Some highlights from the week so far, pictured left to right:

🍎 King’s Acre Pippin (Oakwood) – a beautifully russeted apple with an excellent sweet-sharp flavour.

🌿 Flat parsley bags (JW European) – judging by the love, you’re enjoying their herbs just as much as their salads.

🍋 Primo lemons (Geima) – some of the first we’ve had from these guys in a while, and they’re 👌🏼.

🥬 Green kale (Chapel) – love carrying these around the warehouse pretending we’ve got 25kg bags of spuds on each shoulder. 🤭

Good afternoon friends,

The snowdrops and daffs are flowering as the light returns to our days. Some of the prettiest of our seasonal markers as we look forward to increasing temps and the spring choruses of birdsong.

But there continues to be a hell of a lot of rain and it’s wreaking havoc with some of our growers both domestically and particularly across southern Europe. Many fields have been flooded for so long now that it’s enough to threaten the viability of the entire farms and year on year, this problem only appears to be getting worse.

It would be very easy to lose all hope that this thing can be turned around, especially given the state of our politics just now. Give up we won’t though, and we continue to look to grow and support methods of agriculture/horticulture that serve to act in harmony with our environment rather than extract from it.

One of our long-term friends that shared this view was the late John Hurd, our watercress grower, and we were very saddened last week to learn of his passing. We’ve been working with John and his family since we started in the mid-nineties and every time you rang their office, even as John approached his mid-nineties, with his trademark soft accent, ever polite, it was always John who answered the phone. We will miss John but his legacy lives on through his family business and the great role model he has been throughout his life to so many people.

This week’s veg updates:

• Starting in the UK, Royal Oak has some washed white satin and Yellowstone carrots as well as some red java spuds. New Farm has some washed swede and Bedlam some small onion squash.

• Elsewhere, there’s not too much newness coming in from our UK farms this week but Dart Valley has some grey and yellow oyster mushrooms for us to go at.

• On the UK fruit front, Oakwood have added some Rajka apples to their offering and some spartan apple juice too.

• From Spain, we’ve some green beans from Bioalgarrobo, fino lemons and Lanelate oranges from Bioandalusi and butternut squash from Call Valls.

• From Portugal, Vasco has fennel, leeks, New Zealand spinach, butternut squash, blueberries and loooaads of herbs so have a good peruse through the list to see what’s on offer.

• From Holland, Zann have added some Chinese cabbage, pointy cabbage, fennel, green peppers, gala apples, ortanique clems and coconuts.

• From France, Bio & Bio have some caulis, Solagora from green asparagus and our top pics from Dynamis are blood tarocco oranges, mixed colour cherry tomatoes, aloe Vera, chantecler apples and orri clems.

• And to line your pantry’s, we’ve got some new bits in from Mr Organic this week including tortellini mushroom and two new pasta sauces for kids packed with organic goodness and loadsa veg!

I’ll sign off this week with some positive news. One of our newest growers Billy Auger who grows fabulous fruits and nuts for us in South Shropshire has just been approved to offer farm walks for groups of 4 or more. If you’re ever in the area of fancy a trip, you can contact Billy on Insta to arrange a tour for your group and the tours are free too : )

Here’s to some brighter weather, brighter politics and some brighter times,
Sean, Mads, Alph, Cathryn, Ell and Team ON x

As Sean mentioned above, it’s very sad news to share about the passing of John Hurd. Above is a photo of John from the early days of his farming life, which began in 1953 and grew, alongside his family, into a fully independent growing business. He will be very fondly remembered, and our thoughts are with his family. 💚

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