Daffodils and flowering brassicas

Lovely daffs planted amongst our rhubarb in the field!

Temperature today feels a bit more like it should in March, but we have really enjoyed the last couple of weeks of warm sunny weather, just felt much needed for the soul. And we saved a bit of ££ on electricity not having to use the hot bed in the green house!

Which helps off-set (well, not really, but let's try to be optmistic) the demise of our van. Yep, the 'new' van which we got last Autumn, verdict from our well-trusted garage is that it's not worth the money to repair. We were expecting it since it had it's episode last week but still feels a bit depressing to say the least. Nothing we could have done, wasn't something that would ever have come up in a service, so literally just bad luck. And we are just grateful no accident caused and it's 'just' a thing (that happened to cost a lot of money!). So, the new plan is to bring the original and trusty little mini van back into service for the deliveries and hire a van to pick up the veg each week from Manchester. It's worked this week and we're supporting a local van hire business so all good. Onwards and upwards!

In the field:

Everything has been going great guns, and things are starting to suddenly flower! Eeek, so we're rapidly trying to harvest before they go beyond the point of being any good. We harvested a lot of purple sprouting broccoli, spring greens, chard, lettuces. Took Rosie and Chris the good part of a day to harvest it all!! They also flail-mowed some of kale which really had gone to flower, and did some weeding. They also moved some of the massive tarps we have down over winter - they uncovered a big area of ground a few weeks ago to let whatever was in the ground geminate and have now covered them again to kill those pesky weeds. Chris has done a little video to show you how it's all going:

In the boxes:

Regular boxes have chestnut mushrooms, swede, sweet potato, oranges and from Prion lettuce (some with roots -stick in water if so), purple sprouting broccoli / flowering sprout tops, and spring greens. Small have purple sprputing broccoli, palermo peppers, Prion chard, leeks, bananas.

Our spring greens have suddenly (overnight!) started to go to flower so we're harvesting them as quickly as possible rather than wasting them. If yours has some flowers on there you can eat them too (Chris eats them raw). Next week we're relying on harvesting the last of our brassicas and hoping there's enough to go round!! Might be tight but we just couldn't justify ordering when stuff in the field.

An extra special thanks to all of you who are so loyal to your veg box- lots of you we see and hear from, others we don't, but a massive thank you for sticking with the boxes through the seasons. We just couldn't run the business without this support, and by having the veg delivered to your home you reduce the barriers to you getting and eating the best veg that you can have. If it's there, you tend to end up doing something with it!

In the shop:

Plenty of: potatoes, carrots, brown/Roscoff onions, garlic, cherry tomatoes, sweet potatoes, palermo peppers, white cabbages, leeks, beetroot, swede, purple sprouting broccoli flowrs, rhubarb

Limited: Should have a few leaves and lettuces from the field but not sure exactly what!

Fruit: Bananas, orange, blood oranges, clementines, lemons (if you aren't putting lemon juice on your kale and spring greens you're missing out!)

Eggs, sourdough bread, apple juice, other organic pantry staples and also organic beer! We've also got milk in from Pentrefelin Dairy (Llandyrnog) - more on this to come but it's verty tasty milk. Veg box recipe books too.

Recipe inspiration:

Lots of you have bought recipe books in the shop, hope you're finding them useful.

Here's some easy ideas from Riverford for the purpple sprouting broccoli (and flower sprouts). This swede, leek and bacon gratin sounds just the thing for a cold evening.

Finally, we came across a documentary which literally feels so close to what we're about it and some of the things we've discussed since taking on this business it was like listening to Chris speaking in stereo at times! If you're interested you have to sign up to a 'video on demand' platform called WaterBear (it's free and there are lots of interesting things on there -short and long) and find the documentary called 'The Organic Life' - it's about an hour long and a relatively gentle watch. So many themes in there that resonated with us, not least the point that's made that this kind of produce shouldn't be exclusive, it should be accessible to all and that's what we're trying to do.

have a lovely week

#enjoy that tasty veg

Important stuff:

*The nature of how we order and plan the veg means that boxes can change at the last minute, so if you don't have something that we've mentioned here then we have had to substitute it for something else. If you need any help identifying anything please let us know!

All veg is either grown by us at Prion (not certified organic but organic principles followed) or by farms who are organically certified. We prioritise UK (seasonal) veg. We try to re-use packaging wherever possible to reduce waste.

Please remember to wash all the veg you get from us - ideally a couple of times - we don't wash it before passing it on to you. Because we don't use pesticides, you may find some little 'friends' (!) hanging out on the leaves, we do try to check but sometimes hard to spot them.