This week’s box features quite a few special things that we’ve struggled to get hold of this season all at once! The lack of any extended periods of warm weather during the summer, as mentioned in last week’s blog, has especially created issues with fruit growers; the Canes at Franklin have had a very difficult season as a result of this – their fruit set was excellent, but a lot of fruit has simply refused to ripen up, bringing their yields right down. This has meant we’ve been unable to source any of their delicious stonefruit to share with you – until this week! Fruit supplements receive a handful of Nashi pears, but fruit boxes receive a full kg of a late season variety of nectarines. In addition, we’ve bought out the very last of Lucaston Park Orchard’s Amber Jewel plums, which means all $30, $25 and $40 box customers receive a kg of these, and fruit box customers get an extra kg as well. Fruit boxes also receive a few delicious passionfruit from a home-grower in Geilston Bay.
We’ve also been able to source a few pretty rare items from a couple of smaller growers further upstream from Hobart. Tomatoes, being a fruit, have suffered from the same malaise as other fruits this season – insufficient warm days to ripen up – which is not an issue for temperature controlled hydroponic setups, but is an issue for old-fashioned “field” tomatoes (i.e. the ones you traditionally plant on the show day long weekend!) $40 boxes receive a kg of delicious naturally ripened field tomatoes from Kevin in Dromedary (if we’re lucky, we’re hoping we might be able to get some more for other box types next week). Heading a bit further north to Maydena, Nicky has had quite a good season for broad beans, supplying us with 50kg to share out with $20, $40 and $25 boxes this week (and again, hopefully a few more next week).
