We sell our produce in a range of ways … below is an introduction to this season’s outlets (the markets stalls, schemes, cafes and restaurants where you will find our freshly harvested food) and a note on how we get it there! Contacts for more information are at the very end – please read on and hope you get to taste our London-grown food somewhere!

Find Our Freshly Harvested Food:

Do you live in Waltham Forest? – Support good local food by joining our weekly box scheme – click here for more details.

Cafes and restaurants in north and east London that support us on a weekly basis
2011 is our first year for planning and selling our food crops beyond  our own market stalls and box scheme and the Hornbeam Cafe. We have been both inspired and excited by the response we have received from food outlets to London-grown, community inspired food! As the London harvest season kicks in we are delivering produce by foot, by bicycle trailer and in shared vans to the following places – currently 5 main eateries.

Pizza East (Shoreditch) delivered in partnership with The Deli Station (Enfield base) – we distribute salad sacks on a weekly basis to this lovely restaurant where the chefs really value the produce we send; from golden beetroots to Linzer Delikaten salad potatoes. The chefs use voluntary time to come and support the harvesting and growing work at our site. Produce is delivered by Ben and Jo from The Deli Station who are an artisan food distributor around the corner from our growing site – and support our work because of their strong ethical base in the slow food movement.

Pizza East chefs prepare the ground for potatoes

Chefs help to harvest salad leaves

Back in the kitchen with the salad!

Camden loop – we send around 10kg of salad to three outlets in Camden. All these outlets share our belief in the importance of food produced with integrity and have been striving to achieve this with their varied food outlets.

• Friends House – the Quaker Centre (Euston Road)  A meeting/conference venue on Euston Road with a café and facilities that ‘don’t cost the earth.’ Also the administrative house for the Quakers in the UK.

• Nicegreen Cafe (Cecil Sharp House – Camden)  At the home of English folk and dance, Helen Tindale serves up ‘seasonal, lovingly prepared food’.

• MannaV (Chalk Farm)  ‘The  oldest and most established vegetarian restaurant in the UK – possibly Europe’.

Our deliveries to Camden are done by bicycle – zero food miles food and London grown! We are developing a partnership project with a new East London social enterprise, ‘Bikebox’ to see how more food can move around this city’s networks by bicycle.

A weekly salad run – by foot (!) with other produce when required to:
Table 7 Bistro (in Chingford)  A fine diner just up the hill from us – deliveries are done by one of our regular volunteers on his walk home.

For more information about our distribution and product contact Clare at the growing site on 020 8524 4994. clare[at]organiclea.org.uk

Endnote!
“The forces of nature limit us, as do our soils and the size of our holdings… and we never did it to make ‘loadsamoney’.” Organic, community food producers are inspired by a range of political, economic, ethical … and possibly even “spiritual” stances. It’s part of the social and ecological resistance movement .. not a cunning ruse to sell more. We have been inspired by the support those we distribute to share for creating a more sustainable, healthy and honest food system that grows people as well as plants! Thank you also to writing in Organic Growers Alliance, Spring 2011 for some of these words!