Food History

This morning was market morning and all the new season’s produce is happening. Tomatoes with scent and flavour, cherries, tiny parsnips and new varieties of apples. Kate takes me marketwards once a fortnight or so, and I’m getting used to the apple guy telling me “Two weeks now and we’ll have those heritage carrots for you again. This year there’ll be multicoloured beets as well.”

I’ve blogged about the nature of farmers’ market shopping before, so you probably don’t want me bouncing up and down about how different it is to buy something direct from the grower as opposed to direct from the supermarket or local shop which gets it direct from the wholesale market or from its own suppliers which (in Canberra’s case) often means ‘fresh’ fruit and vegetables coming via Sydney. Except I’m going to anyway, because there are important historical points involved. And I’m breaking it into two posts, one of which will appear tomorrow. I have a lot to say, even keeping it not-too-technical.

The pattern of who buys what from where is an important facet of food in society. Patterns of purchase help shape that society, in subtle ways. When a Parisian bought from the street-sellers anywhere between the twelfth and the eighteen century, that Parisian was reinforcing the Parisian dependence on entry of foodstuff through the gates. People starved when that flow stopped. And before they starved, they were liable to protest, sometimes very violently.

So the food trail has political implications. It always does. We’re just not always aware of what those political implications are.

There’s more to the food trail than politics. For instance, the closer you are to buying from a farm, the more you know of the trail the cherries you buy have followed. My cherries today were picked in Young and the farmer crated them and then sold them. By the kilo, we were told, but everyone asked for $5 or $10 worth and we all ended up with rather more than we paid for. A farmers’ kilo.

The difference between the cherries I bought today and the ones I bought two days ago is that the former were picked yesterday and the latter were picked a week before I bought them. There was a difference in the handling, too. The cherries that came straight from Young to the farmers’ market are several cuts above the supermarket variety. The buyers appreciate the quality and the generosity and the private jokes that they establish through meeting the stallholders every week or so, and social networks develop.

PS The picture today is by Kate and of Mountain Creek Farm, just a 20 minutes drive from me. Some of today’s food came from there.

food history, Mountain Creek Farm, farmers markets, produce, trade, travel