Hacker News Reader

Comment by codingdave | Hacker News Reader

No, not quite accurate -- the only results it returned are apples and cherries. Apples are 100% correct. Cherries are not. And there are a plethora of squashes and pumpkins recently harvested, as we just had our first frost last week, so the list is clearly incomplete.

View on HN

The database is definitely incomplete - I have a ton of work left to do.

There is also the problem that just because a certain produce item is being harvested within x miles doesn't necessarily mean that produce is available at local stores, and vice-versa.

My hope is that if I can get some early adopters, I'll be able to concentrate improving the data in a smaller number of targeted areas. This is the first time I've shown the site to anyone, so I'm hoping I can get some feedback to make the most effective improvements first.

Ah, see, I wasn't thinking this was about local stores. Because frankly, stores ship food in from wherever it is in season, so I don't need this info... I just look in the store and see what looks good. The better use case, for me at least, is to know when it is worth going to my local farms/markets and not even bothering with the store.

Apples are sort of correct, at least near me...but really only the late varieties. It lists apples as "In peak season", but peak apple season is late September, and the only ones really being harvested now are the Braeburns and Fujis and others that don't mind the frost so much:

http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/predicted_2017_apple_harvest_da...

Ah, that might explain it - I actually have varietal information in the database, but I'm not using it yet because it adds a ton of complexity and I really wanted to show this to people before spending more time on it.

So "peak season" might better be interpreted as "as least one variety is in peak season", at least for now. And "peak season" is a bit nebulous due to how hard it is to normalise between different data sources, but it's something akin to "most active harvest period"

I thought most apples one can get in any grocery store in the USA is typically retrieved from storage that has lasted 9-12 months. How does one guarantee an apple that is fresh from the tree other than picking it yourself?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com