GO BEYOND FOUR SEASONS

EARLY

WILD GARLIC
Wales & Scotland, UK
Jan - May

Hard frosts in Scotland and dry weather in Wales have been working against the Wild Garlic season, but it’s finally getting going. With rising temperatures and rain due over the next two few days, things should pick up even further. By working with skilled, respectful foragers in Cornwall, Wales and Scotland through its run, we should be able to move around the UK for a good supply right through to late May, early June. Expect flavour to mellow out as abundance and leaf size increases.

Three Cornered Leek Flowers deserve a mention too - less punchy than the later in the year Wild Garlic heads, these mark the near end of its life cycle and will open up in the coming days, running through to May, if conditions are kind.

Sourcing wild food and supporting the foragers who hold valuable knowledge is an important part of challenging an industrialised food system that favours all-year-round availability, homogenised flavours and dependable yields. These resilient plants offer up valuable sources of nutrient-dense food while restoring our connection to nature through the truest example of seasonality. ⁠

Our foragers spend hours selectively cutting Wild Garlic from the forest floor, before meticulously sorting through their stock, removing any foreign leaves. This is labour intensive work, demanding expert knowledge and a respect for the plant’s natural environment. Proper harvesting methods encourage regrowth while over-picking can have the opposite effect. Each patch should be left for three or four years to regenerate.

LATE

CARROTS - SANDY, YELLOW, RED, PURPLE & WHITE
Dunkirk, France
Aug - Apr

We’re hitting the final weeks for François’ Carrots, as soil temperatures rise and we come to the end of storage root vegetable season. Right now, his Sandy, Yellowstone, Ruby, Purple Haze and White Satin are tasting just as good as when they were at their peak, but some allowances should be made for the late stage when it comes to calibre and shelf life - particularly the sensitive red-fleshed Ruby variety.

The same goes for his other root vegetables: radishes and Jerusalem Artichokes will all finish up by the end of March at the latest. A grower with whom we’ve been working for over a decade, it’s been a relief to see him on better ground this season, following an incredibly difficult run throughout the months-long flooding of 2023 and 2024.

At the age of eighteen, François set up his own farming business, specializing in leeks, potatoes and carrots, commodities mainly destined for large wholesalers. Over time, however, he came face to face with a disappointing reality: the dream he had nurtured since childhood of growing a wide variety of varieties was not meeting market demand.

Our history with François - stemming from a chance meeting through a convent-run food bank project - started with a visit to his fields, where we uncovered sandy rows of unusual varieties he had patiently cultivated, just waiting for the right audience. Over the course of the following years, we’ve seen our growing plan with François expand to satisfy our shared passion for incredible flavour, building a reputation built on his humble good humour and dedication to improve the status quo.

Today, François works alongside his wife and children, sharing with them his passion for diversity and innovation, which he strives to pass on to the next generation. His products find their way into the kitchens of some of the most renowned chefs in London and Paris - and it only takes one bite to understand the culmination of a lifetime of dedication and hard work