Fresh FieldsGreengrocer · MaestegGreengrocer

The team

Two of us, and a van.

Carol took the shop on from her father in 2011; Rhys came for a Saturday job in 2014 and stayed. Between them they do the market, the counter, the boxes, the cafés and every ticket on every crate.

A wholesale fruit and vegetable market before dawn, pallets of boxed produce under bright lights and a trader in a hi-vis jacket loading crates onto a sack trolley
Carol Bevan, a woman in her early fifties with short grey-blonde hair, in a green canvas apron over a navy jumper, holding a crate of apples in the shop

Carol Bevan

Owner. The market at four, the counter, the café orders

Started on the Saturday counter for her father, who opened the shop in 1994 after the last pit closed, and took it over in 2011. Drives to the wholesale market three mornings a week and knows to the penny what a case of leeks should cost. Writes every ticket by hand, does the café orders from her phone at four in the morning, and will tell you to buy the Cox, not the Braeburn, this week.

Rhys Morgan, a slim young man of about twenty-six with dark curly hair and a short beard, in a brown canvas apron, standing by the open doors of a white van stacked with crates

Rhys Morgan

The van, the boxes, the back of the shop

Came for a Saturday job at sixteen and never left. Packs the veg boxes from eight, runs the rounds from ten, and built the box list that this website reads from. Knows which porch in Caerau has the dog and which house in Llangynwyd wants it over the back gate. Plays outside half for Maesteg Celtic on a Saturday afternoon, which is why the Saturday round finishes by two.

  • 1,994the year the shutters first went up on Commercial Street
  • 3mornings a week at the wholesale market, in the van by 4am
  • 9Welsh growers and producers on the shelves, named on the tickets
  • 4.9average from 312 reviews
A small greengrocer's with a green shop front and a striped awning on a terraced valleys street, crates of fruit and veg on the pavement, hills behind

The shop

Opened the year after the last pit shut.

Carol's father, Alun, was a fitter at the colliery at Coegnant until it closed, and in 1994 he took the redundancy and the lease on a double-fronted shop on Commercial Street that had been a shoe shop. He went to the market three mornings a week for seventeen years. Carol worked the Saturday counter from twelve, went off to be a nursery nurse, came back in 2011 when he wanted to stop, and has not missed a market morning since that wasn't snow.

The shop has changed less than the street: the awning is new, the scales are the same, and the veg box was Rhys's idea in 2021.

Finding the shop

This week's box, with the day the van reaches your street.

Small £15, medium £21 or large £28, this month's veg, two swaps if you want them, and the next round for your area worked out before you order. Free delivery around the Llynfi valley. No subscription; pay on the doorstep.

Build a boxIn season now