Any good gardening book will list the growing seasons of specific fruits and vegetables along with a detailed planting and harvesting guide. It’s a very quick way of seeing when certain of your favorite fruits and vegetables will be in season. Take that one step further and you’ll find literature online or at your library on the seasonality of foods around the globe. The term “seasonality” refers to the period of time a particular plant is at its peak of taste, nutritional value, texture and fragrance. This is true wherever you garden or farm. But the seasonality of fruits and vegetables will be different in different parts of the world. Raspberries, for instance, may be in season in January in parts of Australia where they will not be in season until maybe August in the northeast of the U.S.
Mention seasonality and most people think of fruit or vegetables – spring strawberries, autumn apples, winter squash. We hear so much these days about “being in touch with the earth” but there’s nothing more “in touch” than eating foods at their peak right where they are grown. This is eating in harmony with the rhythms of the earth and the climate and soil in that part of the world. Woodstock Farms brings you that experience wherever you live. The nuts in our nut butters, the fruits in our juices, the seeds in our trail mixes are harvested in season, where they are grown, the same with our fruits and vegetables which are flash-frozen within 2 hours of harvest. This process retains the seasonal goodness and folds that flavor, texture and nutrition right into the product that you buy at your local store. There’s something very organic about tasting the nutty flavor of nuts grown in Georgia even if you live in Vermont - or apricots from Turkey, canola from Asia, cranberries from Massachusetts...
Knowing and understanding food seasonality is hardly new. Many ancient peoples literally followed their food moving with the seasons to guarantee food for the community. They might move to areas where the climate was more conducive to an abundance of their particular food whether it be a plant harvest or an animal hunt of species such as deer, bison, fish...
Archaeologists routinely determine the seasonality of a site from organic artifacts found there – the presence, or even absence, of certain species; physical indications in the bones and teeth of animal remains and more recently by means of oxygen isotope analysis.
The prime seasonality of an item is usually the time when the item is not only at its peak of freshness but also its availability. This in turn means the price for that item will be at its lowest. Woodstock Farms brings you that reduction in cost as well as peak flavor and nutrition. Not a bad deal!
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