
Show HN: Fruits and vegetables in season in your zip code - gabemart
https://harvestsignal.com
======
swalsh
Very cool. Not sure if your motivation is to "promote local eating" or if
you're trying to build a cool product that would bring in some cash... but if
you're looking to monetize, I'd pay a small amount (about the cost of a
magazine) for a HIGH-QUALITY set of recipe suggestions that use 6 ingredients
or less, and take ~1hr to cook. (because I cook for a family every day, I
don't have all day to cook, and I don't want to buy 100 ingredients I'll only
use once)

The last point is important to me. Food porn is common these days, they put
out these recipes with beautiful pictures, but the recipe is so impractical
I'll probably never make it. Frankly, if I never make the recipe... it's of
little added value to me.

~~~
platz
Your request is different from the core value prop of OP's sites focus

~~~
swalsh
It's a mailing list, not a unix app. I'm not going to be piping the output
from this into something else. To me the core "value prop" of this is
"inspiration" for things to make. Adding specifics to that seems like a
natural extension.

~~~
peterwwillis
You need inspiration to cook a vegetable?

~~~
dominotw
We wouldn't be having a obesity epidemic if that wasn't the case.

~~~
peterwwillis
I wouldn't say it's inspiration that's lacking. It has more to do with the
fact that vegetables are more expensive and harder to get than junk food, and
the contents of said junk food, combined with factors like time and cultural
trends, and of course education.

------
dbingham
Neat!

But you've got some work to do to get the data in there. I put in my Southern
Indiana zip code and got 12 results back. Only one was actually anywhere near
my zipcode (or even in my state). The rest were anywhere from 200 - 500 miles
away. Sorry, but I don't consider Maryland to be local to Indiana.

I would suggest you work on getting data about local farms in there, and then
tighten up the constraints for what is considered "local".

At the very least, in the results paragraph, change the display from "12 for
your zipcode" which is just flatly false to "1 for your zipcode and 11 in the
broader region" or something of that nature.

~~~
gabemart
Thanks for the feedback - this is very first version, and there are a lot of
improvements to make.

I think you're right about the wording, reading it with fresh eyes it is very
confusing, and I'll change it ASAP.

Right now, all the farm information data is pulled from aggregated USDA data
so there is a ton of work left to do to get better, finer-grained results. My
plan is to look at which zip codes get the most queries and the most user sign
ups, and improve results for those first.

The data wrangling aspect of this is definitely one of the biggest challenges.
I've spent more time than I'd care to say extracting data from PDFs and other
non-parser-friendly materials with regular expressions, and, often, manually.

~~~
dbingham
Have you come across [Local
Harvest]([https://www.localharvest.org](https://www.localharvest.org)) before?
That might be a good data source, at least for what farms exist where. I don't
know if they collect data on what farms actually grow.

But I empathize a lot. I've pursued a number of side projects in this space.
I've worked on an online farmer's market, a plant database, and a recipe
database in the hope of solving a nexus of problems around eating sustainably
and sourcing food locally. The only one that ever actually made it to live was
[http://www.fridgetofood.com](http://www.fridgetofood.com) and I haven't
touched that in years, so it has decayed pretty hard.

I always got hung up on the data collection and translation aspect of things.
It's not an easy problem to solve.

~~~
scranglis
Another good data source that I've used is
[https://www.farmmatch.com/](https://www.farmmatch.com/).

------
blauditore
Just a small detail: The large subscription form popping up after a search
made me think there are no results initially. Maybe make sure the results are
higher up, and e.g. move the subscription form to the side?

Also, a softer (lighter?) background might bring out the fruit/vegetable
images a bit better.

------
brudgers
My visual experience:

1\. There is a field to enter zipcode and empty space below.

2\. I enter zipcode.

3\. Empty space filled with fields for an email and name and a "we found
results banner".

4\. Because all the results were off my screen I figured it was nothing more
than another email harvesting page.

5\. Later I saw it on the front page of HN and tried it again. It still looked
like an email harvesting page on my laptop. Only because I had seen the
comments did I think it might be possible to scroll down.

It might be worth delivering value (results) before asking for value (a
visitor's email). Fresh fruits near me is awesome. Signing up for email isn't.

Good luck.

~~~
zild3d
same here, assumed it was spam before realizing good stuff was below

------
aluminussoma
I like this! This was an idea I toyed around with in my head for a long time.
I am glad to see you actually implement it.

One suggestion I have is this: it would be great if there was a way to "peek"
ahead and see what other items will soon be coming into season within the next
1-2 weeks.

~~~
gry
I toyed with this idea just the same and expanding it to provide recipes with
the peak fruits and vegetables.

Not only was collecting the data time intensive, but determining the feature
ingredient(s) was a challenge.

~~~
samschooler
Oh ya connecting the Yummly API[0] to this would be really cool! Simply pass
the search terms that are in season and you have seasonally curated recipes.

[0]: [https://developer.yummly.com](https://developer.yummly.com)

------
JoeDaDude
Very nice! Next step: steer users to where they can get the produce. I would
suggest teaming up with Community Supported Agriculture [1] where people can
buy stuff right off the farm with subscription.

[1] [https://www.localharvest.org/csa/](https://www.localharvest.org/csa/)

~~~
maxxxxx
I would like that too. In the LA area I have no idea where to get veggies that
have been grown locally.

~~~
palidanx
As a LA/OC local, we have tons of farmer's markets near us. The two
powerhouses are the Wed Santa Monica Market and Sunday Hollywood market, but
there are several others depending on the city you live in.

------
bsharitt
I get that you don't want to show mostly empty pages(but that's going to
happen most places in November), but 500+ miles seems to be stretching the
definition of near. Being in Tennessee, I don't know that I'd consider various
citrus fruits 572 miles in Florida to be very helpful.

~~~
kunal88
nice website

------
codingdave
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.

~~~
gabemart
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.

~~~
codingdave
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.

------
paulirish
<input type=number pattern="\d*"> on the ZIP code field would be fantastic for
your mobile users. (At least until you support non-US zips)

[https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/design-and-
ux...](https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/design-and-
ux/input/forms/#choose_the_best_input_type)

------
nerdponx
Nice work. Worth mentioning prior art:

Harvest: [https://itunes.apple.com/app/harvest-select-best-
produce/id3...](https://itunes.apple.com/app/harvest-select-best-
produce/id320650307?mt=8)

Seasons: [http://www.seasonsapp.com/](http://www.seasonsapp.com/)

Locavore: [http://www.getlocavore.com/](http://www.getlocavore.com/)

~~~
navaati
Seasons: Parse error: syntax error, unexpected 'new' (T_NEW) in
/homepages/14/d154513924/htdocs/seasonsapp.com/wp-settings.php on line 204

Uh oh…

------
motardo
How can I use this to help me eat locally? I put in my zip code for Raleigh,
NC (27601), and it gives me a result of: Cabbage in Pasquotank County, but
there is no contact information. How can I get some of that cabbage?

~~~
pjmorris
Easiest thing for you is probably The State Farmer's Market [0], corner of
Lake Wheeler Road and Centennial Parkway.

We keep a copy of the NC seasonal produce chart [1] hanging in the kitchen,
and sometimes remember to check it.

Seems like one option for the OP would be to let users (moderators) update the
site with vendors. That's a can of worms, but it could provide local
information not available from online sources.

[0]
[http://www.ncagr.gov/markets/facilities/markets/raleigh/](http://www.ncagr.gov/markets/facilities/markets/raleigh/)
[1]
[http://www.ncagr.gov/markets/chart.htm](http://www.ncagr.gov/markets/chart.htm)

------
aj_g
Awesome idea. My zip (59718, MT) shows 250 miles away as the nearest food.
Definitely as others have pointed out, needs a lot more data to be viable. If
you are to take this more seriously, maybe target a single community and
connect with local farms, i.e.
[https://www.strikefarms.com/](https://www.strikefarms.com/)

~~~
d-sc
You just typed out my comment for me. I tried 59715. I like to cook entirely
local meals for fun and Montana has plenty of readily available farm goods for
that.

------
charris5
Would love to share this with my non-tech friends, but the data's just not
there yet, and sharing with them would ruin their impression forever. Data is
too sparse with respect to geography. No idea how you get the data, but
increase your data density as a function of location, and you'll likely see
wide adoption.

------
mikeash
The results are kind of confusing. If I put in zip code 22003 (not mine, but
close, and the results are the same) it tells me "1 Result from Georgia" which
is bell peppers from a place 611 miles away, then "10 Results from other
states" including one place 14 miles away, and another 36 miles away.

The wording seems to imply that it thinks 22003 is in Georgia and the top
result is the best, but it's in Virginia and the top result is the most
distant one.

I'd also suggest making the on-page results a bit more prominent. My first
reaction after typing a zip code was that I was required to give an e-mail
address to view the results, and nearly gave up and left the page before
realizing they were also displayed at the bottom. (The fact that only the "1
Result from Georgia" was above the fold didn't help, since it looked
unrelated.)

~~~
gabemart
Ah yeah, the zip database I'm using is a bit out of date (as some other people
have mentioned) and you're seeing this behaviour as it thinks 22003 is in
Georgia. I had a hunch people might be more interested in results from their
own state even if they were a bit further away, but clearly in this case that
doesn't make sense.

I'll experiment with moving the email form to under the results, or putting it
behind a button. I was trying to make it low friction, but I think I might
have gone a bit far.

~~~
mikeash
Interesting, I take it the distances are being computed in some other way? The
"results from State" would definitely make a lot more sense if they matched
the zip code.

~~~
gabemart
Distances are being computed from a geopoint representation of each zip code
(which is a bit out of date, but which I can update fairly easily) to a set of
shape files representing US counties. It's intentionally not 100% accurate
because the underlying math is quite slow and using slight approximations
speeds things way up.

------
nemo44x
This is great - cool idea. I'll register as this is something I really care
about and this saves me research and time. It also helps me consider which
meals I'd like to make.

I'd be willing to pay a small monthly fee for this data being curated for me
when you get the database a bit more fleshed out.

------
ajtaylor
This is a great resource. Thanks for sharing it!

I have a suggestion which would make it very useful for me: hints on when to
plant. Since you have the timing for "peak season" and (I assume) the growing
times to get there, hopefully it would be easy to work backwards to arrive at
planting times.

As a new gardener in Southern California, I could use some help planning my
planting schedule. I can get away with planting a lot of things whenever I
feel like it, but sticking with the ideal times would help optimize my yields.

~~~
palidanx
As someone who frequents farmer's markets often, my suggestion would to visit
one close to you. I often ask the local farmers for planting advice especially
since it seems our temperatures are getting wackier each season.

~~~
ajtaylor
That's an excellent point! There are several near me so I'll ask next time I
go to the market.

------
neogodless
About five years ago, a colleague had an idea for a social/user-driven app for
seasonal food (produce, meats, etc.) He called it something like Local Bee,
and then we created a version (for Windows Phone 7!) of it over the weekend at
a Hack-a-thon. We actually won, though it was small (13 teams). We called it
P2P Farms! We made another version (for Android Auto, before it was even
called that) at another event, where it would actually alert you right in your
dashboard when you got close to specified items. Then our employer started to
turn it into "a real thing", and renamed it Fresh! However, I left the company
around then and haven't heard much about it since.

At the time, I searched online, and found sites like LocalHarvest, Farmstand,
RipeNear.me, LocalDirt, etc., each usually with a little different spin (some
focus on specific food, some one farmer's markets, some on actual farms, and
some on produce stands).

So you can see the challenges - data, use case, implementation, monetization,
etc.

If it's from various feeds, they aren't standardized or consistent. They could
update at different frequencies. They might omit huge swaths of geography.

If it's from the users themselves (i.e. you "check-in" when you find a local
produce stand selling fruit or beef jerky or something), you need MASSIVE
adoption and participation, and you'll probably have a 10-to-1 ratio of people
that want to consume vs contribute. And how long is the data useful? Maybe
they bought awesome watermelons but 15 minutes later, the last few sold out.
Can you get people at the stands to update their listings?

What if you convince producers (farmer's markets, farmers) that it's worth
their marketing dollars to get listed (and highlighted)? Does it follow the
spirit of the app you envisioned?

And do you combine approaches? Multiple ways of getting data in, keeping it
updated, etc? I'm curious where you'll take this, so create an "About/News"
section of your site (or Twitter) and keep posting!

Edit: Also, I realize your approach "just what fruit is in season" varies from
the above variations, and so the challenges and solutions do as well. I kind
of went off on tangents there! Hopefully it gives you ideas anyway.

------
AustinG08
Love it. Might want to update the meta tags to remove the mention of the
"preact-boilerplate." That's some prime real estate for describing your site
when sharing it socially.

~~~
gabemart
Ha, thanks - done now

------
AdmiralAsshat
Very neat idea. I'd like to make the following suggestions:

1) Some vendors of said produce. If I can get grapes that were grown 5 miles
away, awesome! Now where can I buy them?

2) A filter that lets me determine the maximum distance allowed. I ran a
search based on a Northern Virginia zipcode and it recommended me some Bell
Peppers from Georgia...609 miles away. We're not exactly "local" at this
point. Simply having a filter option to stop it from showing me anything
farther than 50 miles away would be useful.

------
gesman
3 thumbs up!

As soon as my wife heard about it - voice of joy!

Definitely solution to existing problem + tons of potentials for business
(recipes, partnerships with stores, organics, deliveries)..

------
elcritch
Nifty, thanks for sharing!

Couple of suggestions:

I signed up for the email, but I'd likely pay more attention to a monthly
email as personally I get so many "weekly" email that I setup a filter
consciously or not.

Second, `being` is misspelled in your post-signup message: "confirmation link
to being receiving fresh produce notifications once a week." Might even be
good to reword it a bit .:-)

------
w0m
I love the concept. Rather than just listing what's 'in' season, listing
what's out (among staples, fuzzy definition of what that would include) would
be valuable to.

My wife tends to give me a grocery list and includes things that - when i get
to the store, are overpriced/look like crap as they're significantly out of
season anywhere remotely close.

------
11thEarlOfMar
Hey! Very cool.

I visited the local farmer's market yesterday. Every 3rd stall had
persimmons... Didn't see any in my Santa Clara County list.

------
memco
Not sure if it is my ignorance here, but I was actually pretty happy with the
results for my zip in southern CA. There are certainly results that are not
convenient traveling distance from me, but the value to me isn't in knowing
exactly which farms to purchase from, but in knowing what produce I should
look more closely at when I go to the market.

------
irrational
Where is the data coming from? It tells me that things like apples, pears,
etc. are at peak ripeness (true) - but then it says the closest places are 50
miles away. I know for a fact that there are numerous apple and pear farms
that are open to the public within a few miles of my house (they are problem
in the same zip code as my house).

------
millisecond
Good stuff! Would totally install a native app that sent me pushes when things
go in/out of season.

~~~
gabemart
Serious question - would you pay for it?

~~~
noahmbarr
Probably not... but the list created / produce box people / farmers would be
amazing.

I could see building a business on top of this FOR SURE.

Awesome MVP

~~~
gabemart
thanks!

------
dawnerd
Your zip database is old. My zip returns nothing (97078) but the old zip they
split up works (97007).

------
gearhart
For the UK, I use [http://eattheseasons.co.uk/](http://eattheseasons.co.uk/)
which is much simpler, but serves as a great starting point when considering
what to cook.

------
rmk
Thank you for this site. Wonderful!

One correction: 'Cantaloups' should be spelled 'Cantaloupes'.

It would be really nice to have the tags clickable (for example 'Peak', so
that we can figure out what produce would be cheaper).

------
throwaway2016a
Looks like a very neat idea.

I'm curious where the data comes from. For my zipcode (souther New Hampshire)
it said apples are in peak season. Peak Apple around here ends early to late
October (depending on weather).

~~~
gabemart
Almost all the data right now is pulled from various USDA publications which I
scraped, combined, sanity-checked and cleaned up. It's not perfect, but it's
the best I could do as a first-run.

I'll have a look at southern New Hampshire specifically and see if anything
weird is going on.

------
Ozark
Very cool would it be possible to get a reminder of when something is in
season to plant as well, this would be very helpful with my home vegetable
gardening efforts.

------
tectonic
I’d love to see this integrated with
[https://fallingfruit.org/](https://fallingfruit.org/)

------
hw
This is awesome. It would be nice to have a list of local farms that produce
them, as well as farmers markets that offer them (when and where)

------
therealdrag0
I get wildly different out-of-state results when putting in 99114 vs 99113,
even though both zips are in the same starting state. What gives?

------
gregalbritton
This is great! Thank you. Lots of great feedback here as well :) Look forward
to following along and making more informed grocery choices.

------
tyred
You can generally figure out what's in season by going to the grocery store
and seeing what they have a mountain of for almost no money

------
bkohlmann
I showed this to my wife who has never been on HN and is an avid Gardener. I
was excited to find some commonality in our hobbies!

She spent three minutes on it and said “this is crap.”

When she entered our Dallas zip code, it noted that the nearest harvests for
very basic veggies was over 270 miles away in the middle of no where.
Meanwhile she’s growing the very same plants in our backyard.

Gardening is far from my area of expertise. But unless we’re missing something
fundamental about the program, there may be some work to be done on this
commendable project.

------
ElijahLynn
LOVE THIS!!! I have actually printed out charts and put them on our bulletin
board, however, not all charts are local.

Next question: Is this public code?

------
josh_carterPDX
This is nice. I'd love to see this expanded as I am sure there are more than
just 4 fruits in season right now in Oregon. :)

------
Mrtierne
Very cool idea! Agree with the comments tying this to a Farmer's Market
somehow. Would be good to get user input as well.

------
xster
I love it! So awesome.

I'd love to make a mobile app for it. Is it an abuse if I just pinged
[https://harvestsignal.com/api/v1/public/whatsfresh/[zip](https://harvestsignal.com/api/v1/public/whatsfresh/\[zip)
code]? I don't want to spam you but I doubt I'll have any traffic any time
soon anyway.

------
nsxwolf
6 things within a 300 mile radius and the combination does not form a complete
protein...

------
caio1982
Nice 90210 reference :-) here's hoping for some data to brazilian visitors...

------
ringaroundthetx
Very cool, I always wondered about things like this but it was verrry low
priority

------
kreeWall
Very interesting! Can you talk a little bit about the reliability of your
data?

~~~
gabemart
I would say that the data I have at the moment are _reliable_ in the sense
that they are collated from informed, reasonably up to date sources (mainly US
government sources at the moment). I would say that they are not very
_complete_ and not very _granular_ yet, but this is something I am working on.

~~~
kreeWall
I work for a company that has very similar problems - our data is reliable,
but not necessarily complete. Thanks for sharing!

------
dzonga
...congrats bruuv...wanted to build something similar lack of time killed it

------
ravitation
Very cool!

Also lucky to be in a west coast state with lots of rain and lots of
agriculture.

------
komali2
>Artichoke

>Days left in season: 253

Artichokes, man. You just can't convince them to die.

~~~
s0rce
I also noticed that. I tend to buy the heirloom perennial artichokes which
have a shorter season than the continuously planted annual varieties. Also,
saw asparagus which even near the bay area I don't think is in season, most of
it seems to be from Mexico.

~~~
gabemart
I ran some queries and it looks like there are only about 4 weeks a year when
asparagus isn't being commercially harvested _somewhere_ in California - the
first couple of weeks in December and the last couple of weeks in May
(approximately)

Distribution is another matter entirely of course!

------
inetknght
200+ miles away. Holy hell. Are the farms really that far away?

~~~
saalweachter
Without knowing where you are, I'd say "probably not"; the end of November is
not the best time to show this service off (in the US).

------
ryanweinstein
A great start! So exciting to keep an eye on this

------
markhall
Super cool - awesome idea and great UI.

------
asarno
This is awesome! Nice work :)

------
exabrial
> Chile Peppers > Chaves County, New Mexico (607 miles) > In peak season

I guess there's a reason we call this hunting season... deer, turkey,pheasent,
quail, dove plus many non-game animals (hogs, etc) are in season in the
midwest.

~~~
exabrial
Hilariously, hunting is free-range, grass-fed, antibiotic-free, cage-free,
ethically-sourced, ethically harvested, local, and sustainable, among many
other things like 100% of the fees go towards habitat preservation.

Some very angsty vegetarians on HN :D

------
himom
Great work! Sorting by days left (asc/dec) or alphabetical would be nice.

