Sign up for the five latest stories, once a week.
Taken as a whole, 2015 has treated us well. A bright and dry, if cool, spring allowed us to plant in good conditions, and though crops were slow to get away in the cold, all was well as we entered summer. The persistent dampness of late summer brought a spate of fungal disease, but the wonderfully bright and dry September and October were a gift to all farmers, allowing perfect ripening and harvesting conditions and a late rally in many crops.
You won’t be seeing a sale at Riverford this January – or at any other time. It might seem like we’re being mean, but the opposite is true: saying ‘no’ to discount marketing is fairest for everyone, including you!
There is only one general Riverford meat topic right now – how much meat should we be eating? It’s a tough question for a butcher and one that, not surprisingly, most aren’t prepared to face up to.
We’ve all got so used to everything being available all the time that we forget that, outside the world of vegetables, there is little more than traces of seasonality in most of the meat we eat. Exceptions exist, in the case of Christmas turkeys and geese for example, but these are market driven. Bernard Matthews and his marketing team failed in their efforts to de-seasonalise turkeys and we, as a consumer group kept turkey as a once a year treat.
I can’t remember exactly, but it must be about ten years since we started the Meat Box, or Riverford Butchery as it’s now known. Back then, organic food was on the crest of a wave. Vegetable box sales were soaring and it felt as though the next step was to do the same with meat. We were right but, at the same time, very, very wrong.
Issue 12: Fairness and five years.
Find out more about Wicked Leeks and our publisher, organic veg box company Riverford.