This is kicking the snot of out my gardening urges

At home I'm carefully planting trays of vegetables.  Putting individual lettuce seeds (they are REALLY TINY).  Trays go onto the heating pads, and under the lamps.  I really enjoy gardening -- until this year. 

Every week I'm handling tons of produce.  Nice looking stuff, too.  Nothing wrong with it.  I shop in the same stores I get this from.   Andrea and I were walking through one day, and I looked at a head of lettuce and pointed to it, and said to her:  "We'll see that soon!".  We probably did. 

Here's 500lbs of broccoli.   What kills me about this is that these are perfect in every respect.  They're crisp and green and...  well, I'm not going to plant any broccoli this year.  It's a little overwhelming. 

The tropical fruits are a little easier to deal with.  I can't grow pineapples, so I feel better about tossing a thousand pounds of it to the pigs.  Oranges, same, but the pigs don't like oranges.   The pigs love pineapples.   

Kiwi fruits...  small peppers.  Industrial quantities of every common fruit and vegetable. 

Blueberries are high in antioxidants.  Here's a mixed load of 500lbs.  A few lemons, some watermelons, grapes.   Click on that picture.  Can you see anything wrong with any of it? 

I chided another blog for raising fears of a food shortage.  I'm moving piles of surplus food every day.  Tons.   If you get hungry, come on by.   

I am feeding my pigs better produce than you'll find in most markets.   

I do find some small solace that using food as food is better than making compost out of it directly, or having it be completely wasted in a landfill somewhere, but I'm a little amazed at what we as a society discard, all to have the perfect display at your local market. 

How many hundreds of pints of jam were those blueberries?  Orange marmalade, anyone?  Lemon meringue pie...  that's what we used to do with produce that was a little past its prime.