Learned at the farmers' market, or at the orchard/garden/greenhouse

1. The most important time of year to buy (or pick) produce at either your local farmers' market or your own produce growing space is during and right after a heat wave. In July 2017, Los Angeles county is undergoing a major heat wave + "monsoon" humidity ... so I postponed my instinctive reaction (of flopping onto the couch and watching the Tour de France bike race on TV) in order to show up this morning at our local farmers' market and buy almonds, peaches, plums, Valencia oranges, pink grapefruit, green onions, and green cabbage.

2. Today I learned that California almonds are mostly harvested in November, and then sit in cold storage for months until that season's crop is sold out. Here is a fact sheet on that from UC Davis, a leading California research university on agriculture: http://homeorchard.ucdavis.edu/8005.pdf

Perhaps in the future I should buy a lot of almonds in the shell and store them at home. That would minimize the storage costs (and climate footprint) for my vendor at the farmers' market. What say you?

It turns out that the insect world uses food distribution methods that local sustainable community food hubs can adopt:

https://ensia.com/articles/ant-inspired-food-distribution/