-loved colleague, Marton made the mammoth trip back home to Hungary last week to vote in the national elections and to his, ours and I’m sure most people’s elation, that nasty bastard, Orban has finally been ousted- huzzah! Via busses, boats and trains, Marton made his way via Hull, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Vienna before making it back to his native Hungary. Top effort, brother, we’re all proud of you!

In other selected news, we sold almost £1000 worth of PICKLEBITS’ pickles last week in the first week. Thanks for showing your support for our newest supplier- they were blown away by the demand and are very pleased with the sales.

For the aforementioned shortages on yogurt last week, we’ve already started work on locating an extra supplier of yogurt and in the process, we may have obtained an extra kefir supplier. We’re just trying to iron out the details with the supplier now but the hope is that within the next month, this new supplier will be listed and we’ll have some samples out for you to try too : )

In less positive news, we had two big let downs yesterday on the delivery front that were really annoying. Bioandalusi who have been really reliable since we first listed them last year sent a pallet late that missed its connection to us. This meant all our blueberries and lemons didn’t make it to us until this morning. We’re already onto them about how to avoid this happening again and we’re really sorry to everyone who missed out on those lines.

Similarly, our longstanding mushroom supplier over in Ireland, Orchard have been having supply/production problems too and next to no warning, shorted us this week on our mushrooms. They believe that they are over their problems and that things should be back to normal for this week but we’ll of course monitor the situation before deciding to take any further action or not.

The fruit and veg headlines: 

• Starting in the UK, Royal Oak has red manitou potatoes, and the lovely Terry Simpson returns to the list with some baby leaf spinach and SKEA have a full offering of spuds for us again.

• Elsewhere, as mentioned below we have the first UK asparagus on from Bedlam, Strawberry Fields have added some tarragon both bagged and loose and Haslum have their first aubergines available.

• As mentioned above, Flourish also return for the season with plenty to choose from including celeriac, barese chard, catalogna frastagliata chicory, leeks, adoring heart oakleaf lettuce and plenty more so be sure to peruse their full listing.

• From our market gardens, if you fancy trying your hand at growing your own tomatoes, Trinity has you covered. This week they have a selection of tomato plants, including Green Zebra, Mango Lassi, Ruthje, and Yellow Submarine varieties.

• And for our Wednesday customers, Growing Well has added rainbow chard and Siberian kale to their offering.

• On the UK fruit front, Oakwood has some Nonpareil apples and Mole Endhas crimson crisp again as well as some evitas.

• Before we move on to the European additions, we’re pleased to let you know that John Hurd is now back to using UK-grown watercress.

• From Italy, JW European adds some wild fennel herb to their offering in both 50g and 100g bags.

• From Spain, we’re excited to share that – for the first time ever – we’re trialling a wider range of products from Terra Rica. Up to now, they’ve only supplied us with peppers, but as the season comes to an end, you’ll also be able to enjoy celery, broccoli, and mini romaine lettuce from them starting this week.

• From Holland, we’ve got green beans, savoy cabbages and abate fetel pears from Zann and some more red Bartlett pears from Fairtrasa.

• From France, our top picks from Dynamis are the striped watermelons, cherimoyas, blackberries, peas, tenderstem garlic and chives while Uni-Vert have added some round green courgettes and coop 43 apples.

• To line your pantry’s, we have both orange and ginger juice from Sunita as well some honey halva with almonds. We’re also stocking back up on Morgiels raw forest honey, beetroot & horseradish relish and kale sauerkraut.

I’ll leave you this week with a wee vid that features a few of folk we know/know of and respect across the sea in the North of Ireland. We’re very proud to support a growing number of businesses in the North of Ireland, including our newest customer over there including Ethical Weigh Co-op in Eglinton near Derry and it’s great to see the burgeoning scene for organic veg-growing over there. Hope you enjoy the video and have a fab week in store ahead,

Growing local: Building food security in Belfast

Sean, Cathryn, Mads, Ell, Alph and Team ON x

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