April
April
Our week starts with a bang on a Monday; we begin at about 6am- the pallets arriving on lorries are broken apart, stock checked and put away. The shop is filled and the box team begin packing the hundred or so boxes that go out on a Monday whilst the wholesale team start putting together the shop and restaurant orders. In the packing area Jane weighs and packs everything picked from the farm. We have a busy round that needs to leave before 9am, another at about 12 and a third at 1pm but I love starting the week like this- everyone in and working and chatting about the weekend, comparing what we’ve been cooking or eating, excited by a new addition to the produce list. It’s April, so the light is good now, even at 6am, and we open the doors to the packing shed and the shop to hear the dawn chorus.
There is a moment, when the first round is being packed and the coffee is dripping through the filter, that we run through the morning checks and almost unanimously look at each other and yell ‘food bank!’- the last order for that round to be completed. You see for the past 13 months, thanks to the great generosity of our friends at Real Seeds in Newport, we have been supporting the Pembrokeshire Food Bank with fruit and veg bags, and Monday is the day they hit the shelves. The fruit bags generally go to the transient or homeless, and the veg bags to families. It’s something we absolutely love being part of and being able to supply them at cost means the donation from Real Seeds goes much further. In the last year we’ve provided well over a thousand bags of organic fruit and veg and we’re planning on at least another year of donations too.
This month, April, is the month of change. The hungry gap comes into its own as the root crops that have provided for us all winter come to an end and the summer crops aren’t quite there yet. Increasingly we are seeing this time becoming just as difficult in Europe, even though they are months ahead of our growing season, but with stronger storms and unusual climate events affecting availability and transport they are struggling just as we are. But this is also the time of year when we get those special seasonal glimmers that mean so much more as everything else becomes scarce- asparagus, artichokes, strawberries, purple sprouting broccoli.
In just 8 weeks the citrus will move from Spanish to Italian, then Greek, then South African and then back to Spanish. The potatoes and carrots from Hereford will dwindle, then disappear and we’ll be sourcing from Europe until the first of the UK waxy new pots arrive in June. And the Mediterranean veg and greens will jump week on week, place to place, farm to farm until we start cropping our own in June/July. It’s a rollercoaster, and inevitably there will be wobbles- I say this every year, but do check your veg- as the seasons are stretched it becomes increasingly hard for us to rely on how long things will store for when they’re in and out in a day- but we will always refund it if ever there’s a squishy patch.
This time of change belongs to us too- the shape of our days shift as we begin to spend more time outside, our bodies used in a different pattern of movement planting and hoeing, our skin warmed by the sun again. It’s this time of year that reminds me that I’m just so grateful for the great privilege of being a custodian of this land and the ability to put our hands in the soil and grow food. And whilst I love knowing our produce goes into the kitchens of so many amazing families, restaurants and businesses, I’m equally, if not more, proud of those little unassuming fruit and veg bags going off anonymously to the food bank and into the hands that need them most.
Good right now:
Purple sprouting, salad, spinach, chard, asparagus, artichokes and herbs all great, strawberries and European blueberries are also a really nice little hint of the summer flavours to come. Kale, calabrese broccoli and wintery greens and roots are on the way out, each week the list seems to contract a little! But luckily the local troupe of growers will help us fill the gap and spring greens should be arriving imminently.
Oyster mushrooms from Hyphae are back this week and they should only increase in quantity now. Spring onions have already arrived and we’re looking forward to local broad beans and bunched beet alongside the fruit list expanding a little as the European climate improves. As we’ve expanded in the last 12 months we’ve been so lucky to be able to buy more from a cluster of local Organic growers so I’m really looking forward to being able to add their produce to the list and to extend the local season this year. Our new grower Joe is also already doing an exceptional job so whatever the weather is doing we’re feeling really positive about the year ahead.