When supermarkets first appeared on the high streets they were hailed as your 'One Shop Stop' for everything that you needed for your weeks shopping, no more traipsing around different shops to get what you needed. I can't recall if they sold fresh meat, but they stocked far more products than the local grocery store. Over the years they took on the independent green grocer, the wet fish shop and your friendly butcher who not only knew what you wanted but always had a few off cuts for your cats or bones for the dog. A few years on and they became mega shops, everyone undercutting their competitors and squeezing the farmer so they could keep prices low, and the standard went down. Going back to the early 60's I could get everything I needed from four shops, the advent of supermarkets cut that down to just two shops, the butcher and the supermarket. Fast forward fifty years and I now need to go to seven different outlets to get a weeks shopping and four of those are supermarkets, two of which are 30k away. Is this progress? not in my book, of course if we were happy to buy poor quality mass produced food we could do all our shopping in one supermarket, but we're not. The two supermarkets that we have to travel a distance to are three monthly visits, one of them for Organic butter, the other a German supermarket for good quality organic milk, and while we are there we stock up on good bread from the best baker for miles. Fortunately all these things freeze very well, for good fish we travel 50k, again stocking up for three months. It would be great if we could get everything that we need locally, but that would mean turning the clock back fifty years.
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| Victoria plum in flower. |
Thankfully we grow all our own veg and fruit, can't get more local than that. We currently have carrots, PSB. cabbage, spinach, we are on the last of our leeks and parsnips, but they lasted well.
The garden is looking it's best now with so many different types of daffodils and tulips in flower.
In the woodlands the first bluebells are flowering
along with wood anemones
primroses and celandines, it is lovely to see so much colour, I have heard the first cuckoo of the year, soon the swallows will be with us and summer will be here.
Your photos are just beautiful! Thank you for sharing all these lovely harbingers of spring!
ReplyDeleteThanks Ruth.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely gorgeous flower pics, so much colour! xxx
ReplyDeleteThe garden is looking great at the moment, so many different types of tulips.
DeleteOh and I completely agree RE the shops, luckily Valencia has more options than most but I still find myself having to plan meals and shopping carefully and a 40 minute round trip to pick up salad supplies...which I then absent mindedly have left in the shop once, woops! xx
ReplyDeleteLuckily we don't have to go hunting for veg or fruit as we grow all we need, it's just things like bread (which we used to make) fish, milk and butter, we cant get really good organic milk in the village or organic butter of any type, so have to drive 28k to stock up, fish we drive 60k to get good fish but we do buy enough of everything for three months so it's not too bad, just a matter of being organised.
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