Because they taste amazing! Our vegetables are local, seasonal and grown in soil rich in organic matter and balanced in minerals. They are also picked, packed and delivered in the space of a few days, rather than weeks for supermarket produce. All this is important not only for flavour, but for your health, for the land, and for the sustainable livelihoods and communities you’ll be helping support. 

Truly seasonal eating can take a bit of getting used to. While we do use greenhouses to bring you more of what you love over a longer season, we don’t artificially heat our greenhouses. This means that even our favourite vegetables need to take a break for part of the year. This necessary break helps support a healthy soil ecology by allowing us to grow cover crops or crops from different botanical families over the winter.

As our field crop varieties change throughout the year, different minerals are mined from and returned to the soil with each planting. Plant-specific disease is given a chance to die off, and pests can’t get too comfortable. In this way, growing seasonally strengthens our organic system.

As we get used to eating only the vegetables that are in season for our climate, we find ourselves appreciating each one all the more. We get excited for the first crisp broccoli of winter, and early summer’s juicy cherry tomatoes have never tasted so sweet. We encourage you to give this way of eating a try! Our recipes sent to email subscribers can serve as inspiration.

Everything in the store that is in the Farm Grown category is grown by us, at our farm in Aldinga. We plant it and nurture it, then we harvest it, wash it, pack it and bring it to you the very next day.

You also have the option to order some extra items that are produced by farmer friends of ours. These include pastured eggs, and apples and pears from McCarthy’s Orchard. Other seasonally available items include bread, organic olive oil, fresh berries and fruits from the EcoVillage orchard next to our market garden.

We also sell certified organic vegetables and fruits (e.g. potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, bananas) when we don’t have them growing in our fields or they aren’t available locally. Any item that comes from elsewhere are flagged as such on the ordering system e.g. Certified Organic. We are fully transparent about where anything not grown by us comes from.

Each week, we curate the best variety of produce that the time of year has to offer. For $45.00 onwards (depending on the box size) you’ll get a mix of items that changes every week throughout the year. You can expect some fresh greens, some root veg staples, and a rainbow of other in-season produce. The small box is enough for an average couple or small family for the week (though if you eat as many veggies as we do you may want to add to it!). We suggest the medium box for a 3-4 person household, or large for 4-5 people.

If you’re new to Village Greens, we recommend starting with a Farmers’ Choice box to get an idea of the variety and quantity we provide. Some customers have continued to choose this box every week for years, and love the element of surprise and the creativity it encourages in the kitchen.

You’re more than welcome to add extra items to your Farmers’ Choice mixed box, as you desire. Just select these when you make your order online. For logistical reasons we are unable to switch out items in the box, as we plan it in advance based on what’s best out in the field each week.  Every once in a while we may substitute for similar items or offer a credit on an item, depending on crop variations that occur through the week, but other than that, we don’t tailor Farmers’ Choice mixed boxes for individuals.

The vegetables on our farm are grown organically, but we are not yet certified organic. We do not use any chemical pesticides, herbicides, or synthetic fertilisers, but we have currently chosen not to go down the route of certification due to added cost compared with the small size of our operation. We like to think of ourselves as community-certified. We aim to be transparent about our practices and our farming values. These include a holistic approach to soil health, including regular soil testing and use of organic-based amendments. Our pest and disease management includes frequent crop rotation, fostering biodiversity by growing a wide range of crops, and occasional use of specific organic applications that would be allowed under a certified organic system.

We tag our products on the website so you can Browse by Growing method, and filter for Certified and uncertified Organic, as well as Spray Free, Pasture Raised and Free Range. You can filter on these products with the left hand browser in our store. Underneath that, you can also browse by region. The Farm Grown tag means it is a product grown here on our farm, and this will also be tagged as Organic (uncertified) if you open up the individual item. The Certified Organic tag means that we’ve sourced these products from other certified organic farms around Australia – we do this when we either currently don’t grow items ourselves (for example, bananas) or want to provide more volume of product than we currently have in the field (for example, broccoli).

If there is no tag under the picture when you open up an individual item, that will mean it’s grown conventionally. Sometimes we’ve chosen to support local businesses rather than sourcing from further afield, for example the strawberries from Harvest the Fleurieu in Mount Compass.

If you’d like to chat more about our farming practices, contact us here.

The majority of our produce comes without any plastic. We use true cellophane compostable bags for salad mixes and bags of microgreens, and if you recieve these items please transfer them to a different container (e.g. tupperware) when they get home, as the cellophane doesn’t keep the greens fresh for long.

Other items, like bags of potatoes and onions, come in brown paper bags. Tomatoes are packed in in BioPak biodegradable punnets or boxes.

Our carton liners are compostable (biobag).

To create a new account, simply start shopping on our store. When you get to the checkout there is an option to create a new account. Next time you order you can log in before shopping (or at checkout).

To make it financially viable for us to offer delivery, we have set minimum order amounts as follows:

Pickup points: $25 minimum

Home delivery: $30 minimum

Unfortunately, yes. To reduce the amount of administrative time we are spending, we don’t allow editing of submitted orders. You can always place another order with any items you forgot.

We currently have two options for making payment. You can use PayPal or a credit card at the time you make your order, or you can pre-purchase credit that will be applied to your account.

If you’d like to pre-purchase credit for the season, great! We love this. Pre-payment gives us the critical cashflow we need before each growing season gets underway, and it simplifies your ordering each week. As a thank you, we will extend a 5% discount for pre-payment over $500. Each week when you log in to order, you will see the amount of credit remaining on your account.

To set up credit, log in to your account and go to My Wallet, then Wallet Topup. Here you can add a prepaid amount and pay for it using your credit card or paypal account. You can also do a direct bank transfer if you would prefer – contact us if you are interested.

If we cannot supply an item in your order, we email you at the time of packing showing the total credit amount and reason for crediting. If you can’t find the email, please check your spam folder as it may be there (and save our email to your contacts to stop it happening in future!)

However, sometimes we might make a packing error, in that case you will not have received a credit. Please contact us and we’ll ensure the credit is applied before the store opens the following Saturday at 1pm.

Credits are applied automatically to your next order. You can see them in the subtotal in your cart, or at the bottom of your order confirmation email. We can also refund if you’d prefer (for example if you’re not going to order for a period of time) – please contact us to ask for a refund.

To check your wallet balance, log into our website and go to My Account > Wallet to see all your Wallet transactions. You can also check your previous orders at My Account > Orders.

Our standard fees are as follows:

Home delivery: $6.95 (or free home delivery over $100)

Pickup point delivery: $3 or free over $100

Yes! Over $100 for home delivery or pickup points receive free delivery.

Each week, we walk through our farm and assess what is ripening, then estimate the total amount of produce we will have available for our online store. Occasionally, we don’t get the numbers quite right, or there is a problem in the field or at harvest, or we may not receive the product from one of our local suppliers, which means we’re not able to meet your exact order.

We occasionally substitute for a similar item (for example, rainbow chard instead of silverbeet), but most often you’ll receive an email detailing the item we were unable to supply, and adding credit to your account for the value of the missing item.

If there is a problem we haven’t picked up, please send us an email at [email protected] and we’ll do everything in our power to fix it.

We ask that you pretty please put out a chilly bin/esky, box or crate in an accessible place (e.g. front porch) for us to pack your veggies into. We cannot leave behind our crates, because we need these every week (for harvest!).

If it’s a hot day and you won’t be home to bring your veggies inside right away, it’s a good idea to leave out some ice packs and make sure there’s a shady place for us to leave your delivery.

If you’re collecting from a delivery hub, your order will be in a grey plastic crate. Please take your produce, but leave these crates at your pickup point hosts’ house as we will collect them next time we deliver.

If we don’t deliver to your suburb and you’re not near enough to a Local Pick Up Hub, we encourage you to get together with some neighbours and friends to request we create a new pickup point! We’ll need to deliver at least 5 regular weekly orders to warrant a new pickup point. You’ll need to provide a shady, undercover space where we can drop off the veggies, and be willing to meet your neighbours.

If you’d like to discuss starting or hosting a new Local Pick Up Hub, please get in touch.

We love feedback – positive or constructive, it all helps. Please send us an email at [email protected]. We are busy farmers with families, so greatly appreciate no phone calls or texts outside of business hours. 

Please sign up to receive our weekly email. This is where we share the latest happenings and developments at Village Greens, as well as photos of the market garden and seasonal recipes.

If you have ever made an online order with us, you will automatically receive this email, as well as the weekly produce list (though you can unsubscribe at any time).