What's in season when, then? : comments [Matthew's Journal]

Yeah, I guess, or foreign gooseberries

Ngghh. Yes! Precisely! Part of the point of wanting to know when things are in season here is to reduce food miles, ie buy stuff that's grown locally instead of stuff that's been flown in from abroad!

("I think we're encountering the middle of this conversation.")

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mm. our local grocer is quite good about labelling stuff with country of origin. (don't Tesco do that??).

mind you I'd also assume, possibly erroneously, that things could be grown out of season "locally" in some kind of greenhousery thing.

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Yes. Yes, things can be grown in greenhouses or polytunnels; and yes, supermarkets do label things with country of origin. (I suspect there will now be a barrage of comments from people telling me how they never needed to learn that supermarkets sold fruit, or they don't memorise the names of countries so how can they be expected to know what "abroad" is.)

Anyway, originally, I said, "So if you see them in Tesco as 'in season' in February, you suspect you're being sold a pup", and you said, "Yeah, I guess, or foreign gooseberries, or something". Yes, obviously, I do look at the country-of-origin information if I'm buying from somewhere that provides that information, that's not the point. If you know that fruit ripens in summer/autumn then you don't need to look at the country of origin to know that raspberries aren't going to have grown normally, in this country, in February.

Of course, if you can label anything as "in season" on the grounds that it's in season somewhere, or it's in season in a greenhouse, it rather devalues the words "in season", but hey, now I know I'm weird for having noticed summer and remembered that it's different from winter, I'm happy to accept that I'm weird for remembering that words used to have meanings as well.

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It's interesting to read this, since actually, I think my knowledge, and remembrance of bygone summers and not having summer fruits in supermarkets in the winter (etc etc), is actually not dissimilar to yours. I just thought the poll was asking slightly more specific questions. Maybe I should have had more confidence.

Interesting about this food miles issue, and yes I agree in principle that the less food miles we all use on average the better - but what about non-food miles, is *everything* you buy local? - and how much stuff that isn't food do you actually buy? (In my case, the answer is frankly not a lot, and not buying much is green in itself).

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but what about non-food miles, is *everything* you buy local?

Almost certainly not. Unfortunately I know that round here (Cambridge, LiveJournal) it's considered worse to try to improve your environmental impact in some areas, bit by bit, than just to do nothing.

I confess, I bought some ibuprofen yesterday: I have no idea where the tablets are made, where the plastic blister-packs are made (and it's plastic therefore it's evil anyway), where the cardboard is made. I suspect I should have just drank some home-brewed gin to dull the pain, or just accepted that pain is part of life.

- and how much stuff that isn't food do you actually buy?

Not that much, really. And nearly all the unnecessary stuff I buy (books, clothes, music etc) I get second-hand from charity shops. That's fairly local and fairly green. I do buy toiletries -- toothpaste, shampoo, soap etc -- which is probably unforgivable when I could make them all at home; but working full time doesn't leave me with as much time as I'd like to do that sort of thing. On the other hand, since I work with computers, there's probably no way I can offset that evil, & I should probably just give up the job and become a self-sufficient farmer or a Buddhist monk or something.

Are you interrogating everybody in this way, out of interest, or have you just picked on me for daring to have an opinion?

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I'm not really interrogating, I was just interested to see what your values were on these related issues. (Not related to the poll, but to some of your later comments).

I'm not aiming to pass judgement at all, just to point out that someone who doesn't fall over backwards to care hugely about the precise seasonality of, mostly, luxury items isn't necessarily one of these people who couldn't care less and is massively damaging the planet due to their food shopping habits, which is what I felt you were saying with some of your previous answers (to me, and to other people). You sounded extremely critical and jumped to many conclusions.

I completely agree that doing things bit by bit is valuable. Every little bit helps. And sensible, since a radical overhaul of a lifestyle isn't as easy as it sounds, as you have implied. The point I want to make is, that not everyone will be doing it bit by bit in the same order or with the same emphases as you. For example, I've got a limited budget, and young mouths to get at least 5 a day into, and therefore neither the in-season-ness of apples & cucucmber, or the air travel of bananas (all popular here and good for lunchboxes) nor the seasonality of duck (can't afford it, except for an annual treat when it's on special offer), are as high on my agenda as they might be on yours, but other things might be higher on mine than yours.

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someone who doesn't fall over backwards to care hugely about the precise seasonality of, mostly, luxury items

Oh for crying out loud. The point was that somebody who was taking part in a debate on seasonality of foods seemed to be arguing that fruit was "seasonal" if it was "in season abroad", which was making a nonsense of the terms of the debate.

I don't expect people to "fall over backwards to care" about anything; most people don't care about most things. I was, and still am, baffled at the sheer number of people whose response to the question seemed to be "how/why on earth would I know when fruit grow?", not because of their reasons or otherwise for caring or not caring but because I'm just amazed that it's possible to get to the age of 30 or thereabouts and not realised that "to every thing there is a season".

not everyone will be doing it bit by bit in the same order or with the same emphases as you

Yes, I KNOW THAT. And the question of priorities wasn't in any way my point, or even something I was interested in debating, until you charged in with "so have you ever bought something non-local? Are you perfect? ARE YOU? You BUY THINGS! BURN THE WITCH!" and for some reason I bothered to defend myself against drive-by tosspottery.

For example, I've got a limited budget, and young mouths to get at least 5 a day into

Oh, stop it, you're breaking my heart.

other things might be higher on mine than yours

Yes, yes. You win at green. Happy now?

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I'm quite comfortable in my approach to the whole thing, so maybe the issue is your comfort with *your* approach to it. You're starting to rant irrationally for no apparent reason that I can see (other than "chip on shoulder" about some aspect of it?), so I am taking no further part in the discussion after this post. It's been interesting though overall, and I shall perhaps spend the summer pointing out the seasonality of the work going on around us (for the kids) just in case it is something we've skipped over a bit too much at our house (and I mean that genuinely, not sarcastically, none of my posts were sarcastic).

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Tesco do, it seems, fly about-to-fruit raspberries in from Mexico, plant them in Cambridgeshire in polytunnels, and sell the result as "local, in season reaspberries" in February.

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