"Dave Hill" wrote in message
ups.com...
On 27 Apr, 10:04, "'Mike'" wrote:
"Dave Hill" wrote in message

ups.com...
I was just thinking about my younger days when we didn't have fruit
and veg flown in from all round the world.
We used to grow dwarf French beans as they would crop 2 weeks earlier
than runner beans sown on the same date. French beans take 10 weeks
from sowing to picking whilst runners are 12 weeks.
We used to pick Broad bean pods when they were finger size and slice
them like runner beans, the first green beans of the season.
The first English Strawberries would make £1.00 a pound as would the
first English tomatoes.
Eggs were always more expensive in the winter as the chickens in those
days tended to stop laying in the winter.
Ah! Those were the days.
David Hill
Abacus Nurseries

Dave this was the 'theme' or whatever you want to call it a few days ago
about Great Britain importing too much stuff and us not being self
supporting, or at least somewhere near self supporting.

I feel we should be worried about our reliance on imports of EVERYTHING.
Just think for a while, it wouldn't take much to block our ports and thus
nothing could be brought in. I thought about this when the subject came
up.
Even with my limited knowledge, I, and a very small team and the right
military hardware, could close all ports within 6 hours and keep them
closed
for a very very very long time.

Think about it, so could you, or anyone.

:-((

Mike

--
.................................................. .............
The Royal Naval Electrical Branch Association.
'THE' Association if you served in the Electrical Branch of the Royal
Navywww.rneba.org.uk

Forget about blocking the ports, harbours etc. as well as being able
to close every airport and landing strip in the UK.
I do think it's madness when in the middle of the summer with runner
beans growing everywhere you go into a supermarket and see sliced
runner beans from Zimbabwe, as if we can't slice beans in this
country.
Parsnips flown in from New Zeland in August, who the hell wants
parsnips in the middle of the summer.

I don't even want NZ parsnips in the middle of a NZ winter thanks Dave. One
of my work mates was moaning/lamenting that he could no longer get locally
(NZ) grown tinned Golden Queen peaches anymore. It is cheaper to import them
from Greece, Italy or Canada than it is to purchase the metals cans for NZ
canning. The overseas peaches are apparently nothing close to the quality of
local ones. I did suggest he could grow his own and bottle them. That was
too much effort for John mind. He was correct in his moaning, he was wrong
to ignore a good suggestion. In the height of winter I used to have to rely
on imported Italian tomatos for basing pizza. Now I have a number of bags of
stewed home grown tomatos that will do much of it for me. It just feels
better.

rob

ps much of our produce is shifted to Britain by sea. Putting aside locally
grown vs importing and fresh taste issues the global warming issue is not so
significant as compared to airfreight. Moreover we can produce many things
with less enegry input than can be produced in coutry of origin it seems.
Not sure on that score however about our peaches vs Canadian peaches, my
tomatos vs Italian tomatos.