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!

Gardening with Cooking Waste!

Re-purpose used tea leaves

The next time you steam or boil some veggies, don't just dump the water down the drain! Let the water cool down and then use it to water your plants. The nutrients that have boiled off of your veggies provide great food for them and you'll be amazed at how much more lively they look without needing to buy nutrients or add fertilizers. As an added bonus, save the remains from coffee ground and tea bags to sprinkle across the top soil around azaleas, rhododendrons, camelias, gardenias, and blueberries. All these plants prefer slightly acidic soil, so by spreading the leaves and grounds (about 1/4 inch deep) you'll can adjust the pH of the soil to suit them. HGTV

Prolonging Your Produce

How many times have we set something on a shelf in the fridge or placed it inside the crisper, only to come back not even two days later to find it has gone bad? Thankfully, prolonging the life of your organic produce is not as hard as you’d think. It all starts from the moment it enters your home.

The cleaner your produce is before it enters your fridge, the longer it will last. As a side note, the cleaner your fridge is, the longer your food will last as well. Gently wash and dry all produce before storing it, even those with protective skins on them like oranges and bananas.

 I recommend using a solution of 3 parts water to 1 part vinegar, the vinegar works as an anti-bacterial and keeps the produce from breaking down as quickly. For an even more complete clean, try adding a tablespoon of baking soda and a squeeze or two of lemon juice.

The baking soda and vinegar will react together, helping to actively clean the produce by forming bubbles of hydrogen dioxide. The lemon acts as an astringent, helping to close the pores of the exposed plant tissue and prevent access to invading bacteria.

Once washed, spread your produce on a flat surface and separate all your leafy greens from everything else. Interesting fact, if you put spinach or kale in the same bin as apples or peaches, the greens will become yellow and limp within a day or two.

The reason for this is differences in production and reactions to Ethylene gas. By keeping your leafy vegetables separate, you are actually prolonging their life in your fridge.

On to storage! Keep the locations that you store you produce dry. Some people prefer to wrap each leafy vegetable in paper towels until they are ready to be used. This is a good method and helps to absorb the water, keep the leaves cooler, while still letting them breathe.

Another greener alternative is to invest in some new produce dedicated dishtowels. Wash the dishtowels in the same vinegar/baking soda/lemon solution as I mentioned earlier, rinse well and let them air dry.

Line the bottom of each bin with a dish towel and then, once the greens have been placed in the bin, place another dry dishtowel on top. You can layer additional towels as needed. By using dishtowels, you can easily switch out a damp towel for a dry one and lower your paper usage footprint.

If you are interested in finding out the optimum temperatures and storage for a specific type of produce or knowing more about which types of produce are sensitive to Ethylene (like Avocados and Carrots), please check out this produce storage table.

9 Ways To Bring More Veggies Into Your Diet

With December around the corner, our diets can get inundated with sweets and treats - sometimes we forget to take care of our bodies in the dessert madness of the season. Here are a few ideas to make sure you're keeping a place at the table for those good old veggies.

1. Incorporate veggies into a morning omelette. Spinach, onion, zucchini, peppers, and mushrooms are a great way to introduce vegetables to start off your day.

2. Make a soup or stew. The possibilities are endless. Use a ton of veggies in one soup or prepare a soup with just one vegetable ingredient.  A great way to get your veggies in at lunch time.

3. Add green leafy veggies to soups and stews. Spinach, kale and swiss chard are great additions and are packed with calcium and iron. A great addition on a chilly winter day.

4. Create a salad that is not just lettuce: add spinach, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, pepper, beets... the possibilities are endless. Create your own healthy salad dressing using olive oil, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, and salt and pepper.

5. If you have a sweet tooth, sneak puree zucchini into your chocolate cake or muffins or make a traditional carrot cake or zucchini bread.

6. Add spinach or kale to your morning smoothie. Feel that morning energy zing.

7. Add vegetables to your pasta sauce. Whether it's a cream sauce or tomato sauce, adding veggies to the sauce will enhance the flavour and you are getting all your veggies in one dish.

8. Keep cleaned and cut up raw veggies in your fridge for easy snacking. Carrots, celery, cauliflower, cucumbers, and broccoli are great for snacking on at anytime during the day. Consider dipping them in a delicious yogurt dip or hummus.

9. Plan your meal around a vegetable and add your protein later. By making your vegetable your main item, it will get you thinking about vegetables. Try to introduce a new veggie to your plate or consider using more colourful veggies like beets, sweet potatoes, eggplant, or squash rather than the traditional potatoes and boiled carrots.

Summer Storage Tips for Fruits and Veggies

We get a lot of questions about how best to extend the shelf life of the produce you receive in your bins and how long different items are expected to last. Keeping fresh food fresh throughout the week can be especially challenging in these hot summer days. Here are a few tips on how best to store your produce this summer to make the most of what arrives in your bin.
Fruit

If you want to speed up the ripening on your peaches, plums, apricots, or nectarines, place them in a paper bag at room temperature. Cold makes stone fruit mealy, so skip the fridge and keep them on the counter instead. Be careful not to pile stone fruits on top of each other, as they bruise easily.

Berries are so hard to keep fresh -- and everyone's favourite treat this time of year. When you first get a basket of berries, pick through it to remove any moldy ones, as mold spreads incredibly quickly through berries, and then spread everything else on a baking sheet and cover gently with a towel. Store in the fridge.

It's always a guess as to whether tomatoes would be best included in the fruit or vegetable section, but either way you want to store these summer beauties stem side down in a single layer. They like room temperature best and prefer to be away from direct sunlight, which can cause bruising and softening.

Vegetables

If you have an overabundance of summer squash and zucchini (and who doesn't at this time of year?), the best way to keep it fresh is to store it at room temperature or in the fridge for up to a week. You may find sturdier varieties last longer in the fridge than that -- great! As long as it's still firm and fresh, eat it!

Bell Peppers do best kept in a plastic bag in the fridge for up to a week, while cucumbers can be kept either uncovered or in a plastic bag in the fridge for up to a week.

If you're eating good, sturdy greens like kale, swiss chard, or collard greens, wash them in lukewarm water to remove any dirt, then wrap in a damp paper towel and store in a plastic bag in the fridge for up to a week.

Who doesn't love corn in the summer? And who doesn't feel immensely disappointed when you peel back that husk to discover your cob is not as fresh as it could be? Store corn husked or unhusked in the fridge for up to a week and avoid that disappointment!

Fresh tender greens like arugula and baby spinach stay fresher longer if their roots are still attached. Store these guys in a plastic bag in the fridge for up to four days. If the roots are still on, wrap the roots in a damp paper towel.

Beets can be a double storage issue if they arrive with their greens intact -- cut their tops off and store the greens separately the same way you'd store heartier greens like kale and chard. Store the beets in a plastic bag in the fridge for up to three weeks.

Summer is the time of fresh herbs, so make the most of them by storing them correctly. Heartier herbs, like mint and parsley can be prewashed, wrapped in a damp paper towel and stored in a plastic bag in the fridge. Others, like cilantro, do well to be kept upright in a glass of water in the fridge. Only wash tender herbs like basil and chervil right before use.