Each week we try to include as much as we can from our smaller growers – once we’ve worked out what’s available from them and worked that into the plan for the box, we’ll order the rest of the box from larger growers. The future of food in Tasmania needs to celebrate farms of all shapes and sizes, and let’s not forget that all big growers started small at some point! The saga of this week’s cucumbers is a case in point…
We needed 190 cucumbers this week for your boxes. We knew that one of our growers, Marcus (who by the way has lovely field grown heirloom sauce tomatoes available at the moment for $2.5/kilo, we can pass on his details if you’re interested), had lots of cucumbers he was hoping to sell. Meanwhile, when we ordered this week’s potatoes (the super-delicious white-eye, very similar to a pink-eye in flavour but very different skin colour) from John, he mentioned that his cousin Danny had lots of small cucumbers available, probably about 40. We then found out that Marcus was only able to do around 80 cucumbers, and the “small” cucumbers from Danny were really not small at all (at which point we promptly doubled the price!). Meanwhile, our contingency plan for the remaining cucumbers with Tassie Pride (who grew this week’s capsicums) fell through, and a desperate last-minute call to Grown for Taste in Saltwater wasn’t going to work as an option either, both due to issues with freight logistics… and then, just as we were looking at plan E, we got an availability email from Hermione from Longley, letting us know that they had loads of cucumbers looking for a home! If you’re wondering why sometimes the spoiler list is a little late, here’s a taste of what’s going on behind the scenes…
As well as the complicated cucumbers, we’ve also got more of Brendan’s great raspberries (after a few phone calls last week he adjusted his irrigation system resulting in a firmer berry with the same great flavour), the first of Joua‘s purple carrots, the Canes sweet, crisp and juicy Nashi pears (a great alternative to crackers with your cheese, if you don’t eat them all first!), and for the $40 boxes only Matt’s first season’s baby corn (something I’ve only ever seen in cling-wrap at the supermarket before last week!) Enjoy – more seasonal treats to come next week!
