Our Producers

Adrian Izzard grows a wide range of organic salad leaves (which won the award for best fresh food at the Soil Association Organic Awards in 2014) and Asian greens such as pak choi, tatsoi, mustard leaves and coriander in his unheated glasshouses at Great Abingdon, Cambridgeshire. He has recently taken on another 30 acres of land to grow field crops, so is producing root veg, such as parsnips and beetroot, for the box scheme and market. He grows a gorgeous range of tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers and aubergines, all of which he brings to the farmers' market in season.

Fruit and veg scheme farmer
Farmers' market: weekly

These Soil Association certified organic vegetable gardens form part of an organic farm with large gardens, a historic house and conference and education centre. The vegetable gardens are also key to the centre's work with young people, providing work experience for those in the Grow to Grow programme, providing supported placements for vulnerable and disadvantaged young people who are in transition, excluded or recovering from mental health problems, and young people in and leaving care. You can also camp at the site and check in on how your vegetables are growing.

Fruit & veg scheme farmer

Farmers' market: weekly during peak harvest season (summer/autumn)

Fabienne and Simon Peckham run Galileo Farm – a small family organic farm on the Fosse Way in Warwickshire, south of Leamington. Their livestock includes grass-fed beef cattle and sheep, geese, turkeys, chickens, ducks and pigs so they sell chicken, poultry, pork and beef as well as eggs. They started the farm from scratch nearly 20 years ago on 30 acres and have built up their beef and sheep herds by renting grazing land adjacent to the farm. The farm has extremely high animal welfare standards – this is Fabienne and Simon’s top priority.  The farm only sells direct.

Farmers' market: weekly 

William Rooney grows organic oyster and other exotic mushrooms at his small farm in Great Bromley, Essex. He also brings wild mushrooms to the market in season including puffballs, chicken of the woods and woodear, as well as making delicious mushroom sandwiches while you wait. He also brings other seasonal goodies to the market, including wild leaves and flowers in summer and birch sap in spring - which is said to boost the body's cleansing properties. He also leads foraging walks around his home in Essex - visit his website for details.

Farmers' market: weekly

Master chocolatier Anthony Ferguson has been satisfying chocoholics on both sides of the Atlantic for nearly a decade with memorably addictive creations. Chocolates from Niko B (named after his son) are handmade in Hackney. Using only Soil Association certified chocolate, fruits, nuts, herbs, spices and flowers, as well as organic British cream and butter, the adventurous range includes exotic truffles, caramelised nuts, oozing nougats, salted caramel brownies and decadent ganache-filled, liqueur-soaked figs.

Farmers' market: weekly

Hatice Tuğrul makes her traditional Turkish borek or gozleme (a type of folded pancake) using organic ingredients such as spinach and mushrooms sourced from the organic farmers at the market. Hatice lives locally and is one of the ultra local producers we've worked with to help them get into sustainable food production.

Farmers' market: weekly

Peach and Pippin is the new incarnation of Marina O'Connell's smallholding in Manningtree, Essex - four acres of organic paradise, a teaching centre, a woodland, an orchard, a food provider, an incubator, a spreader of goodwill and a home. The family-run enterprise was set up by Ian and Rebecca who live with their three young daughters, Romily, Miriam and Gwendolyn. Both Ian and Rebecca are teachers but also have a habit of complicating their lives with social enterprises, green projects, apple pressing extravaganzas, and lots of gardening. 

Ian has a history in environmental education and enterprise, teaches mindfulness, meditation and Chi Gung, and plants marigolds wherever he goes. Rebecca works in education as a system leader for a multi-academy trust although originally trained in music and arts leadership. She drives an electric car and makes a mean chocolate brownie.

Rebecca and Ian saw that the Apricot Centre and all its wonderful orchards and spaces was for sale. Ian had always wanted a van and Rebecca dungarees. It seemed the perfect match.

Follow @peachandpippin on Twitter and Instagram.

Farmers' market: seasonal (usually soft fruit from June/July, plums, apples and more from August to December)

Eric Beaumont is a Hackney-based bee-keeper who sells honey and beeswax from hives in Hackney, Walthamstow, Tottenham Marshes, Stoke Newington, Epping and Dagenham at our market on a seasonal basis. He also often has comb honey and baker's honey (slightly too "wet" and often starting to ferment - perfect for cooking). He is always at the market in late autumn and in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and often has a stall at other times of year too. The Dagenham honey is made in hives set up by Eric on our Dagenham Farm.

Farmers' market: fortnightly until the honey runs out  

Tim keeps bees that produce delicious Hackney honey. He also makes exquisite bowls, boards, ornaments, lip balm boxes and more using wood from fallen Hackney trees, which he sells at the market during December.

Capel Mushrooms, in Suffolk, supplies our veg scheme with mushrooms all year round. It is very much a family run business, initially set up by Peter Hearne, when he purchased his first site, Churchford Grange, in 1962.

Of his eight children, three work on the farm, and two have run or still run mushroom farms of their own.  Capel Mushrooms is now run by the founder’s sons, Damian and Patrick Hearne. In 1988 the decision was made to go organic. In all likelihood this makes them the first organic mushroom farm in the UK.

Closed cap white mushrooms, brown cap, portabello and portabellini mushrooms are grown on Organic compost at the site in Capel St Mary.

Capel mushrooms are particularly proud of their compost making facility, as most mushroom farms will buy in ready-made compost. The base material is wheat straw which, of course, must come from organically grown wheat. At the end of the mushroom cropping cycle most of the spent mushroom compost is sent to nearby Home Farm at Nacton, who also occasionally supply our veg scheme with vegetables.

Fruit and veg scheme farmer

Grahame Hughes has been growing organically in Norfolk since 1982 and selling produce from other organic farmers in East Anglia since the early 1990s. He founded and ran Eostre Organics, the marketing arm of the East Anglian organic growers co-operative until it folded in 2008. Grahame and Lizzie Hughes, together with their son Josh, still grow veg in their greenhouse in Bunwell, Norfolk. They also run a wholesale business that provides much of the veg for the box scheme, as well as the bananas, which are imported from organic growers in the Dominican Republic.

Fruit and veg scheme farmer and wholesaler

Organiclea is a workers' coop based on the edge of Epping Forest in the Lea valley. They grow fruit, vegetables and herbs at the Hawkwood Nursery market garden outdoors and under glass. Like Growing Communities, Organiclea's star product is its salad, with a mix of over 40 different plants evolving through the seasons, but it also supplies celery, squash and other veg to the box scheme, as well as providing some strawberries in the summer. The site offers regular volunteering opportunities for those with or without previous growing experience, as well as both formal and informal training and skillsharing workshops involving practical work on the site.

Fruit and veg scheme farmer

Paul Ward and Sara Rowan started growing fruit organically in 1994, after discovering that 90% of the UK organic fruit market was supplied by imports, sending the environmental benefits of these production systems abroad. They now grow fruit on five sites in Kent which include conservation areas to provide bio-diversity and a home for natural predators who feed upon the crop’s insect pests as well as offering a wealth of habitat for native wildlife. They grow apples for the box scheme.

Fruit and veg scheme farmer

Toos Jeuken has run an organic farm in Cookfield since 1978, when she arrived from Holland and started cycling around Sussex looking for land. She specialises in winter veg, but also grows strawberries, broad beans and leeks.

Fruit and veg scheme farmer