The week restaurants and cafes were shut down due to coronavirus restrictions Fiona Buining went into her garden and had a cry.

There, among the fruit and nut trees, with her chickens, oblivious to it all, clucking around her feet, the bees from her beehives buzzing in the autumn sun, she wondered what on earth would be next.

"I saw all these plants and it was devastating to think I would have to throw it all away," says Buining, who, with her husband Michael Wilson, runs Ainslie Urban Farm.

Buining was supplying close to 25 restaurants with microgreens, from the Ainslie Football Club to Aubergine. Chef Janet Jeffs, of Ginger Catering, has been her most loyal client, the pair have worked together since 2014, and other clients include High Road, Cupping Room, Trevs at Dickson, Gather, Rye and A Bite to Eat. She had just started supplying QT and Ottoman.

"Sales were great early March and they dropped off that first week and then they went to zero," she says.

"I was left with a lot of stock and to be honest I went up to the greenhouse and I actually had a cry."

"After the feeling of paralysis had worn off" she had the thought to sell directly to people from a contactless garden stall on the verge of her Ainslie street.

The microgreens have been popular, she sells out most weekends. She's also stocking eggs from Allsun Farm at Gundaroo.

The seedlings are just about ready, people can pre-order those through her website. She's growing plenty of leafy greens, think rocket, mizuna, Asian greens, lettuces, spring onions and early onions. She's always followed Allsun's Joyce Wilkie's growing calendar.

Buining and Wilson have always been interested in gardening and growing food. When they moved to the quarter acre block in 2008 there were only two trees on the property. "We planted more than 40 fruit and nut trees and berries, there's quite a substantial vegetable garden and we've got two beehives and chickens, it's just what we do.

"Our children, who are now grown up, have always called our place "the farm".

"It's easy to forget about the suppliers in all this," she says. 'I think it's been great that some places have been doing produce boxes to support their suppliers. Joyce was going to feed her eggs to the pigs but I said I'd sell them through the stall."

Sid Johnson and the team at Box Gum Grazing out at Murringo, near Boorowa, are now delivering their delicious meat door to door. They send a couple of little trucks over to Canberra on a Saturday, full of grass-fed lamb and beef, pastured pork, cured meats and mince and sausages.

Their produce was available at the Canberra Region Farmers' Markets but for the meantime, Johnson says delivery is working well.

"Big changes have obviously been forced upon us but I don't want to give the impression it has been all, or even mostly, bad," he says.

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"We are selling just as much as we were before and the workload is about the same. More organisation, but we also don't have to get up at 3am to make it to the markets on time.

"We have also had so many positive comments (and zero negative ones) from customers thanking us for pivoting the business towards deliveries so they can still get the meat they want without putting themselves at any risk."

Box Gum was supplying Mocan and Green Grout, Ginger at the National Arboretum, Aubergine, Silo, Common Grounds and Monster.

"Mocan and Green Grout are still using our bacon for their takeaway business but they are the only restaurant we are supplying at the moment," Johnson says.