So I had in my vegetable racks and fridge:

Two sacks of lovely potatoes.

Two enormous cauliflowers

Enough broccoli to sink a battleship

Just the right amount of onions, probably

Half a field of carrots

Lots of lovely lovely leeks

A couple of nice dark green cabbages

I may have forgotten something but if so, I’m sure it was delicious

Now then, Riverford claim about the roots and greens box “The veg has a good shelf life, so if you’re feeling extra thrifty try a fortnightly delivery.”  which is what I effectively had to cope with. I chose to cook one of the cauliflowers first, grated some carrots for a salad and started to munch my way through the broccoli. Potatoes keep for weeks in the dark so I didn’t worry about them too much.  After the end of teh first week I could see an of the two boxes end in sight. The second cauliflower had developed a mouldy patch but only in one isolated segment, the rest was fine. The carrots were in extraordinarily good condition. Supermarket carrots go limp after a couple of days when kept out in a room with variable temperature but these were still crisp and juicy. The leeks lasted well two. No need to peel away several layers of yellow leaves, just trim the ends a little bit.

Canceling Your Organic Box for the Holidays

Most organic box schemes have quite straight forward ways of canceling your box for short periods.

Riverford

• You can cancel up to 4 orders in a row online through ‘my future orders’ on the web site or by contacting your local distributor.

• If you are going away for more than 4 weeks, you can either remove your regular order via the ‘my regular order’ page or contact your local distributor with the dates that you will not need deliveries. Make sure you also remove any one off orders you may have made from the ‘my future orders’ page.

• Please remember that we need two working days notice before your delivery day to amend or cancel orders. You will need to phone or email your local distributor by 5pm, or by 8pm if you go online to make the changes.

Abel and Cole

• Log in and go to My Account.
• Click on the ‘my holidays’ section.
• Enter all the dates when you don’t want a delivery – you might not want one the day before you go away, so you’ll need to include this date.
• To add dates simply click on the calendar that appears.

Farmaround

• Give them a minimum of 2 working days notice
• They will suspend deliveries for any length of time that’s convenient for you.
• You can do this using their ‘suspend order form’ on the web site or contact them by phone (If you do the latter, please remember to state the date that you want your last order to arrive and the date that you want to resume your deliveries.)

Eating Organic on Holiday in the UK

Here’s an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to make sure they eat just as healthily on holiday as they do the rest of the year.

Organic Places to Stay UK and Ireland

“This book will be an invaluable travelling companion.” – Craig Sams, Vice Chairman of the Soil Association and Founder of Green & Black’s

“Linda Moss’ wonderfully well researched and informative book will provide you with all the information you need to plan your break.” – Guy Watson Organic Farmer, Founder of Riverford Organic Vegetables

“With more and more people choosing a low carbon footprint holiday, Linda’s book is the must have guide for superb accommodation and tasty nutritious food.” – Peter Shield, Editor of Natural Choices

“A well researched guide that is a good starting point for planning a green holiday or just a weekend away. Every Household should have one.” – Laura Sevier, The Ecologist

It looks invaluable and ideal for popping in the glove compartment for trips and even days out. It doesn’t just cover organic B&Bs and hotels but also lots of places where you can eat organically or buy organic supplies in your chosen area.

You can buy it on Amazon here: Organic Places to Stay UK and Ireland

My organic box comes full of lovely, fresh organic vegetables but often I’m out when it arrives.
The front of my house gets the afternoon sun and this is bad news for my veggies! Even if I had a fairly shady spot on those sultry hot London days we sometimes get I could still have a problem.
Riverford have done some interesting work on the problem and spent a considerable amount of time last year experimenting with solutions. They even got Exeter Uni involved to see what percentage of the year temperatures might be a problem for the shelf life of the various vegetables.

How Do You Keep Your Organic Box Cool?

Riverford have come up with a couple of interesting solutions. They tried all sorts of methods but the two best (short of having a hole in the ground to pop the box in!) were using an ‘eco-cool blanket’ or building a rather charming cold store cupboard/planter.

The Eco Cool Blanket

This is a wonderfully hitech solution. You buy a purpose made cover which keeps your organic boxes up to 5°C cooler and keeps the box dry if the problem is summer rain rather than blazing sunshine.
You pop the blanket inside your previous week’s box which you are returning and your delivery driver covers your new box with it.
The eco-cool blanket is elasticated,fits even the largest box, looks very much like the sort of thing people wrap themselves in at the end of the marathon and costs £4.25

Eco-Cool Food Safe

This is a much more attractive solution but costs quite a lot more. Riverford says:

a wooden safe that encases your veg box in a layer of compost and soil, ensuring that any produce put inside stays up to 10 degrees cooler than if just left on a doorstep.

Not only that but it looks really attractive once it’s filled with plants:

How does it work?
1. The safe has a high thermal capacity and captures the cool of the night to preserve your veg through the day
2. Water evaporating from it gives an extra cooling effect, like putting a damp towel over a barrel of beer
3. When filled with soil and compost and locked, it’s so heavy that no-one can make off with your veg box while you’re out

The Eco-Cool Food Safe comes in 3 sizes, is delivered in a flat pack and costs between £69 and £74.

Low Tech Solutions to Hot Organic Boxes

Much though I like the Eco-Cool Food Safe I’m an old hippy at heart and that food safe looks pretty easy to copy. What I’m thinking is two wine crates for the sides and a wooden shelf for the top. Pop a window box planter (wooden) on top, fill with soil and plants. An old cupboard door could be added and the whole lot painted with a chalky mix of emulsion and water to give a shabby chic white or maybe a chippy pale blue. (This might just be my Shabby Chic obsession talking!) Stand it against a wall, ideally  somewhere that gets a bit of shade and your organic boxes are going to stay nice and cool on the hottest day (or dry when it does the other thing!)

It would be a little taller than the smallest bought one but that should make it easier to get your organic boxes out again.

Supermarkets now sell more than 70 per cent of organic produce in the UK — but, having done well in the organic boom, they are now bearing the brunt of the decline. According to Soil Association surveys, it is “barcode” sales of organic that are falling. Farmers’ markets, farm shops and box schemes are still all doing OK.

In their monthly food awards, the Observer newspaper gave the Riverford Field Kitchen the title “Best Ethical Restaurant. Last week Jane Baxter and Sam Miller, who run the Riverford Field Kitchen, were presented with this prestigious award, a fine achievement given some notable contenders.

Guy Watson of Riverford writes in Farm news:

I like to think that we won because, as well as serving the most fantastic and affordable food, mostly grown on the farm, we are the real thing; for 25 years we have been doing what we do, in the belief that great food and sane farming can withstand the ebb and flow of food fashions. Having spent the last few days in London I took the opportunity to look at a few markets, greengrocers and box schemes. It was disappointing to see how many were responding to the recession by trading down to selling uncertified “as good as organic” produce, often with packaging and vans still implying fully organic produce. Everything we sell is certified organic; we keep it affordable by growing ourselves and working closely with our co-op.

Congratulations to Riverford Organic Vegetables, who also happen to be our own suppliers of top quality organic boxes all through the winter spring gap.

Ethical Superstore have recently introduced a system to provide a small range of local organic veg box schemes as a trial, with an additional national vegetable delivery scheme to cover most of the remaining areas of the mainland UK.

We at Organic Boxes blog would be interested to hear from customers who tried this method, whether by registering for a regular organic vegetable box scheme or ordering a one off hamper.