Burns Best Farm

Raspberries and Blueberries

This article was in the Chattanooga Times-Free Press on Sunday, although they didn't have it available online today so I linked to a newspaper in Monterey.  I was fascinated by a good bit of what I read, especially about the blueberries.

One of the selling points I make about our blueberries when I'm  at the farmers market is that they are never more than 72 hours off the bush, and that is the max.  They have so much more flavor to me than the berries available in the grocery store, even upscale stores like Whole Foods. 

Now I know why; the blueberries in stores right now come from Chile (which I knew), but they travel by cargo ship!  They are chilled immediately upon picking to 32F which creates a dormancy that lengthens the life of the berry.  They are shipped over the ocean, still chilled, and can be between 20 and 30 days old by the time you buy them in the produce section.

A month old!  No wonder my 72 hour old berries taste better! 

Raspberries are also covered in the article; they are much more perishable so they are shipped via air cargo, and allegedly the shipping costs are only 25 cents per package (4 oz. pkg.)  To fly berries in the cargo hold of an airplane, then put them on a truck to a warehouse, to a grocery store....only a quarter.  Somehow I find that totally unbelievable.  Completely unable to believe it. 

The whole idea of buying fresh produce from the southern hemisphere removes the "fresh" from the descriptive, don't you think?  I'm sticking with "Buy Local" and "Support Your Local Farmer".  I would encourage you to do the same.

Thanks for posting this!

12:47, 2007-Apr-9 .. Posted by ZookeeperCat

I'm going to spin that article off in a different direction for my TYDOS article this week.

Happy Easter!

Cat, Lazy Creek Zookeeper