Yes, We Have No Bananas: Struggling to Eat Locally
The content you’re looking for is no longer here. We’re finally beginning to shut this blog down, to remove old content.
We’ve chosen to start with essays that are available elsewhere. Specifically, this article has been edited into our eBook, More Calories Than Cash: Frugality the Zeiger Homestead Way. It contains edited, improved, and expanded versions of essays that used to be available for free on this blog, and new material as well. You can learn more about it, and order it here.
Themocracy
while I also try to eat seasonally for the majority of my fruit and vegetables, I also don’t mind ocean shipped staples, which would include coffee, cocoa, pineapple, bananas, spices, etc. Food trade has happened since the beginnings of agriculture. (I found some interesting history about the impact of piracy in the Mediterranean which impacted the regional wheat trade in Roman and post Roman times.) Working in international agriculture, I know the small global farmers, laborers, and their families that those commodities support. Don’t feel bad about the occasional banana!
Charity, are you saying we can eat bananas guilt-free? What a gift!
This recalls a story I once heard on the radio, about a young American who lived with South American Natives for a time. His village headman sent him to the “big” village nearby to get bananas. He selected a whole branch of fresh bananas and went to pay. When he asked the proprietor how much he owed, he said, “The man got a really crafty look on his face and said, ‘ten cents!’ So, I gave him a quarter and went home.”
If only we could go to the source and pay the grower, cut out the middle man!
“Sorry to quote the title of a rather annoying old song”
Not half as annoying as “Seasons in the Sun.”
Every age has its groaners, my dear!