After Brexit - am I stupid or what?

The thing is, I don't mind farmers and even some of the middlemen making their profit - they need it to survive; what I object to is extortionate prices for garbage to be honest.

We've moved a lot of our shopping for basic stuff to Iceland - they are very good to be fair to them, delivery is excellent and rarely see missing stuff. But, their veg is mediocre and limited in range and their fresh meat is generally rubbish.

Last Saturday, early morning, we decided to pop to a market in the local town - first time we've been in years to be honest. Found a wee butcher stall/truck and decided to give his stuff a shot. Really nice guy who seemed to be doing a lot of business, despite it being dead early - even making up order boxes for regular customers to collect. Even offered to deliver on a couple of days of the week if I wanted (he saw the stick/disabilty) - nothing was too much trouble. We spent £50 with him in the end, but we will be eating off the back of that for a good three weeks at least. Better still, the meat is absolutely stunningly good. I have just had two wild boar sausages with mash and I am stuffed full - - none of this watery, cereal filled stuff you get from the supermarket.

Next to him was a fruit and veg stall - again, really lovely stuff (their strawberries are the best I have had in years!) and again, not cheap but not expensive either. Most things were of a comparable price to the supermarket or maybe a few pence more; offered to deliver as well, next day six days a week.

Sure, I could have spent less by going to Tesco, but not much less and the stuff would have been rubbish.

 

It is not only you - poor Mrs Shiney and Sarafi suffer too if they are downwind...

 

We discussed it here years ago with "M" and Armandii -- we should have registered our idea as a trademark in case it ever came to anything - Stopsafartin we called it. There was a higher grade product idea for severer cases... Stopsapoopin

 

To some degree, however where I am seeing a bit of a resurgence is in market stalls (farmers markets and general markets) as well as those who are willing to go the extra mile and deliver, forward order etc.

That butcher I referred to - his card machine was playing up and he asked if we had cash (we didn't, but said we would go to the cashpoint) - his reply was that we should take the meat and either pop back after doing the rest of our shopping or next Saturday even. He'd never seen us before, and didn't know us from Adam. That is the sort of service that folks will remember, and go back for.

 

There are regular farmers' markets held in the villages around here. All good local produce (limited fruit and veg at this time of year) but lots of meat products, pies and puddings, some cheeses, breads and cakes, jams and pickles etc. There's at least one market every Saturday in one of the villages around. There's also things such as knitwear, carpentry items, crafts/gifts and even plants for sale.

We also have farm shops that sell a wider range.