Hurry Up, Spring

[msconduct]

Down here in the Southern Hemisphere we've now reached the really annoying end part of winter. The mandarin season has just finished, so now I have to scrape along for fruit until the cherries start just before Christmas and the stone fruit gets going just after that. And I'm so sick of winter vegetables. Because NZ is a big agricultural producer we mostly eat our own stuff, which means eating strictly seasonally. I don't think, for example, I've eaten an out of season strawberry in my entire life. This is very green and all, but it does mean winter is a trial.

And it's been even worse in the last couple of years, when a combo of the pandemic and very bad flooding have pushed fruit and vegetable prices up to a level way beyond anything I've ever seen. Cabbages, yes cabbages, which used to be around $3 in season, have been around the $8 mark for two years. Kumara (our local sweet potato) was particularly hard hit by the flooding and went from around $4 a kilo (2.2 lb) to $14. I laugh hollowly when I see recipes for leek and potato soup described as "rustic peasant food" - the potatoes I like, a variant like the US Yukon Gold, are $9 for a pack of 2 kg (4.4 lb), and leeks are $3.49. Each. Pretty wealthy peasants. All this means I'm tending to stick to the more affordable vegetables (I'm just not paying $8 for a cabbage!), and if I eat any more broccoli I'm going to look like a broccoli. I'm dreaming of salad, but with lettuces at $5, cucumbers at $8 and tomatoes at $7, a dream is all it's going to be until summer.

And with all due respect to the horrific summer in the Northern Hemisphere, I'm really looking forward to the warmer weather. We had a winter last year with endless rain, followed by no summer because there was also endless rain plus a massive cyclone, and then winter again with, you guessed it, rain. For once the sun is out today and it's lovely. I can't wait for the asparagus season and the strawberry season, and to go to the beach and SWIM more than the once I managed last year because it was too cold. It's going to be an El Niño year, which means we'll probably have a drought - that's not good, obviously, but after a year and a half of intense rain, at the moment it's really hard to care.

Comments

[kaishin108]

Oh gosh, those prices. I really hear for you. The second winter we were here was kind of like that for us. Too much snow for the freight trucks to get here.

I hope it warms up and you can have some yummy asparagus and some decent fruit and vegetables.

I just hope with prices having gone up, that they do go back down. Some of our high prices have not returned back down.

Oh dear, I hope you don't have a drought this season! This extreme weather is getting tiresome.

[msconduct]

Thanks! This is our second winter of $8 cabbages so I'm not expecting prices to drop anytime soon. The flooding from several atmospheric events and a cyclone has really affected us. The kumara (sweet potato) story is particularly sad as they lost not only their current crops but the kumara they use for seed so it affects all other crops going forward. We were working for a large agricultural customer at the time of the cyclone and they terminated our contract early as they'd had to terminate the project they were undertaking because of lack of funds.

[kaishin108]

oh no the seeds!

i hear of these seed vaults kept in different places, i guess this is why. i hope they can find some of their seeds, somewhere. that is tragic.

[dandylover1]

It's now autumn here and I'm not happy. We literally just closed the pool for the summer today. I hate the cold, and even the cool annoys me, because I like spending time outside. I'll eat certain vegetables, but in most cases, I'll always choose something else over them, though I do love potatoes and cucumbers. But those prices sound ridiculous!

[msconduct]

How lovely it must be to have your own pool, even if you do have to say goodbye to it every autumn. it would only be warm enough for that here for a couple of months at most, and I don't think I would be up for doing all the maintenance for so little use.