I subscribe to Wicked Leeks: the Riverford Organics newsletter. There are some useful links for our Food for Thought unit with Year 7.
A previous issue provides some information on the decline of the traditional greengrocer.
They have been lost to many High Streets by competition from supermarkets.
When I was a teenager - about 12-15, I worked on a Saturday for a local greengrocer in the Yorkshire village where I lived. He was called Peter Pellatt as was the shop. It was a stone built building with a large window and two doors. Inside was a counter and a few shelves of tinned goods, plus a pick and mix sweets section with penny chews like 'Black Jacks' etc.
It was very much a traditional shop with weighing scales involving actual weights and a ready reckoner in price per pound, and a till that you had to press the amounts int o to ring up the amounts. Working there relied on mental arithmetic - all totals were worked out in our heads, or written down with a stubby pencil on a paper bag... very little plastic packaging back then.
At the weekends, we would load up a horse box with boxes of fruit and vegetables and head over to Mexborough Open Air Market, and myself and another lad would work with two older people - one of who had previously worked in a large department store in Rotherham in the days before supermarkets.
There are some local greengrocers where I live, in various neighbouring villages - although they are a few miles away I do at least have that option to shop there.
There are other areas which have no access to fresh food and are called food deserts.
There are also "food swamps": where there are plenty of take away outlets.
They are often comparable price wise, and have a good range of produce that is sometimes more local than usual.
Image; Rhubarb - Alan Parkinson
Comments