Image is of a proposed Family Box. Big on value, low on frills. What do you think? 🙂

Family Box

A bit of survey feedback we got was to introduce a Family Box for families who want more volume for less money.

It could have more volume of cheaper things like potatoes, beetroots and cabbages and less of the fancy things like avocadoes, apricots and peppers.

We’re thinking of a larger medium box – with the 3 core veg (potatoes, onions, carrots) + at least 2 additional veg + 2 fruit for £15. 

If you think this is something that might interest you or people you know, please tell us as soon as you can. We could launch it soon if there is demand.

Homegrown herbs

We do like growing herbs so we have put some more in the shop – our own herb fennel, dill, lovage and huacatay are all in there.

Huacatay is also known as Peruvian mint and is a hugely aromatic South American herb – excellent for those exciting Peruvian recipes you have been meaning to try!

The basil and parsley have been slow this year but are on their way.

We also added some red kohl rabi (Borders) to the shop. These are planned for next week’s boxes. We’ve also got ‘Pink Lady’ apples (Argentina).

Next week’s plan for boxes

The plan is for Small boxes to have kohl rabi and ‘Melody’ potatoes (UK), broccoli (Italy), onions (Egypt), chestnut mushrooms (Holland) and bananas (Dominican Republic).

Medium & Large boxes should have all that as well as aubergine (Spain), spring onions (UK) and ‘Packham’ pears (Argentina).

Gardener’s boxes are due to have chestnut mushrooms (Holland), bananas (Dominican Republic), aubergine (Spain), ‘Packham’ pears (Argentina), cocktail tomatoes (Isle of Wight), red peppers (Spain) and apricots (Spain/Italy).

Recipe

This week’s is a delicious Cabbage Pepper Salad.

Note

All produce in our pre-packed standard and Gardener’s Boxes this week is organic (class II), supplied to current EU organic standards.
Organic Certificates are available direct from our suppliers.
Salad bags, lettuce, rhubarb, coriander and dill are homegrown in Llansadwrn and are not certified organic.
All fruit & veg should be washed prior to use. Please contact us for any allergen advice.

This week’s Medium box

Shop news

Our homegrown lettuces, rhubarb, salad bags, lovage, cavolo nero, dill and coriander are still available. They were very popular and there is more!

If you would like to leave a product review, please do so on the Product page. We would love to know what you think.

Website improvements

In response to requests for an information page ‘for dummies’ we have added a ‘How this works’ page to the Shop dropdown menu on the Homepage.

This new page spells out what you can expect from us and when we all do what we need to do to meet those expectations 🙂

Privacy matters

We take every measure to keep your details safe. This means deleting electronic files and destroying any paper records or order and delivery lists, as well as labels retrieved from returned boxes.

If you are able, it would really help us if you could remove your label from the box before you return it. Thank you.

Biobags

We have spent some time sourcing highly ethical and environmental food-grade carrier bags to transport some goods, like our freshly harvested veg.

Some of our own produce will be damp as we might store it in water overnight. This helps flood the plant with water so it’s more fresh for you.

The Biobags are compost-able so an added touch for your compost bin and no plastic for you.

These food-bags are GM-free too.

Genetic modification

The public focus on genetically modified (GM) crops and their derivatives may have died down, but the industry is still very much alive.

Areas of concern continue to be:

• the control that large corporations have over the food chain, especially seeds
• the strong ties between GM crops and pesticide use and associated environmental damage
• future impacts of GM traits, like herbicide resistance, escaping into the wild

If this is an area that concerns you, do look at GM Freeze’s website for more.

Shop news

We have some of our own things in the shop this week!

We have homegrown cavolo nero, lettuces, rhubarb, salad bags, lovage, dill and coriander. All images are our own and taken the day before yesterday. The lettuce will be bigger by Thursday 🙂  

We have also added melon cantaloupes and jalapeno chillies (both from Spain) and conference pears (Holland).

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Exciting survey results

Thank you all again for filling in our survey. The vast majority of our existing customers responded which was very helpful and we gained some insight from a few ex-customers too.

Overwhelming support for local – all but one respondent supported including non-certified, locally grown produce in boxes – so long as it has been grown in environmentally friendly ways, following organic principles. This support is very encouraging news to ourselves and will be for other growers too.

Key factor – most of you heard about us from a friend and family member or from general word of mouth. Never mind us advertising – we just need you to get chatting!

Thank you all also for your lovely feedback. In these hard times it is great to know that we are spreading some joy and are valued for it. As our delivery drivers often tell us on their return, 

“There’s a lot of love out there!”

Changes to our boxes

Almost all of you told us that you would like to see more locally grown produce in our boxes and that this was more important than organic certification. So we are making some changes to our boxes.

If you would like to have a box which only contains certified organic produce then we can still do that – just let us know. If you are happy to receive some things which have been grown locally to high environmental, standards – but are not certified organic – then we will sometimes add these to boxes.

We will make clear where all produce has come from in our newsletter. The main immediate change you will see is that we have added some of our own garden produce to the shop and to a new ‘Our garden’s selection’ on our homepage.

All of this means that we are no longer allowed to market our boxes as “organic veg boxes”. However you can be assured that everything in them will have been produced to high environmental standards. If you want 100% organic certified fruit and veg then you can have that too. Just tell us.

Our garden is too small and not currently profitable enough to be worth paying more than £500 a year to get certified as organic, but we hope to get there one day.

Recipe

This week’s recipe is for a wonderful Roasted Fennel, Mushroom and White Bean Brown Rice Gratin. Give it a go and let us know what you think 🙂