The COVID pandemic, while fundamentally impacting sectors such as work, schooling and transport, also brought with it a significant reconfiguration of food systems. International import/export configurations were confounded, leading to the South African Government mobilising food aid parcels across the country to addressed widespread food insecurity. This paper specifically focuses on how farmworkers who were somewhat “alienated” from the product of their labour prior to the pandemic, reanimated food sovereignty as a response to surging food prices, and food shortages. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Cape Town, South Africa, this paper adds texture to Clapp & Moseley’s (2019) declaration that the impacts of COVID on the food system was a significant blow to the neoliberal food order. By tracking how a small-scale regenerative farming group in Cape Town aimed to initiate the formation of community-based food gardens, this paper highlights the nascent potentialities that emerged during the pandemic and explores the lasting impacts of such grounded community engagement around food security.