Hello everybody,
My dear sister-in-law Mary and I were discussing the recent drastic hike in the cost of produce here where we live in eastern Ontario.
When I was last in a grocery store they actually had signs all through the produce department apologizing for the prices. They blamed it on growing conditions and the drop in the Canadian dollar.
Some of the prices were completely insane. A bunch of celery was $4.99, cauliflower was $7.99 a head and broccoli was $4.45.
Now, we eat a lot of vegetables here in our house. We are also on a very strict grocery budget. I cannot afford these kinds of prices.
Thankfully we had a fairly decent year in the garden and I have a good bit of veg set aside. There is about 35 pounds of green and yellow beans in the freezer and about 100+ pounds of squash tucked away. We can manage. I will only buy fresh veg when I see something that is not a horrible price and we will make sure that we eat every single speck of it. Fruit is the same. The prices are through the roof. We must have some fruit but we will not be eating as much as we normally would. And again, we certainly will not waste a single piece of it.
I have a horrible suspicion that this is just the thin edge of the wedge. This is what we can now look forward to in the future. Climate change is a very real thing despite the nay sayers. All you have to do is look at what is happening all over the world to realize that our dear old earth is in trouble.
So what can we do about it? You do not need me to preach at your about using less fossil fuels and trying to reduce your carbon footprint. If you are a regular reader of this blog then you probably already do all these things.
I am thinking more about the immediate problem of providing food for the table.
I recently read an article about growing some veg in your house over the winter months. I am going to give it a try. I was thinking about something like swiss chard or spinach. I will let you know what happens in a future post.
In the meantime I think that we will all need to tighten our belts a bit. Perhaps frozen or canned food will be the answer in the meantime until we can get back into our gardens. I think that having a productive garden will be extremely important in the coming years. Perhaps we need to take the approach that England took during WWII. Everyone was encouraged to plant a garden and grow as much as they could so the country would not starve.
I know that this has been a doom and gloom post with no pretty pictures but the costs simply shocked me so much I had to say something. Happier posts will be forthcoming.
A Happy and Healthy New Year to us all. Cheers.
Melanie
My dear sister-in-law Mary and I were discussing the recent drastic hike in the cost of produce here where we live in eastern Ontario.
When I was last in a grocery store they actually had signs all through the produce department apologizing for the prices. They blamed it on growing conditions and the drop in the Canadian dollar.
Some of the prices were completely insane. A bunch of celery was $4.99, cauliflower was $7.99 a head and broccoli was $4.45.
Now, we eat a lot of vegetables here in our house. We are also on a very strict grocery budget. I cannot afford these kinds of prices.
Thankfully we had a fairly decent year in the garden and I have a good bit of veg set aside. There is about 35 pounds of green and yellow beans in the freezer and about 100+ pounds of squash tucked away. We can manage. I will only buy fresh veg when I see something that is not a horrible price and we will make sure that we eat every single speck of it. Fruit is the same. The prices are through the roof. We must have some fruit but we will not be eating as much as we normally would. And again, we certainly will not waste a single piece of it.
I have a horrible suspicion that this is just the thin edge of the wedge. This is what we can now look forward to in the future. Climate change is a very real thing despite the nay sayers. All you have to do is look at what is happening all over the world to realize that our dear old earth is in trouble.
So what can we do about it? You do not need me to preach at your about using less fossil fuels and trying to reduce your carbon footprint. If you are a regular reader of this blog then you probably already do all these things.
I am thinking more about the immediate problem of providing food for the table.
I recently read an article about growing some veg in your house over the winter months. I am going to give it a try. I was thinking about something like swiss chard or spinach. I will let you know what happens in a future post.
In the meantime I think that we will all need to tighten our belts a bit. Perhaps frozen or canned food will be the answer in the meantime until we can get back into our gardens. I think that having a productive garden will be extremely important in the coming years. Perhaps we need to take the approach that England took during WWII. Everyone was encouraged to plant a garden and grow as much as they could so the country would not starve.
I know that this has been a doom and gloom post with no pretty pictures but the costs simply shocked me so much I had to say something. Happier posts will be forthcoming.
A Happy and Healthy New Year to us all. Cheers.
Melanie
You might find this web sight informative when it comes to climate change. http://www.agriculturedefensecoalition.org/
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