20 years ago, myself and my dad were out with two hoes dealing with the weeds on the vegetable ridges. It is worth being mindful this this was probably the height of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ boom and for two people to be out in a field weeding was as far from the reality of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ as you could get.
So it was, that an interested party came up to see what we were doing out there in the middle of the field, such an unusual sight at the time. A funny conversation ensued; it went something along the lines of:
Him: “What are you at there?”
Us: “We are weeding”
Him: “Why in the name of God are you doing that? It is an awful waste of time”
Us: “Well, if we don’t weed the crops, we won’t have any produce”
Him: “But Surely all you need is a TOUCH OF ROUNDUP”
All I can say that after this brief interchange, there was little in the way of mutual understanding shared on that particular day, in the end, in the nicest possible way we had to agree to disagree on our approach to weed control and I asked the man if he was not going to help us, to let us be as we had quite a bit of work to do.
There were many funny incidents in those first early days. We actually had the local Garda visit to investigate what mischievous plants we might be growing in our polytunnel one evening. To be fair to both protagonists above it is worth noting that a polytunnel in the west of Ireland would have been a thing of rare occurrence back in those days. Not so much anymore.
In fact, in the space of 20 years there has been a vigorous interest in growing our own food again, at least in the small-scale regenerative way. It seems sad to me that the opposite has happened to many of the larger conventional vegetable producers. 20 years ago, was just about when supermarkets started to take a very mercenary approach to dealing with many of the larger conventional growers in the country, and supermarkets have been instrumental in bringing the horticultural industry over the last two decades to its knees.
It is even sadder to think that the price of this destruction could be for as little as 5c on a head of celery.
It is funny too how supermarkets will fight for that 5c and squeeze the primary producer and at the same time post billions of euros in annual profit. But maybe we are all a little guilty of seeing food as a commodity that needs to be as cheap as possible?
Either way quite a bit has changed in the last 20 years, there are now only 60 commercial growers of field scale vegetables left in the country down from around 400 in 1998. But it is not all doom and gloom and there have been many new smaller scale organic and regenerative startups which shows that there is still an appetite for growing vegetables and doing it without chemicals.
As always thank you for your support, without which we would not be here today.
Kenneth
PS Thank you to everybody who has supported us through the summer. As we head into September and back to school, this is a time that is just as important for us as we have so many great crops from our farm and from our other farmers, and we need your support, what better time to get back into a routine with the very best Irish organic produce.
PPS We have opening currently for full time packing staff, if you would like to join our team please click here for more details.