Vegbox from Riverford
This morning we got our first vegbox from Riverford Organic Veg delivered. Riverford up here in the North East are based on Home Farm near Northallerton, so while its not very local, its better than some other schemes we have seen and/or used, plus they don’t airfreight anything, so its not all that bad.
Anyway the local deliveryman, Ian, knocked on the door and introduced himself and gave a quick little bit of info about the veg, which was great. Then he realised that we have met before as we used the scheme about 3 years ago, but still it was quite nice, and if I was brand new to the whole idea then it would have been perfect.
This weeks box was quite nice we got some lovely vine tomatoes, a bag of lettuce, carrots, celery, parsnips, leeks, onions and some sante potatoes. We also ordered some mushrooms as an extra.
The box itself, which is a small veg box, was £11.45 and the mushrooms were £1.49. Compared to the equivalent organic veg from Tesco, its about the same price, if we got a larger box it works out a bit cheaper. But there are only two of us, so we don’t need that much veg!
Now onto the contents, well its organic and fresh from the farm, well most of it, some has been shipped from abroad, but I will explain a little bit about that latter. Now where was I, ok so its organic and fresh from the farm, so its still covered in mud, its misshapen and all different sizes, everything the supermarkets have taught is to hate. Which means its good!
The carrots are less bright and orangey but they smell so good and feel nice and juicy, the leeks are as good as the prize winning ones grown by my farther-in-law, if not as big! Parsnips, not normally a veg I am that much in love with, look and smell absolutely beautiful.
The potatoes, look just brilliant, and will be lovely roasted, boiled, chipped etc, and I fear for how much I will cry when I cut into those onions.
Now I said some stuff comes from abroad, well this week we have a couple of items which have been shipped in, most obviously the tomatoes. These lovely vine tomatoes which you can see in the photo are from Spain, now some might be thinking, hey that’s not good, why not grow them here in hot houses to cut down on the carbon footprint. Well it has been shown that importing them by sea from southern Europe is much less environmentally damaging than growing them in a hot house.
Now this isn’t true seasonally eating, but lets face it, in this country we have what’s called the hungry gap between April and May, when there isn’t a lot available and for many of us, the tomato has become a year round staple. If Riverford didn’t offer people tomatoes, then they would go to Tesco and buy hothouse grown tomatoes, which are more environmentally damaging. At least it better than nowt.
The other two imported veg are the lovely lettuce bag which has come from France and the crunchy celery from Italy.
All in all I am very satisfied with our first box, tonight’s tea is going to be baked parsnips and carrots with sausages, made with some of the parsnips, carrots and onions from Riverford and some sausages we have in the freezer which came from a lovely farm shop in Wooler up the road in Northumbria which Lindsay’s grandparents buy from.
Anyway, next week we are getting some eggs and milk as well, so we will see how that does, but based on the fact that they were pretty good a couple of years ago and the still high quality now, I think it looks good that we will keep using them.

