Winter Back Then

I've been looking at various stuff over on Local Harvest, to see if there's anything conveniently located near us. As it turns out, there is a produce stand not 5 minutes from our house, which is great, considering spring/summer are coming up.

Having been a city boy for all of my life, I admit I have been totally ignorant to how little food can be cultivated during winter time. At that website, you can see what is available during winter/autumn/spring/summer, and stuff grown during winter time is scant.

Currently, I really like winter time. The colder months are my favorite part of the year. I guess a lot of that is because I grew up in Florida, where it was a treat to be able to see my breath condensing. But if I'd lived back when the U.S. population was largely a bunch of farmers, I probably wouldn't have liked it much. After, one must get pretty tired of beans and turnips all winters. Fall would be spent preparing for winter, drying out said beans and whatnot. I suppose if you were lucky or rich, you might have some smoked meat set aside for very special occasions.

Now we have freezers and refrigerators. We have grocery stores like Kroger and Publix to provide produce and meat throughout the winter. My "crunchiness" only extends as far as it's convenient for me, honestly. Sure we'll visit the produce stands and buy organic if possible, but I'm not so high and crunchy that I won't ever go inside chain grocery stores and buy conventional foodstuffs. Forget that; I'm hungry, it's available, and I like some variety in my diet, so why not? If not for nationwide grocery stores, I might not like winter so much. My lamentations over hard, orange colored tomatoes in wintertime sound whiny when compared to what people must've had to go through in the old days. That said, I can't wait till tomatoes are plentiful, red, and juicy again.

Of course, if I am totally mistaken on some of these musings, feel free to cure me of my ignorance. I know very little of farm life.