Mushrooms, micro-leaves, edible flowers and heirloom oddities from two hectares outside Philadelphia. One pack day a week, and the crate comes back to us.
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We are Nomsa Ngwenya and Ruan de Waal. Krat is two hectares of sandy ground on the Philadelphia road, forty minutes out of Cape Town on the R304. Ruan grows the mushrooms in a converted dairy cold room on the property — king oyster, pink oyster, and shiitake when the logs behave. Nomsa runs the beds: micro-leaf trays under shade cloth, three rows of edible flowers, and whatever heirloom seed we could not talk ourselves out of ordering in June. We cut on Wednesday and pack on Thursday, and that is the whole calendar. Two restaurant kitchens in town and a bistro in Riebeek West take the odd sizes off us — split tomatoes, romanesco that came up small, carrots that forked — which is most of what a supermarket would have turned away at the door. What is left goes into the crates. The crates are pine, they cost us R180 each, and you hand them back on the next pack day. That is the whole deposit system and it has held for four years.
Packed Thursday. Collect in Woodstock between 14:00 and 18:00 or in Durbanville between 15:00 and 19:00, or take Friday delivery inside the N1 and N2 for R70.
One email on Wednesday afternoon with what is going into Thursday’s crate. Reply to swap two items or to skip the week. No standing order and no contract.
