When my great grandfather and his family settled in southeastern Minnesota, they found part of their homestead had berry bushes, fruit and plum trees.
During the growing season they ate their fill. Everything else was dried and preserved for winter. Although no one was interested in buying his surplus plums, people did purchase wine he made from them.
The family understood food was sacred and nothing should go to waste.
“Eat fresh fruit in season,” wrote Coco Chanel a century ago. That made sense then because all fresh fruit was locally grown; sometimes the seasons were short. Enjoy them before they’re gone.
When I lived in northern Alberta, we could get fresh mandarin oranges (aka halos, cuties, etc.) only one day a year. A month before it, Brady’s Grocery Store posted notice telling customers if they wanted fresh mandarins, they must order now and the limit was two 5-lb. boxes.
On Mandarin Monday, a Royal Canadian Air Force transport plane landed at CF Base Cold Lake, the cargo was unloaded onto a truck and paraded into town.
RCAF members marched in uniform, a brass band played and crowds lined the street. At his store, Mr. Brady held court, checking the list as each person came to get their goodies.
We got our 10 pounds of the most delicious fresh fruit imaginable, but when it was gone it was for one more year. If someone died after signing up for Mandarin Monday, Mr. Brady gave their allotment to the nearby convent, which made some wonder about the good sisters’ prayers.
It is all much different today. Fresh fruit is available from around the world at grocery stores almost any time. No more buying pounds of peaches to can or freeze for winter. Nor strawberries, not even mandarin oranges.
Right now we have grapes and kiwi fruit from Peru, mangoes from Guatemala, avocados from Mexico, plus lemons and limes from California in our refrigerator. They’re expensive but seem like essential treats.
Prices are driven by farmers buying increasingly-costly fertilizers and/or paying for labor to raise and harvest what we put on tables. It’s the cost of transportation from farm to market to wholesale to store. Add to that international tariffs imposed by governments.
Then there are costs of warehouses, local delivery and store employees. By the time food gets to the cashier, the grocery has a tight margin and small profit.
The cost of packaging fresh produce, especially imported from afar, adds still more. When I was growing up, grocery stores used butcher’s paper to wrap products like meat, then slapped on a piece of masking tape or tied it with cotton string.
Everything went into brown paper bags at the check-out line. We took the bags home and re-used them for everything from covers on our schoolbooks to coloring paper. If we were thirsty, we drank out of a glass, from a water fountain or garden hose.
Now everything is entombed in toxic plastic. Disposable water bottles are almost fashion accessories.
Much of that plastic ends up dumped in landfills or the ocean. Out of sight, out of mind. But it never goes away. After a while, it breaks down into nano-particles that end up back in the food chain for us to ingest. Once inside us, they stay there until we die.
“Do you think Mother Earth is trying to kill us before we kill the planet first?” a friend asked.
The best answer I have to address this problem is eat fresh fruit in season. It’s hard to do. The other say I saw fresh asparagus at the store. I love the stuff, but the price put me off plus it was transported from somewhere else.
I’ll wait for locally-grown produce to come in, then luxuriate in every bite.
Another good way to reduce our carbon footprint and poisons wrapped around our food is to raise a garden. With luck, we can grow our own produce so fresh it all but slaps us across the kisser.
Anything left over will get frozen or shared with others. It won’t contribute more than a tiny drop of mist in the massive problem of climate change, but we can do that much — and will.
Now is the perfect time to start planning. Talk with friends about how we can share our produce with those not able to have their own gardens. Your church or an area food pantries might be delighted to share your contributions with others who might use them.
It is also a good opportunity for us old codgers and codgerettes to put to use food preservation lessons we learned a few decades ago and pass them on to the next generation.