The Summer Food Disconnect: Can You Find A Veg Minder?

When the summer comes along, the long awaited UK veg starts really rocking and rolling… we are able to grow so much more across the warmer months where we have good steady warm temperatures that don’t drop too far overnight, have long day light hours, and there isn’t any chance of crop killing frosts!

From May onwards until the first frosts of October / November we have some truly amazing vegetables coming out of the ground by growers all over the UK. It’s warm enough for tomatoes, the beetroot comes in a multitude of colours, lettuce grows perfectly, aubergines, beans, peppers, kale, chard, and so much more.

Whilst the conditions for growing this year have been the toughest for a long time, now is still the best time of year for UK vegetables. Especially those growing organically and without artificially heated greenhouses during the winter.

However, this time of year coincides with the summer holidays and a period of time where people want to get away for a bit… And deservedly so, we all deserve a bit of downtime in the middle part of the year, we are certainly feeling like we need it!

This clash of timing means many people miss out on a lot of great local produce, and it causes a huge problem for small scale growers, and small veg businesses like ours. When the summer holidays started a couple of weeks ago over 35% of our customers paused their orders, most for a couple of weeks, some for even longer. Last week 45% of our customers paused and we took a huge hit. We are a small business, with a small team and this kind of drop is a very worrying couple of weeks for growers like us.

This means that our market garden, and the growers in Hampshire that we buy from, have a lot of food ready that doesn’t have a home and we as growers are working extra hours (on top of the farming hours) trying to sell extra produce to shops, restaurants and cafes.

As previously mentioned; we don’t want anyone to feel bad about going on holiday, we can’t wait for our holiday, and that isn’t our intention.. we do however have a couple of options that we hope some might be able to consider:

1.) Take a veg box with you

For those not going abroad and who might be staying in self catering, why not take veg with you. We can switch you to a collection point if your delivery day doesn’t suit your holiday time. And we could put you on to the “build your own option” if you wanted to be selective over what veg you take! There’s always options, so just drop us a message.

2.) Donate your box

Did you know that when you select to pause your veg bag (on your customer dashboard) you can select to donate your veg box for the time it is paused. This means we are able to take the monetary value of your veg box and donate it in veg supply to charities that we work with such as Winchester Beacon Night Shelter and Munch CiC.

3.) Gift your veg box to a neighbour

We call this Veg-Minders… ask a neighbour to keep an eye on your home, drag your bin out, or even feed the cat; and in return gift them your veg box. A lovely way to build local community and for us it’s a chance to show your neighbours what they are missing. You never know they might return the favour when they go on holiday! Simply drop us an email if you’d like your veg bag delivered to a neighbour.

4.) Fortnightly customers

If you are going away for a week, and it’s the week that you would have received your veg bag. Let us know and we can shift your dates around so that you can get one the week you are back, and then fortnightly from then.

We completely understand if this doesn’t work for you, and please do hit pause for those holidays. However if any of these options might work, or you might be able to afford to donate or gift your veg box then that would go a huge way in helping us to keep doing what we do and to help reduce food waste too.

Thank you for reading, considering and supporting local food it means the world to us.