I knocked on Kiwi Kate’s door, but there was no reply. In some cases I might have left the delivery inside the porch and carried on my rounds, but there were bottles of wine in her box as well as cheese and biscuits. You can’t leave alcohol unattended, in case Kiwi Kids get their hands on it.

I wandered round the side of the house, and there she was down the bottom of her garden, standing in the middle of a huge vegetable patch, with her arms around a solitary fencing stab.

‘Kate!’ I shouted. ‘I’m here with your order.’ She beckoned me with a wave, so I went on down the narrow grass strip between two long plots of black earth. Green and purple leaves of tatties were coming up on my left, with carrots starting to poke through feathery green foliage on the right. Ahead were four more big sections, plus a poly tunnel full of trays of sprouting stuff. And a rhubarb patch the size of a small Amazonian jungle.

‘You’re well set up here,’ I said. ‘You won’t be going hungry if times get hard.’

‘Pickle, preserve and pot,’ she said. ‘You can freeze, of course, but only if you think the electric’s going to keep going. I’ve my doubts about that, so I’m entirely ambient.’

‘You’re entirely something,’ I said. ‘Why are you hugging that post? And why is it painted red?’

‘I will answer that question,’ she said, ‘But first let me ask you one. Is it important to shop local?’

‘To support local businesses? Of course, as much as you can, especially at a time like this.’

She nodded. “How about local produce?’

‘Local farmers and food producers, absolutely. Like you have today: cheese, biscuits and chutney, all from Westray. I think that counts as local, even in Orphir.”

‘Yeah nah. I asked you for two organic wines and two Fair Trade. See what I’m after? A balanced scorecard. Some local, some organic, some Fair Trade. It’s hard to know what’ll really make a difference, so you have to tick as any boxes as possible.’

‘And hope that one of them tips us in the right direction? I get it. But what about the red fencepost in middle of your garden?’

‘Pay attention!’ she cried.

‘I am.’

‘I was working a Sauv Blanc harvest in Marlborough, and in the middle of every vineyard was a red fencepost. I asked the farmer about them. ‘Mate’, she said. ‘It’s my most important tool. Every day I go round the property, and I stand for ten minutes at each red post. And I pay attention to what’s going on around me. Is the soil dry or moist, is there enough ground cover, is the bud burst coming along? What about the insects: are they buzzing in the right way? How does it all look? How does it all smell?’ She noticed things, that woman, and because she noticed them she did something about them. And she produced the best juice in the Awatere Valley.’

‘The world could do with a whole forest of those red posts,’ I said.

‘It’s time for a change,’ she said. ‘We need to start paying attention.’

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 28th May Other diaries will appear weekly as long as the Covid-19 crisis goes on. I am posting them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations., and occasional small corrections or additions.

Diary of a Shopkeeper, 24th May