I am a big believer in using heirloom varieties to grow our food. They tend to be higher in nutritional value and it is cool to be able to save your seed. I am also a big fan and member of the "Eat Local" movement that is sweeping the country. It's a crazy thing when something as simple as a strawberry gets shipped all over the place and I end up buying an import to California when other local strawberries were exported. But that's a whole other story.
My desire to eat heirloom produce and my desire to eat local came into conflict this week when I passed a fruit stand with this sign:
Here in California, that particular sign is a first. These very expensive blueberries ($3.50 for the bowl full you see below) were grown in the country outside of some of the poorest communities in the state - just west of Richgrove, near Delano (known as the home of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers).
This new variety of blueberry does not need as many frost hours as the traditional blueberry. Here in California with far fewer frost hours than the home of the Maine Wild Blueberry, this blueberry actually produces a ripe and sweet fruit.
You might wonder how I know about the fruit since it's not an heirloom. All good rules deserve to have exceptions. I made an exception on Tuesday just to have the experience of tasting this new fruit. This particular fruit stand gets local produce that tends to be too ripe to travel. These berries were much more ripe than what you would find in a grocery store and nicely sweet. And so last night when Sander called from the same fruit stand asking what I wanted, I made a second exception.
That will likely be the end of the exceptions since $7 on a handful of blueberries pretty much breaks the bank. But, gosh, they were good.
