Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Crowd Farming avocados

After a satisfactory experience buying Spanish oranges via Crowd Farming, I have now tried buying a 4 kg box of Haas avocados, also from Spain. The order was placed on Wed17th Feb for about £32. The fruit is picked to order and this must have happened in the following day or two. The box was collected by a shipper on 22nd and delivered here by Parcel Force on 25th. We haven't yet finished them but I am happy to say that these avocados are the best I have ever tasted with none of the problems I have sometimes had with fruit past its best from the supermarket. Under this system one buys direct from a farmer and there are several offering avocados. Mine came from this woman's farm: https://www.crowdfarming.com/en/farmer/la-atalaya/up/buy-avocados-h...

I think the price is similar to buying organic avos in a shop but, as long as the season lasts, I shall buy mine through Crowd Farming.

Tags for Forum Posts: Crowd, Farming, avocados

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Permalink Reply by Dick Harris on March 23, 2021 at 1:37

I shall put any reaction to this on the new thread you started.

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Permalink Reply by Burgoyne Bec on April 1, 2021 at 17:42

Is it inconvenience or just learning to plan ahead? I think in many ways it is more convenient to do what Dick is doing! He'll never be one avo short of a guacamole, that's for sure.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on March 19, 2021 at 9:05

It’s interesting how food buying has been turned from a transaction into an “experience”. We no longer go to restaurants to eat but go to a “destination”.

The opposite seems true in the hard headed world of finance. Think about how we would interact with a bank 20 or 30 years ago. A lot of the ways we interacted were face to face, with an employee doing the work and being paid for that. Think about now and how transactions have been pushed back to us. We manage our accounts ourselves, we take money from holes in walls - the cost of banking is now with us as the consumers rather than with the providers of the service.

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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on March 19, 2021 at 11:47

"boomers disdain" . . . Gen X's ignorance . . . woolly-headed slackness of the millennials . . . Covid having pushed all generations etc etc."

Will, you seem to have skipped those of us who (Praise the Lord!) preceded boomers, Gen X, millennials and the rest. We ain't going to be pushed slavishly or otherwise into adopting anything. That said, you're probably right about the rest.

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Permalink Reply by vaneska on March 18, 2021 at 11:20

As a result of your post, Dick, a German friend of mine has ordered avocados and blood oranges to share with her family. The crowdfarming selection available for Germany is a good deal greater, unsurprisingly.

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Permalink Reply by Dick Harris on March 19, 2021 at 10:51

Thanks Vaneska, it is true that there was delay before Crowd Farming found a way to send avocados to the UK. There a quite a few products available but I have bought only oranges, avocados and clementines (once - for Christmas). I should be interested to hear how other users have got on.

Incidentally, a 10kg box of oranges delivered direct to my nephew was a very convenient way of sending a Christmas present and also well matched to him, his vegan wife and their four daughters under 14.

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Permalink Reply by JJ B on March 19, 2021 at 12:13

Just a comment...

I am a "baby boomer" by the way!

Avocados are one of the latest popular superfoods. But have you ever tried large avocados like the type you get in the West Indies/Caribbean? Avocados do originate from the central americas.

I get mine on West Green Rd, Seven Sisters end.

I just cannot buy the small, rough & dark-skinned avocados that you get in supermarkets as they are just NOT the same buttery product that I know - we had a tree in our garden when I was a boy in Trinidad. I'd get insulted if I served them up to family! But the small ones are sold in supermarkets because they come off of midget trees and so are easy to pick, travel well and keep for long on supermarket shelves and not for their taste or culinary value...Well they just aren't for me!

An avocado should NEVER go in the cold before it is ripe, only for a short while after being cut, to keep it from spoiling.

And it always amuses me (not) when I see customers pressing down on avocados - essentially permanently damaging them - to test whether they are good/ready. I shake them to see if the "seed" inside shakes and that's how we tested them on the tree to see if they were ready. I can also, if needs be, judge ones which are ready when the seed doesn't shake or or ones that turn dark purple when ripe. You shouldn't need to press them and really should buy them when they are hard, but "full", then wrap in brown or news paper, place in a warmish place to ripen them - NEVER EVER the fridge or cold storage. This will happen quickly if they are/were in fact full when picked.

Sigh...aren't we getting used to convenience over taste!

Incidentally I just don't buy bananas here in Europe either - don't see the point as I get no pleasure from them at all, at all!

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Permalink Reply by Cathie on March 19, 2021 at 15:33

For the last couple of years we have had avocados, oranges, lemons, clementines, tomatoes, walnuts, pomegranates and Roscoff onions from crowdfarming. Everything has been fantastic quality except the tomatoes which were merely ok. It reminds me of my childhood when there was suddenly a glut of something from the garden and for a couple of weeks we ate eg runner beans so many different ways every day for a fortnight. The Roscoff onions have kept particularly well, no need to binge eat, and they really are a throwback to childhood - we had a Breton onion man call every year in East Finchley.