Have you noticed that fewer people seem to be going in for pick-your-own fruit this year?

I thought a few years ago it was here to stay but maybe it will soon be a faintly nostalgic reminder of days gone by along with cheesecloth shirts and the Bay City Rollers.

As professional fruit pickers declined in number after the Second World War, it was a brilliant idea by farmers to start pick-your-own. It means you could get ordinary punters to do the job for you and be paid by them into the bargain.

Each summer you saw the curious sight of fruit farms swarming with people picking strawberries, raspberries and even more unusual fruit such as tayberries and loganberries to fill their freezers and perhaps to make jam.

The farmers usually pitched their prices so that they were below that of the cheapest markets in town so that it was worthwhile going out to the country and picking the fruit. They later even extended it to apples and pears and to vegetables including broad beans and peas.

A couple of years ago, I noticed that several of my favourite fruit farms had closed and others appeared to be run down. Now there are only six left in the Yellow Pages although I know of a few more minor ones which still stagger on.

The biggest casualty was the fruit farm at Albourne which was the nearest one to Brighton and conveniently close to the A23. First the strawberries went and this year notices appeared saying that the raspberries had gone as well.

I'd spent many happy hours in the past picking fruit at Albourne and using it to make jam although once when I went there by bike. I made the mistake of returning home along bumpy downland paths. Some of the raspberries jumped out and the rest resembled a kind of diminished puree by the time I headed back to Hove.

Of course everyone used to eat a few bits of fruit when they were there and this was expected as part of the fun. I was always tempted to smuggle in surreptitiously brown sugar and cream to have a feast down some fruity back row.

I don't think it was this that caused the decline in fruit picking. It may be simply that it is much more economic for farmers to grow more conventional crops such as wheat or simply to turn the whole field over to pasture.

But I suspect the real cause is that people are so lazy. Most of them simply cannot be bothered to flog over to a fruit farm when they can motor along to Sainsbury's and buy exotic fruit from all over the world already washed and packaged.

Today is the start of August and the soft fruit season is almost over. I have only been to one fruit farm this year. It was at Firle off the A27 and it was rather a dispiriting experience. Raspberries were advertised but search as I could, and I am an experience fruit picker, I could find no more that five in row after row. There were more nettles than canes and they got me.

I was stung in more ways than one when I switched to selecting blackcurrants, for the price I paid was more than if I had bought them at the Open Market in Brighton. There were few other people at this place and small wonder when the fruit on offer was scarce, hard to pick and expensive.

The Beatles wrote a song called Strawberry Fields Forever but this does not seem to be true any more in Sussex. I did make my blackcurrant conserve, 13 pounds of it, and am enjoying it each morning for breakfast. It's a case of jam today but will there be jam tomorrow?