Sorting Herbs

You may not have known this... but we sort through all our rosehips (and other herbs) for all of our customers.  Anything "bad" comes out, so only the best makes it to you.  

This started years ago when we sent out an order to someone, who then posted on one of the facebook groups, a "review" (which they had done with other vendors before, but I hadn't made the connection).  Their review was positive, so nothing bad... the one part that caught my attention was for a few of the herbs, they made the comment that there were a few pieces that were somewhat discolored or a little off, and though those were probably fine regardless, they removed those.  

Those would have been hawthorn berries.  They are small red/maroon berries, that notoriously seem to somehow end up different colors, the most common being turning more whiteish / creamy-ish.  Not mold, mind you, that's just the color some of them turn.  Why just a few, here and there, I have no idea.  But they do.  And every batch of them has a couple that are off-colored.  If the outer layer comes off the berry, they are cream-colored inside.  So now, when packing up hawthorn berries, I make sure to eyeball them.  Not saying some crappy ones never get through, but rest assured, we got out the worst ones (which my animals enjoy thoroughly... cause they really are just fine).

The other day, there were some brown-ish rosebuds in our package of rosebuds.  They looked, well... overdone.  Like someone left them in the dehydrator a bit too long and they got crispy and burnt.  So those were removed.

The latest thing, though, is that our last like... 20 pounds... of rosehips have been, well... disappointing.  We've been buying them as "whole organic rosebuds," and at least 1/3 (if not more) of each pound has been pieces.  As WE are selling whole organic rosebuds, not organic rosebud pieces (at least in the current listing), it shouldn't surprise you that we are sorting these, and have been for quite some time.  Officially we are done sorting these, and hopefully the batches from a different supplier (which we have here, but haven't needed to open yet) will be better.  In the meantime... we have a lot of these pieces.  Some we've already sold off, but we still have a lot of it left.  

We've decided to call them rosehip nibbles! We now have a bunch of these for sale, in 3 oz quantities, for $4. You actually get more of 3 oz of nibbles than 3 oz of whole rosehips, due to them missing the weight of the seeds! 

In the second pic, you can see the 3 oz bag of whole rosehips on the left, and the 3 oz bag of rosehip nibbles on the right.  We have added these to the webstore, $4 for 3 oz. -- https://www.nwichinchillas.com/apps/webstore/products/show/7977833

While supplies last, of course.  Hopefully the new supplier will have more of the whole rosehips (we used to get a few broken ones... but not like this...)... or else this may be an item that stays around forever.