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Bryson Farms Home Delivery

Bryson Farms is a CERTIFIED ORGANIC farm (by the OCPP) which delivers fresh and exotic produce to your door every week.

Everything Bryson Farms delivers is picked the day before delivery to ensure absolute freshness and quality. We supply our family of home delivery customers with a "pick-of-the-day" basket of fresh and unusual vegetables which changes as the season progresses.

We only deliver our own produce. Therefore, during the growing season, nothing we sell is re-sold or imported! By only selling what we grow, we can unconditionally guarantee our produce for freshness and flavour. During the winter, we often supplement our own fresh or stored produce with imported vegetables of exceptional quality.

We encourage you to "share in the harvest!" Click here to read what our customers have to say about us.


You Don't Have to Be Home To Accept Delivery-We Deliver To Your Cooler!To avoid the necessity of you having to be at home when we deliver, we simply ask that you leave a hard plastic cooler (48 quart size recommended) with ice packs in a predetermined, shady location around the exterior of your home/townhouse/apartment. From our years of experience, soft plastic coolers, or any cooler with zippers, belts or buttons do not work. And the larger the cooler the better! Small coolers do not work and will not give your produce the protection it needs!We can deliver to your front door or to your back door - wherever you feel we can readily gain access and in a location where we can leave the basket with minimal risk of loss or deterioration. We leave the perishable produce in your cooler and the other crops in the shade. We also ask that you leave a cheque (made payable to "Bryson Farms") or cash in the cooler for the week's produce. This method has worked very well for us in the past - with the only exception being a couple of years ago when one yellow watermelon mysteriously disappeared from a customer's basket! We have found that our baskets are quite safe in 99% of Ottawa’s neighbourhoods.One ingenious customer showed us the best way for leaving her cheque in her cooler - which we recommend that our home delivery customers follow. Instead of leaving her cheque loose in the cooler where it could get wet from the ice packs or placing her cheque in individual envelopes, she permanently taped an open envelope on the inside lid of her cooler in which she could simply place her cheque each week. This simple technique makes your cheque easy for us to find, keeps it dry, and saves many unnecessary envelopes!The biggest problem we have had with home deliveries is customers forgetting to leave their coolers out. In the heat of the summer or the cold of the winter, this poses a unique problem because we do not want your produce to become overheated or frozen before you even receive it.To try and solve this problem, we are now e-mailing you a couple of days before delivery as a reminder to leave your cooler (and cheque) out for us. If you are expecting a delivery and do not receive your weekly reminder by e-mail, please contact us because we have probably not scheduled you for a delivery. Likewise, if you receive a reminder e-mail and you do not need a delivery, please let us know as soon as you can.But even with e-mail reminders, some of our customers will inevitably still forget to leave their coolers out. So this year, we have decided to try something new. We will deliver your produce to your cooler - but if you have forgotten your cooler, we will leave your produce in the most protected location we can find around your home and telephone you at the emergency telephone number you have provided to let you know where we have left your basket. You can pay for the basket the following week.Many of our customers leave a cooler in a permanent location around their home all season long. This way, if they forget the ice packs or the cheque, at least there is some protection to the produce. This works well if you have a convenient location which works for you.And yes, we deliver produce to coolers in garages, on porches, under shade trees, at front doors, back doors and side doors, upstairs, downstairs, on steps, in foyers, in yards, under benches - and anywhere else that works for you, will work for us!

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Why You Sometimes Receive a Small Quantity of Some Vegetables:

As the season progresses, we have lots and lots of produce to include in our baskets. But as our crops begin producing at the beginning of the season (such as tomatoes), we don’t have very many of them to go around. In May, for example, when our greenhouse tomatoes begin ripening, you may only receive one or two tomatoes at a time. Then, as the season progresses, there will be bushels! The same is true for just about all our other crops, such as snap peas, snow peas, broccoli, carrots, winter salad greens, etc. Just be patient and the quantities will increase – but we like to share all that we have, even when the quantities are small.Environmentally Friendly BasketsIn 2007, we will be introducing almost entirely environmentally friendly baskets. This means that all plastic bags are biodegradable and can be composed or placed in your trash with a clear conscience that the bag will decompose within three to six months. Of course, you may re-use the bags until they start to fall apart, but please do not return them to us. Also in 2007, we are introducing biodegradable “plastic” containers made from corn husks. Our micro-greens and peas shoot will come in these containers. We ask that these containers be returned to us (“open”) in your cooler each week. We wash and re-use them until they break down at which point they go into the compost pile .Please be sure to return these containers to us! The Ziplock vegetable bags which your salad greens come in are the only portion of your basket which is NOT biodegradable. We are at this time trying to find a way to economically clean and re-use these bags, but to date have not found a satisfactory process. So please do NOT return these bags to us. Please wash and re-use them yourselves. They are great for storing vegetables, cooking greens, or lettuce as they have tiny holes which allow the bags to breathe. The final component of our baskets are the outer bags in which the vegetables arrive. At this time they are white plastic bags which are NOT biodegradable. In 2007, we hope to start using our own cloth bags which can be washed and returned to us each week. The bags are colour-coded based on what size basket you have ordered. We are very pleased, not only to have a farm dedicated to sustainable agriculture, but we are also doing all that we can to make sure that our certified organic vegetables arrive at your door in containers which will not add to greenhouse emissions.

Special Procedures for Winter Deliveries:Many people don’t think it possible for us to home deliver fresh vegetables during the winter. In fact, we have been doing this for several years, and every year, we add more and more customers to our year-round service.

But the winter rules are a little different. We ask that you leave your cooler in a location close to your front door. Ice and snow can often prevent us from obtaining access to your back door or garage. Many of our customers bank their coolers in snow during the winter for added insulation. And in the winter, we don’t need you to leave ice packs in the cooler, but rather a heavy old blanket or two pillows. Two pillows work best because we can actually leave the produce between the two pillows in the cooler where it will be very well protected even from temperatures as low as -30 degrees celsius. This is yet another reason to have a large (48 quart) hard plastic cooler.


Home Delivery Days:

We generally deliver into the following neighbourhoods on Tuesdays:

Sandy Hill
The Market
New Edinburg
Rockcliffe Park
Manor Park
Vanier
Riverview
Alta Vista
Hunt Club
Mooney’s Bay
Ottawa East
Old Ottawa South
The Glebe

On Wednesdays, we deliver into these general areas and more:

Kanata
Bell’s Corners
Stittsville
Arlington Woods
Craig Henry
Britannia
Bayshore
Leslie Park
Trend Village
Briar Green
Qualicum Graham Park
Crystal Beach
And
Rothwell Heights
Beacon Hill
Blackburn Hamlet
Alta Vista

On Fridays, we deliver into these general areas and more:

Centretown
Golden Triangle
Somerset area
Tunney’s Pasture
Highland Park
Westboro
Experimental Farm
Carlington
Central Park
Britannia Bay

If you have a question about your specific location, please just contact us. We will do everything we can to accommodate the delivery date you prefer.We generally deliver from mid-morning through late afternoon. We cannot guarantee a specific delivery time since our delivery routes vary from day to day.

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High-Rise Deliveries: Bryson Farms already delivers into many high-rises in Ottawa. Please contact us to see if we are currently delivering to your building. Delivery into high-rises can be challenging since most building managers do not allow delivery personnel into a building for obvious security reasons. Last year, though, we thought the only way we could deliver into a high-rise was if a resident was at home to let us in.

But some of our customers came up with some innovative solutions to high-rise deliveries. One customer left her cooler outside her building so that we could deliver to her. The produce made it through the season without incident! Others left their coolers in the front lobby. This also worked well. And another group of customers provided us with access to their building (with management’s permission) so that we can deliver to their door without the necessity of anyone being at home.


If You Are Away- Please Let Us Know!If you are going to be away, please e-mail us with as much notice as possible (at least two days before your next delivery) and let us know the date of your last delivery and the date to resume.And please don’t forget to let us know you will be away!!We deliver to you every week unless you tell us to stop. Thus, if you have not told us you are away and we show up at your home and cannot find your cooler in its usual location, we will just think that you have forgotten to leave your cooler out - not that you are away! We have no way of knowing you are away unless you tell us. If we leave produce when you are away, it could be very undesirable by the time you return.Customers who have been with us for the past two seasons tell us that we are very flexible with delivery dates. We understand that many people are on holiday during the July and August - but this poses no problem for us - just e-mail us with the date of the last delivery and the date we should resume. We will send you back a confirming e-mail. It’s that simple!

We prefer to have at least one week’s notice of any expected cancellation. If you know you are going on holiday or a business trip and will not need a delivery, just email us you away dates when you know them. While last minute cancellations are not appreciated, we understand that sometimes life gets in the way and you really have no choice but to cancel at the last minute.

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If You Need More or Less: If you are going to need more or less than your usual order, please e-mail us by 6:00 p.m. Sunday for the Tuesday delivery and 6:00 p.m. Wednesday for the Friday delivery.

Please remember that we start harvesting your order on the day before delivery to ensure freshness.


If You Don't Like Something:

If you don't like (or are allergic to) a particular product that we've delivered, just e-mail us and we will substitute other produce for you the following week.


How Far Into the Season Will You Deliver? We deliver year-round. Each year add to the our repertoire of fresh vegetables available during the winter, as well as our stored root crops, squash and pumpkin.

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Things We Don't Grow:

We do not grow strawberries, cherries, raspberries, or apples. And of course everything we do grow is subject to crop success.


Summary The process of home delivery is really quite simple: Just remember to leave your cooler and ice pack out on the morning of your delivery day (with a cheque) and you will arrive home to a basket of farm-fresh vegetables to enjoy. You can enlarge, decrease, or even cancel your order at any time with no obligation.

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