Analysis: an annual gap in the availability of fresh vegetables and fruits showed the vulnerabilities of a food system which favoured the rich over the poor
The hungry gap is the name given to a period in the agricultural year when fresh vegetables and fruits are in scarce supply. For farmers and gardeners, the period can stretch from March or April through to May and early June.
Most of us with no practical connection to the patterns of food production are unaware of this seasonal gap in the availability of local produce. Why would we need to know when a global food system moves produce around the world to keep our food wants and desires satisfied without break throughout the year? This system delivers all things at all times thereby putting distance between the consumer and the rhythms of local production as influenced by place or region-specific environmental conditions.
In the past, the gap in the availability of fresh vegetables and fruits was the period that saw the winter crops spent and the newer spring cultivars in bolt while the new plants were not yet ready to harvest. In this time of scarcity, a variety of strategies helped to bridge the gap. Preserved foods and fruit varieties with long-lasting qualities were prized and the last of the old, stored potatoes were used up.
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Certain horticultural practices and techniques, such as forcing, the selective and restrictive cutting of leafy green vegetables to a 'cut and come style' and the use of hot pits and glass houses were valued for the produce they could support. Consumers were sensitive to market supplies and cookbooks and household economy manuals included seasonal guides as a matter of course to inform and direct shoppers to the best of what to expect at local markets.
But bridging the gap in these ways assumes certain cultural and economic preconditions, not least a strong and diverse horticultural economy (never a strong feature of Irish food production); skills in food preservation and storage; knowledge of substitute foods, and the economic comfort to support a diverse diet in times of strain. At the most fundamental level, the ability or otherwise to manage the hungry gap impacted most severely on the poor in society for whom a disruption or collapse in food supply brought significant privation and seasonal distress.
If we locate the hungry gap in a specific time and place in the past, the vulnerabilities of the poor in a food system structured in favour of elites, landowners and wealthy merchants are highlighted in bold, visceral and tacit terms. The place is rural Ireland in the pre-Famine period as detailed in a variety of sources.
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The reports of the Royal Commission on the Condition of the Poorer Classes in Ireland are a rich source of detail on Ireland from 1833 to 1836. By the 1830s, the diet of the rural poor in Ireland was debased and characterised by little if any variety. Potatoes and little else formed the principal food of the poor with occasional consumption of herrings, milk and eggs (the latter were more usually sold or exchanged at grocers for salt, tobacco and soap by the 1830s).
Milk too had become an occasional dietary item as the poor could no longer afford to keep a cow. Liquid accompaniments to the potato diet were limited to residue items surplus to market requirements (skimmed milk and buttermilk), and in times of distress that which could be gleaned or gathered for free. This weakened subsistence food economy lacked security and was characterised by what the historian, Austin Bourke, described as 'a sinister trend toward monoculture.'
Economic hardship, notably in the slack period after the ending of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, saw food prices and rents increase. Together with insecure employment and insufficient wages, these tensions made the food patterns of the rural poor, in particular the cottiers, labourers and some tradesmen, susceptible to seasonal collapse, periodic dearth and suffering.
Those in employment and working their employer's fields were often forced to delay planting their own potato plots until April or May, thereby delaying their harvest time
Approaches to potato cultivation differed in accordance with economic standing. The poor were increasingly limited to cheaper potato varieties like maincrop Lumpers and Cups, while the superior and longer-lasting early variety, the Irish Apple, was associated with tenant and gentleman farmers.
Depending on variety, potatoes were planted between February and May with the harvest time falling between August to November. The waiting time between the depletion of the old potato stocks and the harvest of new crops varied by location and seasonal conditions and it was determined by the time the poor planted their own fields of potatoes. Those in employment and working their employer’s fields were often forced to delay planting their own potato plots until April or May, thereby delaying their harvest time.
These variables impacted on the duration and time of the Hungry Gap and the period varied from location to location. Differing approaches to potato husbandry meant the lean period from late June to early August could last from two weeks to (more rarely) two months.
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In this gap period, the old stocks of potatoes were either depleted or unfit for consumption. Old stocks, described as ropey, wet, gluey and with chords running through them to the heart, were still consumed in the absence of other foods. The condition of end of season stock was also determined by how well they were stored and their inclination to decay or sprout was linked to prevailing weather conditions during their harvest.
In such circumstances, the plight of the poor could have been eased in part with access to longer lasting varieties like the Apple. But as these were beyond their reach, they struggled to purchase potatoes on credit or at inflated prices or to buy small quantities of oatmeal during what would become known as the ‘meal months’.
Wild foods, nettles, seaweeds and praiseach bhuí were collected and boiled with meal to bulk up food supply
For those without purchasing power, relying on charitable supports in the provision of bread or meal and resorting to foods outside mainstream systems became a necessity of survival. There were contemporary reports of bleeding live cattle for food and the consumption of meat from dead diseased animals. Wild foods, nettles, seaweeds and in particular praiseach bhuí, charlock or wild mustard (Sinapis arvensis), were collected and boiled with meal to bulk up food supply. The practice of digging immature potatoes for consumption, tubers no bigger than walnuts, was commonplace during the months of July and sometimes into early August.
In this world of seasonal distress with limited food choices, the first potato harvest, beginning in many areas on August 1st and in others near the mid-August, marked the end of privation and embodied a sense of hope for the harvest months to follow. The significance of August harvest festivals and Garlic/Garland Sunday no doubt held memory of the relief brought with the digging of the new potatoes at the beginning of this first harvest month.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
