Did you know: Farm to Table at Green Earth Organics!

Have you ever wondered how your fruits and veggies get from the farm to your table? “One, Two, Three, Door!” has been a slogan of Green Earth Organics for years and, secretly, is also one of the things we pride ourselves on. Not only is it how easy to place an order sign up, pick your fruits and veggies, submit your order, and have it arrive at your door. It is also exactly how many steps your produce travels before it arrives at your home or office ready to eat.

One! Your fruits and veggies are planted, cared for, and harvested at the farm.
Depending on the farm, they may clean and process everything directly or they may pack everything into produce boxes for pick up. They are then stored in a cool area until they’re picked up for the next leg of their journey. Thanks to the resurgence in family farming versus mono-farming, there are many different sizes of farms.

Photograph by Nikki

The farmers you see at local outdoor Markets, for example, are usually very small and don’t produce enough during the harvest season to use a distributor to sell large quantities. Instead they bring their harvest directly to the markets themselves and, that way, save money to reinvest in their farm. Larger farms often find themselves with extra produce once the harvest gets going, so they sell to distributors who pick it up for them and then move it all over British Columbia. Our company prefers to use distributors because asking a small farm to produce the quantities we need each week, would be very taxing for them and would defeat our purpose of supporting local food.

Two! Produce from hundreds of different farms arrive at a distribution warehouse.
If the produce has not already been cleaned and processed at the farm, then this is where all the extra leaves and bits of dirt get removed or brushed off. Once ready to sell, each piece goes into nicely labeled produce boxes and is split up into the many different orders. Green Earth Organics orders from two main organic produce distributors. Fun Fact! In order to distribute organic food, a distributor must also be certified organic, even if they do not grow any organic food themselves. We place orders with our distributors every day, based on the projected orders of you, our wonderful customers!

In fact, we get updates twice a week on what sort of produce is coming out of the various farms. This week one of our distributors let us know to keep an eye out for large quantities of canning peaches and pickling cucumbers, as well as upcoming first harvests of local pears. They also let us know if there will be any supply problems. Blueberries, for example, will see a slump due to all the rain and local apples will be expensive and harder to find due to a hail storm earlier this season.

Three! Your fruits and veggies arrive early each morning to our small warehouse ready to be packed into your bins. The bins themselves are washed every morning before packing and are then sorted by size, ready to be filled. Our two packers utilize a long counter with rows of produce both in front and behind them. Each person’s order is individually printed out and the items collected to be placed into a bin. Once your bin is ready, it is stacked with the other bins on the same route to wait for your driver.

Door! Your drivers arrive in advance of their delivery time to look over and make changes to their route. The bins are checked over for any missing items and, if an item is unavailable, your driver makes a note to stop by one of our suppliers to see if we can pick up any individual units of that item before delivering. If the supplier does not have an item available, the drivers then check local stores along their route in a last effort to find that item for you. Then the bins are carefully packed into the van and away they go, straight to your door!