This time last week I wrote about picking the new season youngberries. The crop hast been starting earlier and earlier each year since 1976 when we planted them. It used to be Xmas Day when we could pick just a hand full of just-ripe fruit for our family Xmas meal.

In the last few years, the crop is all over by Xmas Day. We start to pick the berries in mid November now. That’s a 5 to 6 week shift in the crop because of the Global Heating. I was just reading a report on the effects of Global Heating this morning in the Guardian and it appears that many agricultural industries are also experiencing a 6 week shift in crop ripening.

I down loaded this graph from the article;

So it’s not just us and our fruit and vegetables, as this information was generated in McLaren Vale in South Australia.

I have written elsewhere on this blog about the tomato crop coming on weeks earlier than it used to. We now get our first tomatoes before Xmas instead of before new year, which has moved on from our previous earliest tomatoes that used to come on in mid to end of January when we first moved here.

I read elsewhere that a few wine makers such as Henschke and Brown Bros. bought properties in Tasmania more than a decade ago to look for terroir that would still be cool climate growing zones a few decades into the future. They were thinking ahead.

The disastrous effects of advancing Global Heating will be horrific, but in the meantime, getting a few early ripe tomatoes and berries is a tolerable outcome.