Spent a few days in the North visiting some of our customers.
Steph at the Cartmel Cheese Shop
Ann and colleague’s, at The Cheese Shop Chester
Nick and colleague at Nantwich Cheese Shop.
Courtyard Dairy Austwick,, Andy, Kath and the team.
So we have run out of tomatoes and cucumbers! Well surprise surprise. We have been through it with eggs and now its the turn of veg. This is corperate incompetence on a grand scale, supermarkets just in time delivery, just too late and going to be late for a number of weeks. Of course the weather has played a part, it always does, it is allways the big unknown factor, so you just have to accept it. There are periods when product is going to be short and difficult due to the weather, farmers live with that risk every day, we are farmers not magicians.However there is another issue at play here, and our British supermarkets have a horrendous reputation for not paying. They flatly refuse to pay the going rate for produce, be it veg or eggs, and the net result is, the British farmers have not been planting their greenhouses, because of the cost of heating them in January and February, and they know full well, that the Supermarkets will not pay the going rate.Why should the farmers take all the risk, just to be beaten over the head by a supermarket buyer, who will take all the credit, for feeding Britain. Brexit will have played its part as well. Trade used to be pretty seamless between European Countries, but our mate Bob the Builder messed that up, and moving food across boarders is much more difficult than it used to be, so if you are a Spanish farmer, why would you bother to sell your tomatoes to Britain and a Supermarket that will make your life a misery.Some say the Government should have helped the greenhouse men with a gas subsidy. However Rishi has a secret weapon, the lovely Therese Coffey. She has got her gardening book out and decided we should all eat turnips. There is only one turnip on hand at the moment, can we please have George Eustice back.I don’t like those hard tasteless winter tomatoes they sell anyway, not unlike those hard tasteless strawberries you have to take a hammer and chisel to, roll on summer and fresh tomatoes from our own greenhouse.
