Happy Organic September everyone!
It’s a shorter newsletter this week as i’m busy preparing for a 3-day meeting with the Farming the Future group down near Bristol. These guys do some great work to enfranchise many of the movers and shakers in our sector who are looking to better the UK food landscape so it promises to be a great event. Alongside numerous academics, campaigners, writers, farmers and funders, i’m excited to get the chance to meet the founders of one of our longstanding Liverpool customers, Squash, one of our amazing pulses producer, Hodmedod and a wholesalers that we helped to set up in London too called The Better Food Shed.
The Mission | Farming The Future
We’ll be looking to visit a few of our growers and customers throughout September too so keep your eyes peeled on here and our socials for updates. For organising veg deliveries and lumping it about the warehouse each week, putting faces to names and gassing on about all things veg with those closest to us are two pleasures we get nowhere near enough of this end so we’ll be enjoying travelling about and doing exactly that : )
Fruit & Veg Headlines:
- Royal Oak have added again to their impressive array of crops this week with beetroots, red Chinese cabbages, cavolo nero, kohl rabi and a range of interesting lettuces.
- Newfields have added a limited amount of both regular cauliflower and Romanesco. Elsewhere Pollybell have started with their red cabbages and Foskett’s have some bunched salsify.
- Strawberry Fields have added leeks, fennel and some new squash, Roddy’s have some kale and spinach and Dart Valley have some maitake shrooms.
- From our market gardeners, Middle Ground have some fennel flowers and herbs, Flourish have loads more toms, cucumbers and courgettes an Trinity have more toms and ‘Disco’ apples too.
- On the UK fruit front, Mole End have Worcester, Windsor, Robin and Julia apples available, Carey has some conference pears and Oakwood have santana and epicure apples alongside some Marjorie seedling plums.
- From France, the pick of the Dynamis adds this week are the sugar snap peas, nashi pears and aloe vera leaves. Uni-Vert have also added finger limes, kaffir lime and yuzu too… so a top week of adds from our French pals.
- From Spain Biovergel have limonera pears, Ecosur return with cucumbers, tomatoes and piel de sapo melons and Cal Valls have some large red onions too.
- From the bottom of the list we have some of the soft cheeses from High Weald back on this week and we actually visited these guys (and their cows) last week so we’ll have a video diary of that visit for you soon too. Darling Howe and Trusmadoor cheeses return to the list from Torpenhow too… we may be away to visit these guys next year on a staff trip possibly (how exciting!) Lastly, the Ekolo juices return this week too after a fresh delivery from these guys.
I’ll sign off this week with a link to a wee article that I was asked to help with recently for Eating Better who akin to the Farming the Future group mentioned above are an alliance that are working together to create a fairer and more sustainable food environment in the UK. It’s really pleasing that more folk seem to be taking note of the principles that we trade upon and work we’re doing and this is of course only possible because of your loyal support and the hard graft of our treasured growers. Together we’re gonna turn this bus around or die bloody trying eh!
Speak to you all again next week everyone,
Sean x
Sean
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Here we have the Arcadia extra virgin olive oil – this Greek elixir is made using cold extraction (in Peloponesse in the South) by mechanical means only… no industrialised bleached oils around here. This always within 8-10 hours of the raw manaki olives being hand-harvested too! Fast work hey?
So we have the Makri family (4th gen) and their co-operative of neighbouring olive growers to thank for this exceptional tasting traditional oil. Definitely no nasty bitterness in this that can often be found with some olive oils.
Also pictured is our Calon Wen lightly salted butter – this has been a solid stand-in for many of you over the summer during Acorn’s butter hiatus & it’s a fantastic product if you’re dairy-inclined.
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