I guess the location of St Just shapes its community because it's so sea locked.
You can't go any further so these are the people you're with,
and we all share this small pocket.
An eclectic mix that all have to get on with each other.
Because there’s nowhere else to go apart from the sea.
'Well it's understandable to feel pretty helpless right now when so little is known
about this new virus.'
'And is there any guarantee that total local down of the kind we’ve seen
in China,
Italy, France, that it works?'
Because China’s just coming out of that.
'We don’t actually know if it’s gonna stop a second wave of the infections do we?'
There were lots of people who were scared, didn’t know what to do, asking for help,
and it just needed somebody to say,
'It’s ok, I’ve got this', just so that people
calmed down really.
So that’s why I set up the Daisy Chain.
I'm a town councillor in St Just.
The Daisy Chain is a decentralised network of volunteers.
They look after a small group of houses in their neighbourhood.
There’s 91 volunteers.
Ah got it, got it, thank you.
I’m one of the Daisies in the Daisy Chain.
I look after 11 households, and one of the people in particular that I look
after suffers greatly from anxiety.
So I need to give him reassurance, I pick up his shopping for him,
just make sure that he’s ok.
When the lock down was announced my entire income for the foreseeable future
just totally vanished, and it was really terrifying,
just to have absolutely no idea how you were gonna live,
how you were gonna eat even.
But I also felt like I really wanted to do something,
so when I heard about the Daisy Chain it just gave me something to focus on.
Coming up!
Fishing, at the best of times, is completely unpredictable.
When we first got wind of the whole situation in China our main buyers
were saying, 'it should be alright, it shouldn't affect us much'.
When that collapsed pretty much overnight, we were left completely high and dry
and wondered if we’d be able to even go to sea at all.
Absolute nightmare.
The key industries around St Just going back hundreds of years,
mining obviously, fishing and farming.
Can I have some carabiners?
Yep!
The mining is more or less gone.
Tourism has taken over from mining and fishing and farming to some extent,
and that’s been particularly bad hit by covid.
Love them or loathe them you cannot live without the tourist’s money.
I make my money through tourism, I rent a cabin which is actually my home.
So for me personally the impact was huge, but also for St Just where I live.
I've never questioned tourism before
and how reliant we are on things that aren’t necessarily sustainable.
This pandemic has shone a light on just how fragile our economy is,
and how we’re just one season away from disaster.
'Well the Uk has fallen into a historic recession
because of the impact of the pandemic, and the associated lockdown.'
'... are asking is how our societies could be transformed
by the economic shock from the virus.'
'We are going somewhere new, this is an unprecedented crisis,
that new place could be a lot worse than where we started,
it could be a lot more unequal ...'
Nobody needs any time off this week do they?
Just check that till a minute, make sure that’s alright.
I'm a town councillor, and been running this shop with my wife now for the last 14 years.
Right, I’m gonna scoot on deliveries, I think. If you fancy a trip?
We call this St Just Sunshine, we’re used to it. It’s not fog …
We don't get sun tans we all go rusty.
I think what Daisy did with the Daisy Chain was amazing.
It's gonna be an outcome of covid that more people are gonna be either
on reduced hours or even lose their jobs altogether,
and I think food poverty is gonna be of most concern really.
There are a lot of people that are a little bit reluctant to come forward
and when it's someone you know you tend to open up a bit more and that's where
the Daisy Chain has identified areas of need that perhaps have been overlooked.
'... the number of households struggling to get access to enough food,
or skipping or rationing meals, has doubled since the start of this crisis.'
'... for many of them this is the first time they’re using a food bank but that isn’t uncommon.
The Trussel Trust has found that in some food banks across the UK
there’s been a 122% rise in the number of children being given food parcels.'
Hi Sue it’s Daisy here.
Hi my love, alright?
Yeah good, are you alright?
Yeah not bad thank you.
As the Daisy chain has developed, we’ve become a resource
for the most vulnerable people in our community.
They’re having their shopping delivered now ...
— OK. — And they’re having food parcels as well.
But I’m just wondering if there was anyone in the community that could drop by
and just see if there is anything they can do to support them.
Yeah of course.
Poverty is a direct response to a broken economy and in Cornwall that’s rife.
In our rural landscape food is relatively easy to grow
and food poverty shouldn’t be a thing here.
My role with the town council is to help St Just focus on becoming self sufficient.
Do you want another one?
Down here we can try to feed people locally, by growing more food locally.
We can introduce economic networks that will help normalise greener lifestyles.
Bosavern farm is a great example of community farming.
It is owned by the community, it serves the community,
and we need to be normalising this approach to food production.
Is there any salad in the veg box this week?
Not not in yours.
Can I have some salad leaves as well please?
Thank you.
It was telling that as soon as the crisis hit people turned to their local food system.
14 kilos of kale we’ve got.
Our veg box scheme went from 50 boxes a week to 150 boxes a week.
In order to cope with this incredible demand, we really rely on the local people
to come along and help.
We're hoping that people will see that the local food system is the most resilient,
the most sustainable, and that long supply chains across the world can't be sustained.
I met my local fisherman and I didn’t realise that all of the fish previous
to lockdown were going to Europe.
Another good pot.
And probably it was getting covered in plastic and sent back to the supermarket
where I was dutifully going to pick it up, and I’ve never thought about these things before
and it's so obvious. That the food is right here.
When we’re shooting this, Sky, keep your feet tucked right in.
We’re far better at rescuing women than we are men
but we aren't very good at either.
Dad and I work together when we do the pots.
Coming up are they?
It came to the point where we thought we were either gonna have to try
and set something up to sell the fish or just stay home.
Luckily we went down the route of advertising it on social media.
Ah look at these lobsters! Look at them!
The response was unbelievable.
Beauty he is, look!
It's taken this really for us to realise how much of it was being exported
and how much we depended on that.
It was two or three buyers that we know will buy our fish
and we go home and do what you want for the rest of the day.
Above anything else it's been nice to provide fish so fresh to people.
It's where it goes from here now is the big question mark
because our wholesale markets are just beginning to creep back into the equation.
Hey, what are you doing, are we gonna have a look at the lobsters?
Do we just fall straight back into that easy side of things
or do we try and keep this going?
2 pollock was it?
It was one actually.
One. OK.
Thank you.
See you later.
See you later, thank you very much.
Even though there's a lot of fear, everyone's really stepping out to help each
other,
and actually putting creative energy into thinking about solutions
and how we best can support each other.
We live in such a hand to mouth way down here.
The last thing you'd expect out of a crisis like this is to come out of it
feeling empowered
that you can make those changes as a community.
Pedro, hello!
It’s a photo of my father's first bath, and it’s in the sea.
My life’s been paused while lockdown’s been going on.
It's making me think more than I’ve thought for a long time,
about what it means to me to care about people.
My dad died when I was 10 years old.
I think that you mature a lot quicker when something like
that happens when you’re a child.
My mum actually moved out when I was 14 and I lived here with my brother,
and I looked after him and we looked after each other,
and other people looked after me as well.
We didn't have much money or much food.
Good boy.
I think that heart that is community is really going to be the prop
that we need to survive.
'Well with the big reopening tomorrow doctors are said to be braced for
an increase
in the numbers of people arriving at A&E departments.
And how do people going back to work in all these different industries and environments
stay safe.'
It’s time to eat out to help out, to enjoy ...'
'It’s noticeably busier isn't it around, certainly in the village,
and I don’t know if people are going to start to have a bit of anxiety around
that as well ... mmm ... difficult.'
You know at the beginning when it was panicky and so we set everything up,
and now we've got those networks set up and yet it's got panicky again.
I’m quite scared.
I feel like we are less prepared now than we were even when we set up the Daisy Chain.
I don't really know how to,
when the second wave hits, create a second wave of calm.
So back to work?
Yeah, just all go.
It's such a shock in a way, and obviously really mixed feelings about that.
Everyone's been swept back up into everyday life and there's this machine
of making money, and I’m just as involved in that as everybody else.
I think what was amazing is how creative people were under those circumstances,
and how willing to change.
Our future is so uncertain and that courage that we displayed, we need that courage going
forward,
and it scares me that that will go.
Could I get some eggs, please?
Certainly.
Just half a dozen. Thank you.
I've been thinking a lot the last six months about how I make my living.
Thinking a lot about tourism and how we could make it more sustainable,
more community-led, and better for the environment as well.
So first, I’m going to try to map out what is available in the area.
I think that people would like to know about something that’s so local, you know?
Have you got any fliers or ...?
That's lovely.
There's definitely been quite a big drift back towards people's previous habits.
We've lost veg box customers, but on the whole, we’re still doing twice
the number we were doing before lockdown.
A lot of people are starting to grow their own veg.
Our allotment field here on the farm, they've all been taken, we've had to produce
more allotments for people to have because of the demand, and if we lose customers
because of it, then that's a positive thing.
We’ll be leaving in about 10 minutes.
I’ve got 70 kilo of mackerel.
How we looking price-wise, alright?
I’ll go and get my mate a minute while you're doing that.
Yeah, alright.
He talks about his mate, he's' talking about his dog.
The markets have all opened up, so the majority of our catch is going back
to the wholesale buyers.
Winter fishing from Sennen Cove is notoriously hard,
so once you couple that with the prospect of lockdown again, it's a bit of a daunting situation.
When you've got the wholesale buyers happy to pick up all of our fish in bulk
and pay good prices, you know,
you're not gonna turn that down and spend the day delivering.
Quality’s arrived ... How you doing, alright?
We’re selling a little bit direct to the public.
If we can keep it going on the side a bit that would be ideal, everyones a winner.
Does he want it tonight or?
Well he said you were gonna do it tonight.
I was gonna do it tonight.
I don't think we've really seen the effect of covid
on the economy yet.
As a business, we’ve been lucky that we managed to stay open,
but there's a lot of businesses that aren't gonna open again.
My feeling is that it's gonna be a long hard winter.
With so many unknowns still, there's a lot of work to do.
I'm looking to formalise the Daisy Chain to make it a more sustainable structure.
It’s become clear that this support system is necessary on a local level.
No, where are you going? Pedro, come on then.
'Europe's second coronavirus wave is forcing some countries to go even deeper
into restrictions again as worldwide cases cross 40 million …'
'But tonight more lockdowns seem the only certainty,
I understand local leaders are still discussing details
with Downing Street haggling over which tiers should apply to which regions,
what compensation ...'