Hello First name!
We arrived at the Glasgow Wholesale Fruit and Veg Market at 6am. Dodging men in high vis vests driving forklifts, we headed through big roller doors, past floor to ceiling racking stacked with onions. We found a man who looked like he might be able to help us.
“You don't happen to have any pickling cucumbers do you?” Lucy asked.
He laughed. “Uh, no. Good luck on that one," he said as he looked back down at his papers.
“Do you know anyone who does?” we pressed.
He pointed down the building, roughly the size of an airplane hangar. “Dole might, but unlikely," he replied as he turned his back on us.
Off we trudged down the line of sellers, first Dole, then others. No one had pickling “cues” (the veg market slang for cucumbers, we learned). No one even had British cucumbers.
We were met with eyerolls and sighs and referred to as “girls” over and over. Until one guy pointed us to the very end of the market “Try Brogan's,” he said, “They can sometimes get UK cues.”
We followed the line of his finger to a white haired man stood at a desk surrounded by pallets of veg. “We heard you might be able to get us some British cues?” Lucy asked, tentatively.
“Oh aye, speak to Maureen,” he said before calling her over.
A small woman in her late 50s walked over to us. We explained that because of the weather, our local farm was struggling to supply the number of cucumbers we needed to keep the lights on over winter. We'd built a business plan for Fodder + Farm that included sales of pickles via Goat Rodeo Goods and were trying to find a way to make it all work.
She walked us to stacks of cucumbers, talked us through what was realistic to ask for, and had us explain what we needed in detail - British was non-negotiable - small, “naked” - aka unwrapped, and as fresh as we could possibly get them were what we all agreed was the best way forward.
“I know a guy. Leave me your number and I'll get them.” The catch was we had to buy a full pallet.
4 days and a couple of false starts later, Kevin and Kat pulled up in their mini-van at 6am and began loading. The size of a full pallet was not the 150kg we were expecting, rather 150 4.5kg boxes of cucumbers. It would need two trips, more jars and a lot more time than we ever anticipated.
And so began our two week stint in pickle prison.
