What a week

by Kenneth Keavey

There has been loads happening on the farm this week. For one I don’t think I could have eaten finer food at a Michelin star restaurant. We have had Tom Hunt, Guardian recipe writer and eco warrior chef here for three days and wow did he cook some amazing food right out in the middle of our fields. Rustic and amazing on a wood fire, we can’t wait to share these amazing, seasonal, eco-recipes with you. They blew my taste buds away, all vegetarian, some vegan, and all 100% taste explosions. Keep an eye on our weekly recipes and on Instagram for more.

On top of that we had a national organic farm walk here on Tuesday afternoon and had an amazing group of people come along to talk and share information. You couldn’t write it though, on the button of 2.15pm as we were about to kick off the first drops of rain started to fall, (cue a little rain dance by all farmers in attendance) it then rained straight for the next 4 hours. You could tell that this was a seasoned crowd as the rain made no difference, in fact considering all the drought conditions it was more than welcome.

We had some of the farmers who supply us present as well as all the professional bodies, Bord Bia, Dept of Ag, Teagasc, IOA, and OGI. Thanks to everybody who came along it was I hope an informative and open discussion, in particular thanks to William Deacey of Teagasc for organising it.

Not to mention pallets of produce being harvested by Emmanuel and his farm team, from kale to the first carrots and parsnips, beetroot, spinach, salad, lettuce, tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers, in fact today he told me 23 different crops were harvested this week, amazing.

We have also been very busy getting ready for our 20-year celebration festival.  A celebration of sustainable food and it promises to be an amazing day, there are still some tickets left, so if you haven’t gotten yours yet, please click here to reserve now, all the info can be found on that page.

It is a strange time though as if you are like us, we haven’t fully gotten back into routine yet, in fact as a family we are all over the place, between some bits of school started, some not just yet, having one girl going off to college, one starting in 5th year and our youngest just starting in secondary it is all change. Not sure I know whether we are coming or going. We have seen this reflected in our orders also, completely understandable. I think next week is when we will have to settle down and I am hoping it’s the same with many of you, our customers.

So, it really feels like autumn is beginning in earnest, like any change there is a little element of loss and sadness at its passing, loss of the long summer days and bright sunshine, but the swallows are still here, and if anything September can and has been in years gone by a beautiful month, fingers crossed that we have a good one.

As always thank you so much for your support, it keeps us growing, now really is the time of Irish seasonal plenty.

Kenneth

60% of the Broccoli crops has been devastated, why?

by Kenneth Keavey

60% of the total national broccoli crop in France has been devastated by man made climate change. Our broccoli crop is poor or non-existent; our Irish supplier has no organic broccoli. We cannot buy organic broccoli from any of our suppliers on the continent. 

I talk here every week about chemicals in and on our food, but the reality is if we do not stop burning fossil fuels there will not be any food for anybody to spray chemicals on. 

Think about that for a minute. 

This is happening now. This is the real-life impact of drought and massively intense temperatures across Europe directly impacting our ability to grow food. Our farm is still in moisture deficit. 

This is one crop. 

I walked our farm today and even though there is a small amount of rain as I write this, we are still in serious moisture deficit. Some of the crops are stunted; yields are down, this is the second time in 8 years that we have experienced serious drought issues here in the west of Ireland. 

To one extent or another we have all voted for the food system we have. Granted it has been infinitely facilitated by supermarket retail culture and our increasingly pressurised and busy lives. 

But we get what we vote for, and you can see how that has worked out for our American friends across the water. As a society we must decide what we want to reward because in the end that is what we will get. We have always maintained that local organic food production must be where we put our focus, and I have been doing this long enough now to know that growing food commercially is hard and risky and yet outsourcing our food to other countries also comes with a risk. 

The real issue here is the fact that when there is a shortage of food due to drought or floods or whatever other climate related shocks, our food systems will be compromised. 

There is little doubt that certain countries are much better adapted to growing certain crops and it would be hard to see a viable red pepper industry developing in Ireland, having said that with climate change all of that could be up for discussion. But maybe we could be more self sufficient in carrots or parsnips or cabbage. 

When it comes to our food choices we have to decide where it is we want to put our attention. The simple reality is local sustainable food production is our best chance of feeding ourselves when food becomes scarce in other places. 

I know that on a 25-acre farm we are not going to feed Ireland. But we are building a network of other growers that share our vision that sustainable agriculture is a real solution to help bring us one step closer to a better more sustainable food secure future. 

It is only through your support that we get to do that, and your support makes a difference. 

Thank you. 

Kenneth

Glyphosate is needed to feed the world

by Kenneth Keavey

We need glyphosate, it is as simple as that, without it we can’t grow enough food, excuse me?

We never really know what is going on behind the scenes, what is decided and talked about behind the closed doors. We are told things and we need to figure out if it is in our best interests to believe what we are told. For instance, we are told we need glyphosate to produce all the food that is produced in the world. That there would be real trouble if it was banned.

This was exactly the case in 2024, when an exceptionally strong agricultural lobbying group COPA-COGECA successfully lobbied the EU Commission to throw out their pesticide reduction target, this new law part of the EU green deal was formally withdrawn by the Commission in February 2024.

The EU green deal for farmers was going to cut pesticide use in half.

Thomas Waitz A green MEP from Austria said “Copa Cogeca focused on sabotaging, delaying and ultimately stopping the sustainable use of pesticide regulation. They are acting in the interests of large agrichemical and multinationals against the wellbeing of small and medium famers.” The pesticide regulation was withdrawn in 2024.

This organisation set out to protect in particular the use of Glyphosate and the bee harming pesticides neonicotinoids.

This union does represent the rights of farmers, but it represents the rights of some more than others, bigger industrial groups for one.

This same lobbying group (insert link 2) that got an agreement on the extension of the use of cages for chickens for another 10 years. In fact, behind the scenes files captured by “Grilled” (the investigative journalist website)  show this organisation receiving support from EU commissioners in blocking parts of the EU effort to beat cancer, pressuring ministers to weaken protections for wild animals, securing emissions exemptions for factory farms, and prolonging the use of cages for livestock. Using the tactics of large tobacco to lobby, cajole and convince that it is in our best interests as farmers and consumers to do things such as this.   (insert link 1)

One analysis found the EU’s agricultural promotion programme had spent €252 million over four years advertising meat and dairy products, making up a third of its budget.  Imagine if that budget was used for promoting  vegetables!

The EU is now debating a proposal to remove the periodic safety reviews of pesticides always on the market, effectively giving pesticides a carte blanche for ever.

It is safe to say that organic farming is not a perfect system, but it represents a system that attempts to bring farmers back to being guardians of the planet and in so doing creating a more sustainable food system without the use of glyphosate.

Thank you for supporting a different way of growing food.

Kenneth

PS please continue to support us during the difficult summer months if you can, it makes all the difference to our farm, and if you haven’t got your ticket yet for the sustainability festival please click here to get yours.

Link 1

https://www.grilled.media/inside-copa-cogeca-plot-to-kill-eu-green-deal

link 2

https://corporateeurope.org/en/2025/12/pesticide-lobby-instrumentalising-farmer-protests-its-attack-eu-health-regulations-0

If you spray pesticides on your vegetable patch, then you have kinda missed the point

by Kenneth Keavey

If you are spraying pesticides in your vegetable garden, you have kinda missed the point of growing your own food in the first place.

I know for sure that my grandad did not use pesticides, he grew vegetables for himself and his family, including me when I came along. In fact, I have a memory of sitting on his lap drinking sweet, boiled turnip juice out of a tin cup. I know, I dare you to try that with your own kids today, see how far you get. I’d get thrown out of my own house if I suggested such a thing, what between the protein bars, and the smoothies, sprouting broccoli and avocados, I wouldn’t stand a chance. There is no doubt our food system has changed, some for the good, some for the not so good.

He grew carrots, they were amazing, my dad grew carrots they were amazing. My Grandad grew carrots for the Johnsons and the Blakes the families that lived in Cregg castle, he was the head gardener there and grew those vegetables in the walled garden at Cregg. Those families were the lucky ones, they didn’t need to subsist on a diet of potatoes and turnip juice. They had tomatoes, imagine tomatoes on your plate locally grown in the 1950s. it did happen you know. But you know something else? They were an absolute luxury, no doubt about it.

I mean where else would you have gotten tomatoes in the West of Ireland in the 1950s as a normal person, you wouldn’t, and when or if you ever did, imagine what that would have been like? I do remember podding peas, that was a remarkable thing, really and truly.

I also remember harvesting the apples and the jam jars hanging on strings to stop the wasps, I remember all the different varieties of apples, and of putting them on metal sheets in the shed to keep them for the autumn and stop disease spreading by spacing them out.

It was a different era, some good some not so good.

But you know what my grandad and my dad did not do? They did not use pesticides, they didn’t. My grandad had two work horses, one was called Snowball and he also had a small mixed farm, the same one we have now, he never sprayed it. It wasn’t a conscious choice, he just didn’t have the option, there were no chemicals available to him and yet he grew the food.

The food was tasty, simple wholesome. As I have gotten older, I still love a simple meal of new potatoes and fresh seasonal veggies, what’s not to love about that?

Chemistry belongs in a lab not on our food, there is little doubt that going out to spray our food with chemicals to stop other creatures from eating it and then bringing that food into our homes and eating it ourselves is a little bit silly.

As always, we need your support during the summer more than ever, the time of the best Irish seasonal plenty.

Thank you

Kenneth

PS PLEASE if you can at all continue to support us during the summer we would really appreciate it. If you haven’t gotten your ticket for our sustainability festival yet, please click here to get yours, this is a not for profit event to celebrate all that is good in food in Ireland, check out the line-up it promises to be an amazing day.

Make sure you are at rock bottom, before you look up…

by Kenneth Keavey

When you think it almost couldn’t get any worse, this week has proved make sure you are at rock bottom before you start looking up!

On a positive note, the weather has been fantastic, as a person without a farm I would be celebrating having a summer. The reality from a food growing perspective is a little different though, we are heading into the end of 2 months with very little rain, our weather station is reading a large moisture deficit.  Here in Galway, this is or was once a very unusual occurrence. You know those once in a lifetime climate events they used to talk about, that now happen all the time!

So out came the water tanker this week. Our crops are really struggling we have disease and drought stress across the crops. We purchased the water tanker after the serious drought of 2018, and while conditions so far are not as bad as they were then, they are pretty bad, so the tanker is out and we are watering, we have to water as the soil resembles more of a desert that a farm in Galway.

We have also taken out our old sprayer, and as luck would have it, both machines broke down. The sprayer is important as the dry soil mean very little water is going into the veggies which means they are not getting nutrients and as a result they are suffering both from lack of water and lack of food.

For the first time that I can remember we have aphid (Green fly) infestations in our brassicas.  So, we have been scrambling around, we have bought a new sprayer, and we hope to have the water tanker operational again. So yesterday we were out spraying seaweed and a liquid nutrition boost (made from plants) and micronutrients also, and finally an herbal tonic to boost the immune system of the plants. Fingers crossed it helps.

The long-term forecast is for a dry August, that will be month three of little rain, so we must get on with the time-consuming job of spraying and watering. We are lucky though here in Galway we have access to water and there are no fires.

Spare a thought for all those in France and Spain and across the world that are burning and suffering the worst impacts of the climate breaking down. Meanwhile the Fossil fuel companies are rubbing their hands together as they no doubt make record profits again from the high price of oil. They are responsible for our planet burning.  Man made climate change is our reality now, and it is happening all around us, every single year.

I see it here with my own eyes.

Having said that, we are doing all we can in our little corner of the world, and there are many people like us and your support is a vote for a cleaner greener future.

Anyway, back to watering and spraying and harvesting. Your support especially during the summer keeps us going and growing, so, thank you.

Kenneth

PS We have finalised the lineup for our sustainability festival in September and it promises to be an amazing day, if you haven’t gotten your ticket yet, please click here to get yours now. This is a not-for-profit event.

PPS We have at last the first new Irish organic potatoes from Cameron at Battlemountain farm and we are so excited, check them out here. His crops are also suffering from drought, so they are later than usual and smaller than usual, but they are here now.

A remarkably stressful rollercoaster

by Kenneth Keavey

The last few weeks have been a remarkably stressful rollercoaster. If you think local sustainable food growing is important, we still need your help.

We have gone from our lowest level of orders in 9 months to the highest in the space of one week, then a week later we are dropping back again. We have gone from a huge harvest from our farm to harvests being impacted by heat stress, the irony of tomatoes not ripening because the temperatures in our polytunnels have exceeded 45C is not lost on me.

This week we are facing a new crisis, the soil moisture levels are at a critical point, we are now irrigating in the West of Ireland. The courgettes are producing massive amounts of fruits, but the leaves are extremely spiky, this only happens when there is not enough water in the soil.

A nationwide hosepipe ban tells us here in Ireland that the water is low, climate change is real, and data centres are definitely not where we want to be using our precious resource. The celery is stressed and as we start harvesting, we have already seen patches that are affected by stress related disease. The sprouting broccoli is bolting, the swedes are struggling, the cucumbers are aborting and leeks are dying.

Our weather station is measuring a drop of 50% in soil moisture content in the last 10 days, with no rain of any consequence on the horizon. Never say commercial growing is for the faint hearted. I have found that the pressures to produce food and then sell the food when we have it can be very challenging. Our chosen model is labour intensive and is about connecting people with how our food is grown. We will not deviate from the path, just last weekend we had over 100 people on our farm walk.

I believe connecting people with our food, with our environment, and the importance of growing food without chemicals is critical for our health and the health of the planet, today more than ever. I imagine as one of our readers, supporters, you may share this view?

Our food system has disconnected us from our food, it has disconnected us from the truth behind our food, pesticides are still in use, maybe now more than ever. Supermarket food culture is based on profit before all else, this has taken its toll on growers not just across Ireland but across the world.

This is not sustainable. There is another way, but this way does not fit the large distribution centres, and the current model of selling fresh food as cheaply as possible. I wonder do we need to start thinking more about value and less about the cost of our food?

When we value something, we are less inclined to waste it, when we value something we hold it close, we become more mindful about it, we treat it with a greater degree of respect. From our perspective as growers, setting aside acres of land each year to allow the soil to regenerate incurs a very real financial cost, but it is repaid in allowing us to grow more nutrient dense food and a stronger more resilient ecosystem.

Most farmers cannot afford such a luxury as they feed into the insatiable supermarket machine, where uniformity and price are the overriding factors in meeting contract supply criteria. So how can we get to a place where growing food without pesticides and with nature is the norm?

Well to be honest that is exactly what we are doing, and your support means the food system we are developing has a chance.

Please continue to support us during the summer.

Thanks

Kenneth

This is a plea-thank you

by Kenneth Keavey

Last week I stood out in a field and asked your help for our farm. A difficult conversation to have. We have been bowled over by the level of support we have received. I cannot put into words how much the feedback, words of encouragement, and orders have impacted us. It has been overwhelming. Thank you all so much.

I can tell you now that most of the courgettes we harvested have all gone to good homes.

Amid all the good will I wanted to highlight one particular gesture (of many, and apologies I cannot highlight them all) One of our customers in Dublin offered to buy most of our excess courgettes to donate them to charity. 

I spoke to the gentleman involved, I couldn’t begin to express my appreciation, it was an emotional conversation, and the fact that I was able to decline his generous offer as a result of all the other support was quite frankly amazing.

This is one example of many.  We have had so many orders for charity boxes from people here in Ireland and all over the world and we will be distributing the boxes and produce to charity mainly Saint Vincent De Paul in the coming weeks so that people who would not normally ever have access to fresh organic food will receive deliveries to their doors. Again, thank you all so much.

The struggle to make mixed sustainable organic farming work on a scale like ours is real, and there are many other farms up and down the country of Ireland that now also need your support, you will find them at Farmers markets, they will supply restaurants, or small independent shops, have box schemes or honesty boxes. Please support them.

For us next week and the week after will present the same challenges as this week, so if you can remember us and think about putting in an order it will help our farm and the other farmers we source from enormously.

There is an irony in all of this, in that we have been so busy this week we nearly didn’t manage. Going from one of the quietest weeks of the year to one of the busiest presents its own challenges and harvesting all this produce and packing it in the middle of a crazy man-made climate change fuelled heat wave has been tough.

Thanks to all the farm team that worked so hard in the heat every day to harvest all the amazing produce and to the dedicated packers who packed all your orders. Despite calling in everyone we knew, we could not stretch to packing the last tranche of orders, and for this I am truly sorry to those customers who were affected. I hope you can bear with us.

Sustainable food production as with clean energy is under pressure at a time when we need both more than ever, and if the raging wildfires, multiple heat waves, record breaking temperatures and the threat that a now guaranteed 2C of warming (due to burning fossil fuels) 2 billion people will die by 2050 doesn’t convince us of that I am not sure what will.

I think this quote from Elon Musk sums up all that is wrong with the world:

“You don’t seem to understand that SpaceX will be worth more than the rest of Earth if we accomplish our goals”

Greed and power the staples of the ultra-wealthy, fuelling their insatiable appetite for even more power and money at a price the rest of us and our lovely green planet is paying. Our one truly beautiful home is being destroyed by people than care little for you or I or the environment, it needs to stop.

We have spent 20 years in our little 25-acre patch of land here in the West of Ireland developing a sustainable food system, it has not been easy and there have more than our fair share of road bumps. Last week we received from you a resounding and overwhelming endorsement that our planet and our land deserve our care.

I think this quote from Margaret Meade sums up all that is right with the world:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Thank you

Kenneth

This is a plea, can you help us?

by Kenneth Keavey

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.

Where have all our insects gone?

by Kenneth Keavey

Next time you drive down the motorway check your windscreen, is it covered in splattered insects? This used to be the case, but now sadly there are so few insects left that in fact our windscreens are mostly clear.

In 2019 a study published by Danish researcher Anders Møller showed that insect numbers splattered on cars declined by more than 80% between 1997 and 2017. An earlier landmark study by Hallman et al in 2017 stated that “There has been more than a 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas”. This study was breathtaking in its scope and involved nearly three decades of continuous, data collection across 63 sites.

This German study tracked insect biomass in nature reserves— protected land. The insects were gone because the fields around them were sprayed with herbicides and pesticides. Have you ever heard of tramlines? The tramlines I am talking about here are tractor tracks through in particular cereal fields (and vegetable fields).

Next time you drive past a field of wheat or barley, look for these tramlines — those tracks running through the crop. They’re permanent spray lanes, put there at sowing so a tractor can enter the field over and over to apply chemicals. A typical Irish cereal crop gets sprayed four to six times between October and June.

Cereal fields (and increasing grass monocultures where all diverse plants are removed by selective herbicides) are essentially a chemical monoculture from October through June — no flowering weeds (removed by herbicide), no insects able to complete life cycles in or around the crop, nothing for birds to eat. The tram lines are the visible manifestation of the chemical applications. The crop looks green and healthy. What isn’t visible is the biological silence inside it. They’re the signature of an industrial spray programme, written in bare soil across every tillage field in Ireland.

There is more evidence of the devastation wrought by chemical agriculture, populations of European grassland butterflies are estimated to have declined by 50% in abundance between 1990 and 2011. In England, the total abundance of butterfly species declined by 58% on farmed land between 2000 and 2009, despite a doubling of conservation spending.

And finally in the USA in the last three decades, monarch butterfly populations have declined by 80–95%. Researchers studying monarchs found on average traces of seven pesticides in each individual butterfly studied. But the application of glyphosate and the destruction of milkweed a key plant that Monarchs feed on is a critical part of the population collapse.

So, the next time you drive down a motorway and you notice those tram lines, have a look at the insect splatter on your windscreen and remember the application of herbicides and pesticides and fungicides do not only impact our health but also the health of our little living friends that we share this earth with and whom we rely on for pollination and our food. (Over 75% of human-cultivated crops worldwide depend directly on insect pollination. About 88% of all flowering plants are pollinated by insects.)

As always thank you for your support, it means a great deal.

Kenneth

PS It is definitely holiday season and we are seeing harvest rolling in from the fields and also a marked increase in the absence of orders. If you are considering ordering please do, it will help us enormously especially at this time. Thank you.

I am so upset, and hopeful…

by Kenneth Keavey

What are we doing to our planet? In equal measure I feel sad and angry, how can we treat our home like we do, spraying chemicals on our land, dumping plastic in our beautiful oceans, consuming resources beyond what the planet can offer, pouring earth warming gases into the atmosphere which may well end up being the greatest travesty of our time.

The never-ending pursuit of profit, driven by greed, this it seems is all that matters to the corporate leaders. The maths doesn’t add up, it cannot continue, we will be the ultimate losers.

Why does the whole fresh food industry have to be based on aggression? From growing to pricing, to selling? Whatever happened to partnership, and fairness? Couldn’t it be different?

The phenomenal scale of corporate greed behind it all, big industry, big ag, big food, they are all the same, and they are ruining our planet. Not only that but these companies and their lobbying groups are causing epidemics of chronic disease. 

It doesn’t need to be like this.

We received a lovely comment from a customer last week, I think it highlights what we have been fighting for, for the last twenty years, and reading this fills me with hope. 

“… Your service gives me time that I would otherwise spend researching suppliers, chasing down seasonal produce and trying to verify how food has been grown and sourced. Instead, I get to spend that time with my children. They eat well, they learn that food has seasons, and they develop an appreciation for quality, provenance and value that extends beyond a price tag.

Most importantly, I am paying for the confidence that someone else is doing the work of finding produce that has been grown and sourced in the way I would choose myself. If I attempted to do that sourcing (or growing!) personally, it would require far more of my own time and effort. In many ways, I am paying for your time so that I can spend mine where it matters most.

The produce is wonderful, but the real value lies in everything that happens before it reaches my doorstep.”

The cornerstone of our business is anchored in healthy, chemical free food, and a food system that restores the earth and by default our health. Our business is a system that is fair to our food producers, to our partners, to our farmers, to our bodies, to our land, to the living creatures we share the earth with. A food system that can enrich our lives, can energise our bodies, that can make us well not sick, and can heal our planet. We don’t have a big farm, but we have many other farms that we work with, farms that share our common goal, to make this world a bit better, to make our health a little better, and to restore some sanity to a food system that has gone over the edge. 

Thank you for using your power wisely, your support is evidence enough for us to keep our heads down and heading in the right direction.

Thank you

Kenneth