Supermarket-free message spreading

Good morning campers! First of all a little apology.... I know the blogs have been a bit flat this week. It's just that for various reasons I haven't actually been doing much shopping. Life has got a bit hectic. But never fear, I've still not been anywhere near Tesco - instead I've been diving into my local corner shop a bit more regularly for quickie teas and eating a lot of pasta with pesto!

Such is life, but I guess it just goes to show that even when life is a bit hectic you can still avoid the Big Four.

I'm driving my little (although not so little anymore) brother to the airport in Manchester today, he's returning to Bharain, so it'll be another day when I don't really get much chance to go shopping.

So in an effort to find something to write about for today's post, I've just been cruising around on Google. And actually, if you type in "supermaket free" or "avoid supermarkets" lots of interesting things come up.

I stumbled across the website of a community farm in Bristol that has invited its customers to go supermarket-free for a whole year, which began on February 1. The Community Farm in Chew Magna launched the challenge to plug its veg box scheme, which it extended to include store cupboard essentials - asking customers if they thought they would be able to live without supermarkets for a year.

And for those who find the idea of a year without Tesco too hard to stomach - there's also the soft option of doing it for a month.

The Community Farm is offering support to all those who take up the challenge on its Facebook and Twitter pages, and it looks like quite a few people have got involved. And there also appears to be sub-groups forming as far away as Glasgow.

So the supermarket-free and Local4Life movements really are gathering pace. Good luck to everyone out there who is giving it a go - I've been doing it for more than four months now and it's getting easier by the day. Once you've got yourself sorted with a new mental list of places to go to buy various things, it almost becomes second nature.