In California, almost year around, altho certainly where I was a kid (1960’s or so) strawberries were only available freesh for about a month. They were smaller, about the size of a shooter marble, but much sweeter than today’s engineered marvels.
Look up Mission Pack, where us Californians would send benighted relatives in the cold states care packages of fresh fruit for Christmas. Say the magic word, say Mission Pack
And it’s on its merry way
No gift so bright, so gay, so right
Send a Mission Pack magic way
At least with sweet potatoes and yams, the sweetness and texture gets better having sat for a few days/weeks after harvesting. We’d get boxes of sweet potatoes and yams from my uncle (later my cousin), and they always told us if they were freshly harvested, to let them sit a while.
Confirmed here:
“You must cure sweet potatoes or they will not have that delicious, sweet taste. Curing the potatoes allows a second skin to form over scratches and bruises that occur when digging up the potatoes. To cure, keep the roots in a warm place (about 80°F/27°C) at high humidity (about 90%) for 10 to 14 days. A table outside in a shady spot works well. For best curing, make sure that the potatoes are not touching one another.”
In the 70’s/80’s, my Dad would always say not to buy bananas from South America. I chalked it up to political climate at the time, but realized they really were/are tasteless, especially to ones we got locally.
One of my few memories of my family’s time in Japan (we left just before I was four), is picking a fresh permission from a tree and eating right there! It was perfectly ripe and slightly cool because of the weather. I later found out it wasn’t our tree, but the neighbor’s overhanging our fence. They were fine with sharing though.
Rhubarb, even locally, is still pretty seasonal. You can get it frozen, but that’s not so good.
I get a huge load of it in, say, May, from my cousin, and it’s made into pies for the cafe I work in. Folks act disappointed when it’s gone, but I can’t help that.
Every summer, we’d spend a few weeks at Grandma’s place. And we got peaches for dessert at lunch and dinner every day. Why? “Because they’re in season. Nice, fresh peaches. And you won’t get any like this until next year. Do you want another?”
After three or four weeks of peaches at two meals a day, year after year when I was a kid, I became sick of peaches. I don’t care if they’re nice and fresh and in season; I haven’t touched one since.
My Dad loved to toss overripe Japanese permissions in the freezer. They became like sherbet. I tried it couple of times, but didn’t gain a taste for it.
He befriended the produce guy in a supermarket and he would call my Dad when he had a bunch of overripe persimmons and sell it at a big discount. A win-win for both the market and my Dad! The cashiers would always ask my Dad what he was going to do with them, and he always reluctantly (didn’t want to create demand) told them that he put them in the freezer.
I don’t remember not being able to get something but I do remember out-of-season stuff being expensive as Hell. It also played into what the local diner offered in terms of sides and veggies and the like.
Now there was a cheap semi-seasonal beer my Dad liked; he would stash cases and even loved it when it started going skunky in the can 6 months later. We were lucky; he died in February and we finished off his stash before it was totally tough to take.
Last year a local farmer who would come to our workplace selling his leftover fruits and vegetables said that he (and other farmers) are being forced to switch to an African variety of apple-banana, because the current crops were all failing due to disease. He said that within a year or so, the old variety we knew would be completely unavailable.
My uncle and cousin would usually send us boxes of bananas every year, but some years there was none at all. They explained that they had to cut and plow under the entire banana fields because of disease or insect infestation. Same with papayas, sweet potatoes, pineapples and other things they grew.
At one point decade ago, my cousin estimated his farmland was worth about $2 million dollars, but that meant nothing to him because he loved farming and couldn’t sell the land anyway due to no one wanting to buy it. Farming is a tough life, but one we should be thankful people do!