Fresh produce
sucks2beme
Posts: 5,600
I've been stopping at a produce stand down the road for the last couple
of weeks. A local church let's him use the space on Friday and Saturdays.
He's been showing up summers for the last couple of years. It attracts
a lot of people. Best watermelons, hands down. Heard about it from
neighbors a couple of years ago. We get heirloom tomatoes and sweet corn
as well. After giving up on grocery store peaches (baseballs pretending to be
fruit) I tried his. Remember what peaches are really supposed to look/taste like?
I pay a bit more than sale prices at the grocery, but the quality is so mush
better.
of weeks. A local church let's him use the space on Friday and Saturdays.
He's been showing up summers for the last couple of years. It attracts
a lot of people. Best watermelons, hands down. Heard about it from
neighbors a couple of years ago. We get heirloom tomatoes and sweet corn
as well. After giving up on grocery store peaches (baseballs pretending to be
fruit) I tried his. Remember what peaches are really supposed to look/taste like?
I pay a bit more than sale prices at the grocery, but the quality is so mush
better.
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." --Thomas Jefferson
Comments
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Amazing what produce picked at the peak of ripeness vs guessing when you buy it taste like.
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I love this time of year.
Tonight's dinner included fresh local corn, squash, and cukes. Salad ingredients were all from our backyard garden (no, not grass/weeds!
)
I also made a couple batches of pesto this afternoon & froze our first batch for 2024. Pesto in the depths of winter is like instant summertime.
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Somewhat related...
We planted a peach tree and two persimmon trees 3 years ago, I believe. This year we were able to pick a few peaches and holy moly do we have a ton of persimmons on the others!
We have several farmer markers that float around. Usually the corn and greens beans are very good.
Not going to lie though.. For price/quality/freshness Sam's club is super hard to beat. Their grocery and meat sectoon is insane... Especially when Walmarts is so poor (atleast our local one).
Side note, Walmart ox tail and pork neck bone is easily the best in our area comparing all local butchers and grocery stores that carry it.- Not Tom ::::::: Any system can play Diana Krall. Only the best can play Limp Bizkit. -
You know Trey I cannot disagree. I've never been able to figure out how they are so polar opposite of each other and owned by the same damn company.Not going to lie though.. For price/quality/freshness Sam's club is super hard to beat. Their grocery and meat sectoon is insane... Especially when Walmarts is so poor (atleast our local one). -
Costco meat is very good also.
Heirloom tomatoes, home grown, picked at the peak of ripeness is.🤗🤗🤗🤗
We didn't plant any this year (stuff came up) but we find some good recommendations for various heirlooms here:
http://www.tomatoville.com/index.phpSal Palooza -
There are several farmers markets in our area on a weekly basis until late autumn. Usually good stuff but a bit more$$ than the supermarkets. I don;t mind spending a few $$ more with a local business rather than a corporate owned entity. Same for our horse feed, the local feed/nursery gets my $$ even tough the 50lb bags at TSC are $2+ cheaper.
If you have the room or large flower pots, plant a veggie garden.Nothing like munching on fresh as it can get stuff on a summer morning.Yep, my name really is Bob.
Parasound HCA1500A(indoor sound) and HCA1000(outdoor sound), Dynaco PAS4, Denon DP1200 w/Shure V15 Type V and Jico SAS stylus, Marantz UD7007, Polk L600, Rythmik L12 sub. -
Living here in South Jersey we have farmers markets out the wazoo offering up fresh produce & a host of other items from local farms. I guess that's why they call Jersey the "Garden State""2 Channel & 11.2 HT "Two Channel:Magnepan LRSSchiit Audio Freya S - SS preConsonance Ref 50 - Tube preParasound HALO A21+ 2 channel ampBluesound NODE 2i streameriFi NEO iDSD DAC Oppo BDP-93KEF KC62 sub Home Theater:Full blown 11.2 set up.
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I remember when all the local farmers had roadside stands, or small farmers markets. Prices were always 1/2 what the supermarkets charged, or better.
Then they became trendy. It's been 5 years or more since I stopped at my favorite place for tomatoes. They wanted $8.50 a pound, 5 years ago.
Luckily the local supermarkets sell local grown at reasonable prices. -
Speaking of heirloom 'maters... one of the best farmers' markets I've ever seen was in Charlottesville, VA when Steve was in grad school at UVA. Unbelievable tomatoes.
I do - kind of - miss living in the vicinity of DelMarVa at this time of year. Corn and tomatoes here are good... but not nearly on par with what I grew up with.
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I remember when all the local farmers had roadside stands, or small farmers markets. Prices were always 1/2 what the supermarkets charged, or better.
Then they became trendy.
Tru dat.
We still have a couple that you walk in and can get two bag fulls of fruits and veggies for $13 or $14 but the distance you have to drive to get there kind of negates the cost savings. Not to many places 'round here sell the heirloom 'mater's either. That's a shame because the difference is amazing between an heirloom and whatever it is they try to pass at grocery stores as a tomato. Those are horribly tasteless to me.
Tom
~ In search of accurate reproduction of music. Real sound is my reference and while perfection may not be attainable? If I chase it, I might just catch excellence. ~ -
Our neighbor children, across the street, brought us some peaches and tomatoes they grew. I'm partial to really good cherry tomatoes but most of them are thick skinned and tasteless. I had some this morning with scrambled eggs and my wife's wheat bread. Great way to start the day.
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We are quite lucky. In the suburbs that we live in, we have farms about a 7min drive away. Heck we can smell the manure when it gets sprayed. We have many locals stands that sell produce and local unpasteurized honey, eggs and a butcher that sources its meat from locals and even smokes it. We take advantage of this while we can.
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SeleniumFalcon wrote: »Our neighbor children, across the street, brought us some peaches and tomatoes they grew. I'm partial to really good cherry tomatoes but most of them are thick skinned and tasteless. I had some this morning with scrambled eggs and my wife's wheat bread. Great way to start the day.
My favorite-est cherry tomatoes of all (FWIW) are an orange-colored variety called Sungold. They have an amazing flavor, evocative of the tropics. Very luscious.
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Since Monsanto got bought by Bayer and then sued out the wazoo, the farmers markets around me have been producing some of my past faves again. It was hard to find Silver Queen corn in Jersey for a while. You'd get what was supposed to be Silver Queen but it was a mix of yellow and white corn on the same cob and the whole thing tasted bland but sugary.
There's been less Monsanto seeding going on and that's good because Monsanto's seeds were sterile. You plant them, they grow a crop and you'd harvest but none of it was viable seed for next season. You HAD to buy more from Monsanto. What that did, though, was when a crop of Monsanto seeds were growing, flowering and pollinating, they would pollinate with other non-Monsanto crops and turn those crops sterile too.
They are currently in court over it in the U.S., Canada and the E.U.
But this year was the first year in a while where I've been able to get that Silver Queen corn I remember from my youth pretty much everywhere. Stella Farms, about 5 minutes up the road from me, has had so much Silver Queen this year that they were selling bushel bags for $30 just to move it before it spoiled.
They were selling half bushels of Jersey Beefsteak tomatoes the size of softballs for $20 and they keep putting heirloom tomatoes on special too. It was a good year for blueberries too, apparently. Peaches are in-season but I'm waiting for the late season picking. There's been little rain and so much heat this summer that those peaches that matured late for an August picking are pretty much candy on a branch.
The supermarkets have a bunch of produce but it's all coming from halfway around the globe and it's not as good of a quality anymore. Lots of spoilage and lots of hard stuff that looks ripe but it's like eating pulp. The markets all around us don't have much in the way of meats lately, either. But the butcher shop we've been going to seems to have no problem sourcing local livestock and it's been stellar quality.
The only one that comes close that I've been to is BJ's Wholesale Club and they don't always have everything in stock and their prices are all over the place. The butcher shop has been pretty steady.
The butcher also offers 4H shares. I got an order in for half a cow and I picked up my Heritage Pig last week. The Heritage Pigs are pigs they raise on their farm and then sell shares for slaughter. It's expensive up front, a couple hundred bucks, but when you walk away with 40-50 pounds of a variety of pork cuts, some prepped like sausages and hams, it ends up being a good value. Just make sure you have freezer space!Expert Moron Extraordinaire
You're just jealous 'cause the voices don't talk to you! -
There's been less Monsanto seeding going on and that's good because Monsanto's seeds were sterile. You plant them, they grow a crop and you'd harvest but none of it was viable seed for next season. You HAD to buy more from Monsanto. What that did, though, was when a crop of Monsanto seeds were growing, flowering and pollinating, they would pollinate with other non-Monsanto crops and turn those crops sterile too.
They are currently in court over it in the U.S., Canada and the E.U.
Did not know this. They should immediately destroy all of the seed they currently have worldwide and NEVER be able to offer it again. Anywhere and for any reason. No seed company should ever be able to sell seed that has these kinds of consequences.
Tom
~ In search of accurate reproduction of music. Real sound is my reference and while perfection may not be attainable? If I chase it, I might just catch excellence. ~ -
I haven't followed the whole Monsanto seed thing for some time, but I'm glad to hear that it is becoming less of an issue. I never liked the idea and I especially didn't like how Monsanto had a team of bulldog lawyers who sued the crap out of farmers who tried to avoid their seeds but got cross pollinated anyway.For rig details, see my profile. Nothing here anymore...
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There's been less Monsanto seeding going on and that's good because Monsanto's seeds were sterile. You plant them, they grow a crop and you'd harvest but none of it was viable seed for next season. You HAD to buy more from Monsanto. What that did, though, was when a crop of Monsanto seeds were growing, flowering and pollinating, they would pollinate with other non-Monsanto crops and turn those crops sterile too.
They are currently in court over it in the U.S., Canada and the E.U.
Did not know this. They should immediately destroy all of the seed they currently have worldwide and NEVER be able to offer it again. Anywhere and for any reason. No seed company should ever be able to sell seed that has these kinds of consequences.
Tom
It was all about money and production efficiency for Monsanto and the farmers. Make Roundup to kill pretty much any plant you spray it near. Then GMO a series of crop seeds that are Roundup resistant and sterile. What could go wrong? Spray the heck out of fields with Roundup, sell farmers a seed that is only for 1 season, it grows fantastic in the absence of any competing weeds, the roundup kills off milkweed, honey bees, Monarch butterflies, and countless other issues. Money coming in from seeds, herbicides, and from lawsuits against the farmers who had crops that were cross-pollinated!
Oh yeah, and all your farmers get cancer from the Roundup!
Gotta love the corporate greed instilled by the CEOs and investors.
For rig details, see my profile. Nothing here anymore... -
... and that, boys and girls, is why our back field looks the way it does.
There's probably an acre of just milkweed spread around out there. The monarchs started arriving a few weeks ago. They and their kids will be around until frost.
(from a few years ago)
