IT’S hard to believe that we are approaching the third anniversary of the first COVID lockdown. 

Although many things in life have returned to normal, nothing is quite the same as it was before. 

COVID continues to lurk in the shadows. It seemingly no longer has the power to bring life to a complete halt, but it still leaves little reminders that it hasn’t gone away. 

Many people continue to be concerned about going out in public without a face covering. 

Now and again I will see a post on social media from someone saying they have come down with the virus. 

There are faded signs on some shop floors reminding us of the time we had to stay two metres apart from each other. 

The pandemic has left a lasting legacy and many unhappy memories. 

I will never forget how scary it was to do the food shop. Something that was previously so mundane, a chore we took for granted, suddenly required military planning with no guarantee you’d come back with the stuff you wanted. Remember the run on toilet roll? 

Three years on, that is one of the many miserable aspects of COVID that I had hoped we’d seen the back of.  

Unfortunately for several reasons we are in the middle of another round of supermarket shortages. 

You will no doubt have seen the reports of stores rationing some produce including tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. You may even have had difficulty buying some items. 

It’s not the end of the world, in fact as far as I can tell most people can still buy whatever they need. 

It’s the price of the stuff that is more shocking than its lack of availability. 

But the idea that certain items are once again being rationed has reminded me how fragile the supply chain can be. 

Until the pandemic I doubt many of us really considered how much effort is involved in producing our food and shipping it to where it needs to be at just the right time. 

It is an incredible feat of logistics. Tomatoes grown in Spain are picked at just the right moment and within days they are on your plate in perfect condition. 

But the wrong sort of weather and the high price of energy, among other things, have conspired to make it more challenging for Spanish-grown tomatoes to magically brighten up our winter, along with some of the other exotic produce we take for granted. 

And that gets to the heart of the issue. We all know that it’s not really natural for a summer fruit such as a tomato to be so readily available in the depths of a British winter. But supermarkets have made it seem normal.  We expect everything all the time and until now growers, supermarkets and transport companies have found innovative ways to make it happen. 

They have pushed and pushed the planet’s resources to deliver the goods we consumers demand. 

But perhaps the planet is starting to push back. It’s starting to tell us we can’t go on at this level of consumption. 

Lowering our expectations isn’t going to be easy though. I am as happy as the next person to eat tomatoes all year round. 

However, I am coming round to the idea that we should live more seasonally.  

Eat the stuff we can produce well here in the UK at the time the year when we can produce it and not rely on out-of-season produce being flown in from around the world. 

It’s easier said than done though. I was watching a report on the local news the other night extolling the virtues of buying vegetables from farm shops in Devon and Cornwall to beat the shortages in supermarkets. 

It’s a lovely idea and makes total sense; buy from a shop on the farm where the produce was grown. 

It doesn’t get any fresher than that and no planes, ships or lorries were used to transport it. 

I try to do this from time to time. A couple of years ago I decided to avoid the supermarket crush in the run-up to Christmas and get all our festive fruit and veg from a small outlet that sells mostly local produce sourced from surrounding farms. 

It opened at 6am and I was there by 5.45am, yes that’s how keen I was to avoid the supermarket panic!  

I managed to get everything I needed and be back home again before anyone else in the house was even awake.

But here’s the sting in the tail.  It was more expensive than the supermarket. 

Farm shops don’t enjoy the economies of scale and purchasing power that the major high street stores have, although it could be argued that farm shops are simply charging a more realistic price, the true value of how much it costs to grow our food. 

I hope this recent run of rationing will be a bit of a wake-up call about the sheer scale of food production required to satisfy our huge demand, and it is huge. 

I have been lucky enough to visit my sister in Canada a few times and I will never forget when she took me to a food warehouse. 

It’s the sort of shop where Canadians can bulk buy. 

I have never seen so much food. Giant boxes of everything you could think of piled to the roof. 

The scale was overwhelming, then I realised this was probably one of hundreds of similar giant stores all across North America. 

Just think of the amount of the Earth’s resources to fill and power that one store then multiply that hundreds of times. 

Can we change our shopping habits? Probably not! 

We have all got used to a plentiful year round supply of everything. But perhaps we can make some small adjustments. 

I have just sown tomato seeds and I am delighted to report that little shoots are starting to appear. 

I have also got some strawberry plants that I managed to keep alive from last year, along with some chilli plants I grew from seed and that have also survived the winter. 

If I am lucky they will provide a harvest later this year. 

It won’t be much, but it’s a start and they’re going to taste better than ever.

Bye for now!