Produce Update: June 24th 2015

This is our last price list header that will be part of our price list.  Several of you have asked that we take all this hopefully fascinating information and publish it as a separate document.  Well, we will go one step further.  Starting Friday you will get a separate market report, (same deal on Wednesdays) as a word document, plus an info-article on Fridays that we hope will become a library of important information. Getting the word out is hard, and only buyers see the list, often the rest of the staff don’t get to read it.  Well, when we want to spread the news here at Discovery, we print it and post it about 4 feet off the floor in the bathroom – where everyone sees it.First of all, sorry for getting you so excited about the Cotton Candy grapes – they are awesome, but someone froze our only pallet somewhere between Mexico and L.A., so only staff get to savour their perfection, although brown and soft.  Lemons continue to be a treasure with continuously increasing prices.  Nothing we can do about it except suffer with producers who are hard pressed to come up with fruit in areas that are bone dry.Bananas – well that was somewhat of a &%# show if there ever was one over the past 10 days, but we now are now back to our regular Fairtrade program with Cerro Azul fruit in house and ripening.  We already apologized for this a few times, but being Canadian, have to say sorry one more time.Now, for the more important news:  We told you about a looming heat wave back on Friday that is now part of the forecasts across BC and Alberta with daytime highs now expected to crest anywhere from 30+C along the Vancouver beaches to over 40C in many parts of the BC Interior, and the same story for Alberta through the weekend.  Well, we followed our own advice and have a very impressive lineup of melons awaiting – we have been rocking with the bins of 80 count seedless – we used to call these ‘icebox’ melons but few people know what the hell an icebox is anymore, but they are priced to hit great retail price points – it’s not too late to set up a weekend AD if we know about it today so we can put more on the next truck.Of course, this weather is also turning on blueberries like crazy and volume is picking up very quickly on early varieties.  Early Similkameen cherries are going to hit good volumes over the next 7-10 days so be ready to promote those, as well as the early apricot crop, and even a small smattering of early peaches.Yes, the strawberry train continues – we’re receiving fresh every 2-3 days and continuing to blow previous year’s sales records out of the water.Last note – congrats to a great group of BC veg growers – never before in our lives have we had so many BC selections in June – the list is too long to mention the producers and the crops – suffice it to say that it’s just awesome!  A telling story about our current weather – two weeks ago we were begging for more of Mary Forstbauer’s Zucchini – now we have an August-like glut already with 6 BC commercial growers in the game already!