As I write this, I am sitting in field of courgettes, of which there are about 700 I think, next week we will probably harvest over half a tonne, and currently many of those courgettes we just don’t have homes for.
The worst-case scenario is we harvest these and must put them on the compost heap. This is deeply demoralising, we have worked hard for at least 6 months to get the land and the food ready and now it is and not to be able to sell it, is an impossible situation.
We are one of only 60-70 field scale vegetable growers left in Ireland, but if you are reading this you probably already know that. Over the last three weeks we find ourselves in a desperate situation.
Many of you our customers have stopped ordering for the summer, and we have seen a drastic decline in orders, all for completely understandable reasons: Schools closing, people going on holidays, and ironically the hot weather, which has disrupted cooking routines, nobody wants to be in a hot kitchen cooking in the heat.
This is ironic because the good weather has meant that our farm is now overflowing with produce, and not just our farm but many other small scale Irish organic farms up and down the country, the kind that do not supply supermarkets, those that frequent farmers markets and many of which also supply us.
Last year as most years our farm made a loss. We would love that one day we could say, do you know what? This year was different we made it; we covered our costs. Making that difference starts right here at the end of June, as the season is relatively short, the weeks and months of seasonal plenty need to be just that, busy weeks.
It is the most amazing time to source local seasonal organic produce, and a time when Ireland desperately needs more sustainable vegetable growers, in fact there couldn’t be a better time.
The last thing I want to do is have to put pen to paper to ask for your help, but as I sit here in our field of courgettes, I am not sure what else I can do.
“Can you help us?”
If you can spread the word, share this note, tell a friend, obviously if you can place an order that would be wonderful, or just send us a small bit of positivity, all would be amazingly received.
Your help could be the pivotal factor in keeping our farm and farms like ours operational. We have built our farm and business on the principle of fairness and reconnecting people with their food, and we work hard at that, we do not supply supermarkets, and so we depend on orders like yours.
And I would like you to know, even though I say it every single week that your support fundamentally makes a difference, to us, to our farm, to other Irish organic farms, to biodiversity, to nature, to the planet, and finally to your health, it really does.
So, thank you so much for taking the time to read this and for whatever you can do we will be deeply grateful.
Kenneth
PS. If you are away and you cannot order, please remember the summer is long and every week for us during the summer can be a struggle, so please order when you are back. But if you would like to support us anyway, then why not order a charity box, which will be donated to St Vincent de Paul, or gift an order to a friend, who would not appreciate the gift of sustainable food delivered to their door anywhere in Ireland.