broad beans & Heisenberg’s principle

Half the staff are lost in the broad beans, picking with deft, nimble and (I hope) well motivated fingers, moving systematically up the rows like marshalled locusts. A bean top rustles now and then and occasionally a head pops up to carry out a completed crate, but otherwise they could all be asleep in there.  Read more particularly if you want to know what Heisenberg’s principle has to do with picking beans!

strawberry season

Strawberries mark the start of summer and provoke Pavlovian dog style anticipation but, as in so many years, the first pickings had very disappointing flavour. Just as I was despairing and the first complaints started arriving, the flavour developed (no one knows why) and I am confident this will improve further as we get into the main season.

in season – spinach

spinach is plentiful through June and there are a lot of thrifty but imaginative ways to use spinach. Here are some ideas: 

1.  simple oriental spinach (see picture) shred spinach stir fry in olive oil and serve sprinkled with soy sauce. Great served with grilled fish.

2.  greens and cannellini beans – blanch spinach for a minute in boiling water, drain well, then cook gently in olive oil with sliced garlic and chilli. Stir in some drained cannellini beans (or other pulses), season well and drizzle with olive oil.

3. max out your meals – to make curries, stews and risottos go further, stir in spinach towards the end of cooking. Adds flavour, colour and stretches your supper to feed another person.

there are a lot more recipe ideas on our website.

tasting french carrots

we’ve been tasting carrot varieties today, all grown on our French farm in the Vendee. Our stored Devon carrots last until the beginning of May and we have a 4-5 week gap when we import carrots to fill the gap before our Devon bunched carrots come into season. The plan is to bridge this gap with carrots from our French farm and as we tasted 8 varieities the decision was unanimous -  Namur is the best. So you’ll be seeing these in the boxes this time next year.

a credit munch worthy diet: £11 a week!

 see the letter to the Daily Mail by Celia Gunn a credit munch worthy diet. Two energetic people, one week on organic food (including their Riverford vegbox): total expenditure on food £22.66.

ethical business – what does it mean to you?

Not only did we win Best Ethical Business at the Observer Ethical Awards, we also got to meet Colin Firth… But what is an ethical business? We’d love to know your thoughts.

 

Here’s a short film  about Riverford shown at the award ceremony.

(photos by Alicia Canter)

fleece for sale

Fleece is a godsend to growers and gardeners; its use not only brings crops forward but also excludes pests like carrot and cabbage root fly and cabbage whites. After the local deer, badgers and my dog have run over it we can seldom use it again on a large scale but it is still fine for garden use and a number of locals collect it for their gardens. We will supply a vegbox of pre-used fleece (roughly 30-40 sq m) with a few tips on use for £4.99. Any margin we get after cutting it up we will donate to Send a Cow.

the big lunch 19th July

We need to find new opportunities for communities to come together and flourish. The best community events are organised locally, involving a mutual, all-embracing hospitality. Spontaneity and even a touch of anarchy bring an event to life. This is what Tim Smit and his team at the Eden project are aiming for on Sunday 19th July with their ‘Big Lunch’. The idea is to get neighbours together to talk, eat, share and get to know each other. So how do we fit into this?

I hope you become one of those activists who will initiate local events and make 19th July the first of many Big Lunches. For those of you thinking of cooking something, we will be suggesting some seasonal recipes and offering the ingredients discounted in bulk boxes nearer the time. Read more

rhubarb + strawberry crumble

I used to be a strawberry purist; simply eating them fresh with perhaps a little cream. That was until I tried Jane Baxter’s rhubarb + strawberry crumble. Watch the video to see how she does it.

rhubarb – in season

picking rhubarb

some of the rhubarb is flowering making a stunning backdrop in the fields. There’s a lot of discussion on the cause of rhubarb flowering this year: the recent warm weather perhaps or the age of the plant – some of ours are around 4 years old. Add your two penny worth to the discussion…