The best of times
For Southern hemisphere produce farmers Christmas is a baffling time – just when everything is getting really good everybody eats out or goes away on holiday.
If you’re around for our first delivery this Friday or over the next couple of weeks then you’re in for a treat – there really is no better time to be an organic fruit and vegetable lover.
It is the best of fruit and veg times.
Joe Sgro at Foothills Organic near Colac reckons it’s been one of his best summers in the last twenty odd years he’s been growing for CERES.
In fact things have been growing too well – Joe had to plough under a couple of rows of greens that came on too quickly over the break.
Joe shrugs it off and besides he’s too busy harvesting onions, garlic, bok & pak choi, kale and the first of his Sebago and Pontiac potatoes as well as the thirty thousand winter leeks he needs to plant by next week.
I ask Joe about his famous as-eaten-on MasterChef Midnight Pearl blue potatoes – he says they’re doing fine and will be ready in about a month.
Meanwhile up on Peter and Helen Kamvissis’ farm near Mildura the forecast for the grape season has also been very good – Peter and Helen’s first lot of organic black seedless and Menindee seedless will arrive at the Fair Food warehouse just in time for our first deliveries.
Plums are also coming in from Hazeldean Forest Farm near Warragul which means Jason and Marg will be getting ready to pick the new season’s apples.
And down at CERES’ own Joe’s Market Garden in Coburg, sweet salad greens are jumping out of the ground, zucs and cucs are growing faster than we can pick them and heritage tomatoes of all colours are ripe ready to go.
And this is just a few farmer highlights – bean bushes are groaning with pods, stone fruit is absolutely peaking, there are black berries, blueberries and strawberries, rock melons, honey dews and mangoes – if you ever had fantasies of swimming in a multi-coloured pool of produce this is the time!
Plus, we have plenty of amazing-value, sustainably grown IPM fruit and veg – which in case you’re new to Fair Food is produce grown using very low or no spray Integrated Pest Management methods.
IPM is the most sustainable form of conventional farming and as far as we know Fair Food is the only grocery in Victoria providing an IPM range. Curious? Read about the sustainable farmers you’ve never heard about here.
We’re delivering from this Friday, so if your cripser, fruit bowl and pantry need some love, get you order in by 7pm Thursday and we’ll do the rest!
Welcome back
Chris
