The Journey of Your Produce Box: From Local Farms to Your Doorstep

The journey is the destination! I want to walk you through the process of getting your produce to you from our partner vendors. The contents of your produce boxes come not from one central location, but all over! Let’s go through how it all works:

 

Planning the Boxes

I (Miriam) am always thinking about what will go in our next produce box. However, usually our orders are finalized the week before the produce box week (so whenever we’re not putting boxes together, we’re planning for the next ones!). I look through product lists, or message or call our partner farmers in the Maritime provinces to find out what is available. After choosing what local items we’ll have, I go through the product lists from Mirage Foods in Sussex, the importer we work with. If there’s something missing like a fruit or fresh ginger for example, I’ll order some of that to round out our boxes.

 

Gathering the Produce

While some of our partners are able to deliver their harvest straight to the warehouse at Stirling’s where we work, I meet others in mutually convenient places or else pick up straight from their location. Almost every round of boxes I make the drive up to Moncton to meet our producers and pick up items along the way there/back. If we need anything from Nova Scotia, it’s usually picked up by Serge Bourgeois of Ferme Les Digues, who I’ll meet in Dieppe to get my order. Our PEI orders get shipped to a trucking terminal either in Moncton or Saint John.

 

Gathering Banana Boxes

Don’t forget the pretty packaging! I am constantly gathering banana boxes at local grocery stores and collecting them from our customers. One of the ways I chose my vehicle was based on how many banana boxes I could fit in it- not a word of a joke!

Labels

This may seem like a silly detail, but our labelling is crucial to ensure each individual person placing an order gets the right box. Some have swap requests, others need to be delivered around Saint John (or even to Grand Manan), so these are very important. Thanks to Coastal Business Machines on Waterloo Street for supplying our label printer and stickers and giving me candy each time I visit :)

Packing Boxes

Now the team comes in. We gather on the Wednesday evening of produce box week to bag up our bulk veggies (such as 2lbs of carrots for each box, or 0.5lbs of mushrooms for each large box), and packing everything in the banana boxes. We lay out all our large boxes and fill them up one item at a time. Then we check for swap requests from our customers, and organize our grocery add-on orders for pickup day. Usually I do the Kingston deliveries right after we pack the boxes.

 

Pickup Day

Assuming there are no issues with our shipments or storms, pickup day is right after box packing day. First our deliveries go out with HAL Delivery in the Saint John area and Todd Watkins in Grand Manan. Then, we get to see all our customers! We offer two different times for pickups: one at the lunch hour and one after work (at least that’s how I chose the times of 12-2pm & 4-6pm). We love pickup day because we get to meet the people we have worked hard for for the past two weeks. 

 

Dinner!

This part is the best, but also the part that is the biggest mystery to us and what we have the least influence over! If you’d ever like to share how you use your produce, we’d love to hear/see (/taste haha!) 

So that’s the journey of the potato! And everything else! If you have any specific questions, send them along and we’ll address them!

Until next time,

Miriam