P
L E N T Y
Meet Your Maker
Goldhill Organics
From plot to plate in a day, one of Dorset’s top veg box producers
have some great tips for using your seasonal vegetables.
G
To your left
Produce is picked from
Gold Hill farm’s plots
and poly tunnels and
sent out in veg boxes
the same day. The
farm was one of the
first organic growers
in the South West to
be certified by the Soil
Association.
oldhill Organics has only been delivering
bountiful boxes of organic vegetables since
2013, but the seeds were sown for this supplier of fresh,
seasonal produce 25 years ago when farmer Andrew
Cross was given one acre of his parent’s Child Okeford
farm. He dug the raised beds, started growing, and
more than two decades later his beautiful, organic
vegetables are being delivered to doorsteps in Dorset
and beyond. Goldhill Organics founder Jane Somper
tells us what makes Andrew’s veg standout and gives us
tips for getting the most of your box.
What's the difference between the veg you supply and the
stuff I can buy in the supermarkets?
Organic vegetables have been grown differently, they
haven’t had chemicals chucked all over them and our
vegetables are fresh so everything we have has been
picked in the morning. Supermarket vegetables have
been hanging around for quite a while, have come
from all over the place and don’t taste very nice;
actually, that’s not fair – they don’t taste of anything.
So does organic food really taste better? Which vegetable
should you try to do a taste test?
When people have our vegetables for the first time,
what they say is: first of all you can smell them – there’s
a strong scent, and secondly they actually taste of what
they should be tasting of, so they have real flavour. We
have a customer who is a bit older and she says: ‘These
carrots taste how they used to taste.’
It tastes better, but do you have to pay more for the fl
f lavour? A vegetable box is more costly than buying
veg in the supermarket, right?
We compare our prices to supermarket prices and ours
are often not just less, but quite a bit less. I think
supermarkets have marked up their organic produce
for a long time. Also, a lot of the vegetables we have
here you wouldn’t find in the supermarket anyway.
What is the shelf-life of your vegetables? Do they last
longer than those from the supermarket?
Lettuces do. Say someone gets a bag of salad leaves
in their box, it can last a good 10 days because it’s so
fresh; that’s why our vegetables last so much longer
because they’re only picked in the morning before
we send them out. We advise you put our veg in the
fridge, apart from potatoes. Roots last longer and
things like squashes can last for months.
What's the most underrated veg you supply and how
should we cook it?
Goldhill Orga
nics
founders Jane
and Nick Som
per
provide locall
y
sourced veg