FAQ’s
Bryson Farms is a CERTIFIED ORGANIC farm (by the OCPP) which delivers fresh and exotic heirloom vegetables to your door year-round. We also offer our home-delivery customers 100% Grass-Raised own beef and our own line of flash-frozen organic vegetables; organic chicken, eggs, and turkey from Yorkshire Valley Farms, artisanal cheeses, and prepared foods made on our farm by our chefs.
During the growing season our fresh vegetables are 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 during the growing season. 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 vegetables of exceptional quality from other farms in order to add value and variety to the baskets.
Below are some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s). Click on the + sign beside the question for the answer.
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 many 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 order 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.
The “cooler delivery” method has worked very well for us for many years – with the only exceptions being a couple of years ago when one yellow watermelon mysteriously disappeared from a customer’s basket and when a few coolers were taken by mistake! We have found that our products are quite safe in 99% of Ottawa’s neighbourhoods.
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 email our customers a couple of days before delivery (what we call a “reminder email”) as a reminder to leave your cooler out for us and to modify your order before the deadline for your delivery day. If you are expecting a delivery and do not receive your reminder by e-mail, please contact us because we probably do not have you scheduled 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 or just “skip” your order for that week in your online account.
But even with e-mail reminders, some of our customers will inevitably still forget to leave their coolers out. 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/text/email you at the telephone number/email address you have provided to let you know where we have left your basket. Many of our customers leave a cooler in a permanent location around their home year-round. This way, if they forget the ice packs, 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! One customer many years ago came home to find her produce hanging from a tree, which, on a very hot day, was the coolest location the delivery crew could find. And yes, everything was perfect!
Why You Sometimes Receive a Small Quantity of Some Vegetables:
As the growing 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.
Cheques, Cash, Interact, PayPal, and Credit Card Payments
We prefer not to receive cheques or cash as they get can lost in the delivery van and also incur added bookkeeping costs. However, we can make it work if this is your preferred payment method as long as the delivery crew know in advance of delivery to look for a cheque.
We now accept Interact Transfers sent to: info@brysonfarms.com and no password is needed.
You may also send us a Pay Pal payment to: info@brysonfarms.com
You may also enter your credit card number (no space/dashes), expiration date, and CVV in your Bryson Farms account and we will automatically debit your credit card each month (around the first/last of the month) for your baskets scheduled to be delivered in the next month based on your “recurring order.” This is the easiest and most efficient way to pay for your baskets which is why we assume all service charges associated with these credit card transactions. This payment method also automatically calculates basket size, Add-Ons, away dates, and more. It also carries credit balances forward into the next month’s baskets when appropriate!
Customer Blog
In order to make our service more enjoyable, our home-delivery customers have access to our “Customer Blog” where they can find descriptions, pictures, recipes, and tips for the vegetables contained in the weekly baskets. Our customers can also post comments, recipes, and tips of their own which they want to share with other home-delivery customers.
Add-Ons
With the development of our online storefront in 2010, our home delivery customers can now add fresh seasonal items to their basket orders (at extra cost) such as extra heirloom tomatoes, fingerlings, salad greens, heirloom carrots, etc. or products from our line of frozen vegetables, or they can just order a la carte.
Also, with our on-farm commercial kitchen, we now prepare our own healthy, frozen prepared foods such as soups, complete meals, tagines, chilis, tarts, curries, cakes, pies, stews, tourtières, and so much more – made mostly, or entirely from the vegetables we grow! These items are available as Add-Ons for our home delivery customers through our online storefront and many are Vegan and/or Gluten-Free and/or Vegetarian. Check out our “Shop” page for more details.
Our customers can also Add-On to their order with our 100% Grass-Fed Beef, and Certified Organic Chicken, Turkey, and Eggs from Yorkshire Valley Farms – foraged and cultivated Mushrooms, artisanal cheese, and more!
Can We Just Order Add-Ons?
Yes! Many of our customers get on our routes just to order our fresh vegetables as “Add-Ons” and/or our beef, or just our frozen prepared foods, or just chicken, turkey, or eggs – or any combination thereof! As long as your order is at least $65, we will deliver whatever you would like!
100% Grass-Fed Beef
Our home-delivery customers can order our 100% Grass-Fed Beef as an “Add-On” to their baskets. Our supplies vary throughout the year depending on supply and demand, but this beef is only available to our customers through our online storefront.
Environmentally Friendly Baskets
In recent years, we have developed 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.
At times, we deliver produce to your home in plastic clamshells. After you have used the produce in the clamshells, we appreciate you quickly rinsing them out and leaving them in your cooler so that our delivery crew can pick them up and bring them back to the farm where we sanitize and use them again!
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 products arrive at your door in packaging 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 and other products during the winter. In fact, we have been doing this for many years, and every year, we add more and more customers to our year-round service.
In the winter, we deliver our own fresh produce from our greenhouses like salad greens, micro-greens, pea shoots, swiss chard, kale, and collard greens as well as our stored crops which we carefully tend during the winter months such as – fingerlings, potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squash, pumpkins, heirloom carrots, beets, parsnips, onions, Jerusalem artichokes, leeks, radish, turnips, rutabaga, scorzonera, salsify, shallots and so much more! We also partner with other Certified Organic local producers in order add more variety to the winter baskets.
In 2010, we starting processing our own line for frozen vegetables – sweet corn, French filet green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, mixed vegetables, and more – so these items are also included in the winter baskets. Plus, we now process our own diced winter squash puree, diced sweet peppers, sliced sweet potatoes, whole vacuum-packed Heirloom Tomatoes, and San Marzano Tomatoes, and “Just” Heirloom Tomatoes which are further vegetable components in the winter baskets.
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
This map shows where we deliver on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. This map is constantly changing, so if we are close to you, email us and we will see if we can work something out.
We also have marked where our local markets can be found.
We are currently developing new routes throughout the region!
If you do not see your neighbourhood on this list, please just email us as our routes are changing all the time!
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.
Can You Deliver Biweekly?
Yes! Although most of our customers are on a “weekly” delivery schedule, many are “biweekly” which work for smaller or single households.
Our online storefront also allows our customers to order “monthly” or only as needed – just email us so that we can help you program your delivery schedule to meet your family’s needs.
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 many building managers do not allow delivery personnel into a building for obvious security reasons. 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 (or a ground floor location) without the necessity of anyone being at home.
We also phone customers to access their building and leave their order in a cooler left outside their front door.
We try will to be creative and make it work for you!
Certified Organic Chicken, Turkey, and Eggs
In 2014, we formed a partnership with Yorkshire Valley Farms in Peterborough so that our customers can include certified organic chicken, turkey, and eggs to their orders as Add-Ons! This partnership has been a great success and our customers are loving Yorkshire’s poultry products and the convenience of having these products delivered to their door!
