{"id":5303,"date":"2014-09-01T12:55:56","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T12:55:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/?p=5303"},"modified":"2016-04-08T12:57:14","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T12:57:14","slug":"a-note-from-farmer-al-september-1st","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/a-note-from-farmer-al-september-1st\/","title":{"rendered":"A note from farmer Al : September 1st"},"content":{"rendered":"Dear CSA Members,\r\n\r\nIt was a warm and balmy day in San Francisco...could have been Acapulco, 800 and\u00a0humid. There were lots of regulars raving about the fruit, but also bemoaning the end\u00a0of Cal Reds. But no matter, they were still happy to have the Summersets and the\u00a0Autumn Flames.\r\n\r\nSo I was really enjoying the day until this one customer came. He was young, tall, lean\u00a0and very blonde, and was holding his small child. What he did was a perfect example\u00a0of how wasteful and wrong our food system is here in the good ol\u2019 US of A.\r\n\r\nHe proceeded to pick over at least 15 of the most beautiful Summerset peaches I\u2019ve\u00a0ever grown. He picked up one peach at a time, squeezed it, smelled it, examined it,\u00a0then put it back into the display and grabbed another one and repeated the process. As\u00a0I stood there in front of my scale I witnessed him repeat this ritual a dozen more times\u00a0before he abandoned that display and went on to yet another of a different variety, the\u00a0Autumn Flames.\u00a0He did it there again, finally selecting three or four of them plus a couple of Emerald\u00a0Beauts, and then he brought them up to the scale to weigh and pay. When I told him\u00a0how much it was, he said, \u201cOh, that\u2019s too much.\u201d And walked off. I was angered and\u00a0amazed by his behavior.\r\n\r\nBut actually, I see this fussy selecting of fruit all the time at the farmers\u2019 markets so I\u2019m\u00a0kind of used to it. It is one of the many reasons our food system in the US is all wrong:\u00a0since consumers are allowed to handle fruits and vegetables in this manner, retailers\u00a0will buy only products that are durable enough to withstand the rough handling.\u00a0Even so, at the end of the day this type of behavior results in a very high percentage of\u00a0product that cannot be sold, and so it is thrown away. Meanwhile, back on the farm,\u00a0we farmers are trained to pick everything \u201cbefore it\u2019s time\u201d knowing that otherwise\u00a0retail buyers will not buy it. So in the end we all lose, because we pay higher cost for\u00a0food that is less satisfying and less nutritious that creates more waste to send to land-fills.\r\n\r\nYou have allowed us to choose fruit for you, sticking with us even when it is not always\u00a0to your liking. We appreciate that you, as CSA members, understand the real value of\u00a0food and reject that system.\r\n\r\n\"Signature\r\n\r\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear CSA Members, It was a warm and balmy day in San Francisco…could have been Acapulco, 800 and\u00a0humid. There were lots of regulars raving about the fruit, but also bemoaning the end\u00a0of Cal Reds. But no matter, they were still happy to have the Summersets and the\u00a0Autumn Flames. So I was really enjoying the day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-note-from-farmer-al"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5HwAU-1nx","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5303"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5307,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5303\/revisions\/5307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}