Who are we? ~
The Complete Organic Vegetable Service!
We provide sumptuous organic veg, delivered straight to your door. No need to buy a spade and venture into the garden, nor to head off on yet another of those tiresome shopping forays. Relax and put your feet up - we’ll do it all for you.
If you are a keen veg grower, you might like to know that we also provide a large range of organic veg starter plants - to make things easy for you. If you are new to growing we can design a veg plot or potager to get you up and running. If you need a helping hand we can give advice on organic growing. For a wider audience we do seminars on all things organic (for all ages) – we are The Complete Organic Vegetable Service!
Beyond Veg!
In response to customer requests, we are expanding our range of offerings to include other top quality organic foods and environmentally friendly cleaning products. Visit our online shop to see what's available this week. If there is something you'd like that we don't supply, please get in touch and let us know - we'll help if we can.
Where are we?
The Vital Veg team are based at North Tillydaff, a small farm 16 miles west of Aberdeen in North East Scotland. Our 130 rolling acres nestle at the foot of the heather-clad Barmekin hill, where Lewis Grassic Gibbon was inspired to write Sunset Song - voted as Scotland’s favourite book, a (small) stone’s throw away from one of the many (big) stone circles, next door to a couple of stunning Scottish castles, and within sniffing distance of a few whisky distilleries. All in all a rather fine location – though the winters can be chilly! 130 acres is roughly equivalent to 100 football pitches, in case you were wondering (and on the off-chance that you know how big a football pitch is)…
Our Story
Ever have that Too Much To Do feeling? Ever need to “veg out” without running out of veg, so you can rest and recharge your batteries… but still get those Vital meals that Jamie Oliver and the Dinner Lady recommend? That’s how we felt too. Determined to reclaim some quality time and to get some quality veg into the bargain before the onset of old age we started growing our own organic veg. Food that goes straight from plot to pot, or plot to plate, depending on our mood and the veg in question – can’t beat it!
Pretty soon we discovered that there are loads of other people out there who are in search of quality time and quality veg, but who don’t own a pair of wellies, or don’t rank pottering in the veg plot as quality time (takes all sorts!).
So, Vital Veg was born in May 2005, “manned” by two vegetable devotees, and Vanessa (the Vital Veg Van). Our chief aim – to provide mouth-watering organic veg to those who need it, but don’t have enough time (or wellies) to get it for themselves.
Actually, we’ve been into veg for years – Anne grew her first carrots in a window box when she was three (though she’s a bit coy when it comes to admitting how successful the crop was!). Wendy was a comparatively late starter, with a first crop (peas – still a great favourite) at five. We have to come clean and admit that there were a few veg-doldrum years after these first crops (when we packed our spotted handkerchiefs and set off to get a wider experience of the world working as plant scientists and marketeers) before our paths crossed and we started growing veg on a respectable scale.
We grow organic because we prefer to eat our veg without additives, just as Mother Nature intended. The farm land used for growing veggies at North Tillydaff is certified as fully organic by the Soil Association. Who are the Soil Association?? They are the most well known UK organisation controlling standards for organic production, and have a list of stringent rules as long as both of your arms. You can find out more about them here.
Just to dispel a few myths and set the record straight – we don’t wear kilts on the farm, and have resisted the temptation to have a tartan outfit for our drivers. We do, however, love the bagpipes, the fiddle, and Scottish music and dance in general, and Anne is a much sought-after musician and ceilidh dance caller. Follow the links to hear a few tunes from her bands, JingBang and the all-girl Danse McCabre!
The original Vital Veg team of two has now been joined by a flock of wonderful packing Angels – Fiona, Jason & Eunice, with holiday cover from Chris and Francesca - and champion driver, Tom, while Gordon, Alan and Duncan do a fantastic job on the tractor.
We recently had our first wonderful "Wwoofers" (Willing Workers On Organic Farms!) helping out at Vital Veg ... Monna from Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, who wrote "I am extremely honoured to be Wendy and Anne's first Wwoofer and I hope that this may be one of my claims to fame ... My experience here has inspired me to go home and begin my steps toward self-sufficiency and to go organic as much as I can". A couple of weeks later we were welcoming Todd and Christy from Asheville, North Carolina, USA to our home and farm. They wrote ... "This is such a beautiful farm and we are thrilled that we were part of it for two weeks ". We look forward to meeting more Wwoofers in the future, to share recipes, ideas, expertise ... and perhaps an occasional tune!
Making a difference
We’ve been lucky in that we’ve always had good food. We are even more lucky now that we have enough space to grow tractor loads of scrumptious organic veg. We know that there are lots of people who don’t have good food, and don’t have a place of their own to grow veg – so we want to make a difference. We have set up a scheme with the Cyrenians (a charity for homeless people, ) so that our regular customers can choose to give their veg boxes away when they are on holiday. The veg in these “holiday” boxes is prepared and cooked by the Cyrenian chefs for the people who have no cooking facilities of their own.
We are keen to help conserve vegetable diversity. Did you know that over 90% of vegetable varieties have been lost over the past 100 years? We are members of Henry Doubleday Research Association for organic growing, and Vital Veg has "adopted" a range of heritage vegetable varieties kept by the HDRA to help preserve the gene pool. We are also members of the Organic Growers Alliance, the Scottish Wildlife Trust and the National Trust for Scotland.
That’s us…
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, drop us a line or give us a call at:
Vital Veg
North Tillydaff
Midmar
Inverurie
Aberdeenshire AB51 7LS
Tel. 01330 833 823
E-mail: info@vitalveg.co.uk
