So I’ve been shopping in farmshops yadda yadda yadda….wholesome food….blah….local….rhubarb…

It got me thinking about how we used to live. No not in the 1970’s, most people remember that, the brightly coloured sweaters, Noel Edmunds before he was grey, the union of Keith Chegwin/Maggie Philbin, Kenny Everett bending Terry Wogan’s microphone…No, long before that, before the likes of rail and air travel. Back to a time when it took three days to travel to London from Leeds (last week?). I thought about how, during this time, the general populace would have eaten.

More than likely they’d have a pot containing some mutton on the stove or fire boiling away with potatoes and other vegetables and they would just add to it when it was getting low. Well…I imagine at least. Of course, most of the food they would have grown themselves or maybe pinched from their neighbours garden and it wasnt really until the coming of the choochoo steam train that food started to travel further and consumerism started to take hold.

Of course tomatoes and stuff tend not to grow in the hairy dark winter days of Northern Europe and so the likes of which were probably grown in either greenhouses or on the continent in places like Spain. Indeed, with faster land based travel came faster sea based transport and so began the introduction of “exotic” food stuffs such as oranges, bananas and rice to people’s every day diets. Of importing food was subject to political and transport constraints which became more apparent, in the UK at least, during the Second World War.

As you know, the UK is surrounded by water and is only a teeny tiny place really. During WWII, German Uboats made it nigh on impossible to import food into the country thus forcing a state of rationing upon the populace. We did quite well, I think anyway; back lawns were dug up to turn into mini allotments where people grew their own vegetables (indeed, long after the war some people carried on this home supply thing, my Granddad for one. He grew tomatoes and other vegetables in his greenhouse). Soon as the war was over and society returned to “normality” familiar foods returned to the UK. I remember my nan telling me about how some kids went down to the docks in Bootle to see a strange yellow bendy thing (aka a banana) for the first time. Imagine that, never having seen a banana! Must have been a weird thing to see. Of course by this time refrigeration had improved (thanks to Mr Hitler’s mates and their experiments) as had transport and goods from as far a field as Israel, India and New Zealand started arriving in to the country. Cue all year round tomatoes, all year round veg, all year round apples. Magic! Except one small thing, transporting these things cost money and a good way to save money is to a) pay your workers less and b) use cheap transport. So while Britain was getting fat again, other countries were getting poor, our environment suffered and we became reliant once more on imports. Not a good thing really. For an island nation at least.

As the need for farms decreased so did arable land, disappearing underneath tonnes of concrete and becoming new towns such as Bradford, Reading, Milton Keynes and Warrington or housing estates to accommodate those affected by the slum clearances. We no longer relied on the pot of mutton, opting for a fridge to store our goods for longer and more so with the coming of the freezer. Tinned goods became more readily available, rich in preservatives and artificial things [lovely] and non-seasonal foods were available all year round. Great. So now I can enjoy an orange at any time of the year any where in the world.

So like I said, I’ve been thinking, really this transportation of goods is not good is it? Ethically it is good as Farmer José grows his oranges, boxes them up and ships them out to far away lands (sometimes earning less in a month than what some people earn in a week).It is a source of income for José and it helps him feed his family. However, ecologically it is bad because José probably chucks his oranges onto the back of a smokey old diesel truck, which is then driven miles and miles to an airport somewhere where they are flown, or to a dock where they are shipped, in dreadfully polluting vehicles (big smelly tankers or aeroplanes). They are then unloaded (probably by forklift truck) and reloaded into the back of another truck, or train, where they are then transported to and unloaded at a main distribution depot. At the depot they are then loaded into the back of yet a different truck and transported to the shop or market (Be it supermarket or greengrocer) to where we drive or get the bus then return home to put in our fruit bowl. Jesus! Think of it! That’s a hell of a lot of hydrocarbons burnt so we can have an orange on a cold windy wet morning in October.

So yeah, buying locally is all well and good but really what I had to think about is how far has my food really travelled but not only that, in order for me to eat food that is out of season, it has to travel miles and miles, sometimes having been grown in warmed greenhouses, which is not really good for the environment. I thought long and hard. So hard my head started to hurt. “What did we do before?”

So of course there are things that grow most of the year and things that don’t. It’s the things that don’t that are the problem. I remember not being able to get Satsumas at any other time of year than at Christmas (when they were in season in Spain and imported into Britain) . Now it appears you can get satsumas all year round thanks to Mr Tesco and consumer demand. But what I want to do is only buy stuff that is in season and grown natively. So bananas, oranges and stuff grown outside of the UK will be off my menu, as will strawberries, melons and non-British fruit and veg. Sadly, because I really like satsumas and I don’t want to be awkward, I’m not going to start this project until the new year. I am intending to only eat what is in season and ideally, what is grown locally. A bold plan, but I think I might just pull it off. Of course I will journal my efforts either here or in a separate journal. We shall see nearer the time. However I have also been thinking about potatoes….