Locally-grown grapes a delicious treat

I was just at Two EEs Farm Market getting my usual produce. It was raining and the water was dripping, or spraying, through the canopy, giving the produce a nice wash. I stocked up on apples (mostly golden delicious at 49c/lb and some gala apples), mostly for making apple crisp. I like having fruit for snacks at school as well, and grapes are good for that. I usually get green seedless grapes, nice and crispy and sweet. They were from California this time, so I eyed them suspiciously and decided to take a second look at the purple ones outside. The darker ones were from Arkansas… uh… I can’t even find that on a map. The other ones were locally-grown lighter purple grapes. Small and seedless, and round.

Oh my gosh.

I sampled one before getting ready to wash everything (now put on hold to write this). I couldn’t stop! They are SO, SO GOOD! And with a nice tangy taste to the skin. Oh my.

So this is my first commitment to my grad project: buy some local produce. Why? Well, let’s take tomatoes, for example. When tomatoes are grown to be shipped on long hauls, they produce them to be not only huge and beefy, but also thick-walled so as to withstand being bumped around in a truck. (And they may be plein air, soaking in all the lovely pollution of the Interstate 5.) Try hucking it against an outdoor wall or fence. Does it bounce? If so, don’t eat it; get some meant for local consumption, like from a neighbour’s garden.

How am I to know whether the grapes from California, or Arkansas for that matter, aren’t bred to withstand a journey? How am I to know they weren’t irradiated, grown with herbicides and pesticides, or genetically-modified? Sure I don’t know what the local ones went through, but I think it’s a lot less likely any of this will be the case. I’m buying it at a small market. I think I’ll go ask them about their local produce during the course of my project.