A huge Announcement

by Kenneth Keavey

Even after 20 years in business, no two days are ever the same and we keep on experiencing new things for the first time, new challenges, but also new opportunities. 

I have been bursting at the seems trying to contain my excitement at this announcement, which truly is a first for us. Something we have been working very hard on over the last 2 months and finally we can tell you about it, and the scale of this event is a first for us.

We are having our very first sustainability festival on the 12th Sept this year.  

We have an amazing selection of speakers, demos, suppliers, tastings, farmers, growers, beekeepers, music, speakers, speciality food trucks, artisan ice creams, and sustainable coffee, and of course farm tours planned, it will be a day to celebrate the diversity of Irish local food (from a vegetable perspective!) and the importance now more than ever of using the power of our food choices to drive change that impacts our health and the health of this planet in a positive way.

You can get your tickets here, there are a limited number of early bird tickets available, and then the full price tickets are €40, and these will be strictly limited too.

Generally, we have never charged (or charged a nominal fee) for our annual events on the farm, but we soon discovered that just to attempt to cover the costs of an event of this magnitude we needed to charge €40 per ticket just to aim to break even. If there is anything left over from the sales after costs are deducted the proceeds will be donated to our two chosen charities “Hometree” and “Friends of the Earth Ireland” both of whom will be speaking at the event. 

We are also charging for children’s tickets, this is something we would not normally ever do, but we have limited capacity in our speakers tent and so we feel we had to limit the numbers somehow. The entirety of children’s ticket fees will also be donated to our two charity partners.

We have always felt strongly that educating and inspiring children through connecting them with nature (and our two pet rescue pigs, George and Florence of course) is a very important part of our journey and we thought very hard about how we could make up to you as parents for having to charge. So, we have decided to put on an extra annual farm walk/tour this year, we will be running this on the 18th of July and there will only be a nominal charge (€10/car) to reserve your place. Tickets for this event will go on sale soon too so keep your eyes peeled, and we will let you our customers know first.

I always need to pinch myself to make sure it is real; that in fact we have made it to this pivotal milestone. It is hard to think that when myself my dad and my wife Jenny started packing our first veg boxes on pallets and empty Guiness kegs 20 years ago that we would be still here 20 years later. 

I think we are here too against all the odds, and there were plenty of times when I seriously considered throwing in the towel, it has been and continues to be a tough journey. I know some of you our customers have been with us right from the start, and that is something that makes me feel very emotional you are the reason that we are still here, and the reason when times were tough, we didn’t quit.

Now more than ever it is vital that businesses such as ours exist and thrive and grow. Our world is crying out for compassion, fairness, support, inclusion, sustainability, healthy food and somebody to standup for the health of our planet. You are that person, and you are facilitating us in helping deliver that message. 

So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for keeping us growing (in every way).

Kenneth

PS In another first we have just launched a brand-new delivery day, we can now deliver to you on Mondays. This delivery day is much more difficult to achieve operationally, and the cost of delivery will be at the higher charge of €8/delivery. This is here to facilitate times when you need an additional delivery or an early delivery, we would ask that you stick to your normal delivery day and only use this facility if you really need to. In order to be offered this choice you will need to place your order as a guest rather than using your registered account.  

I can’t believe it has been 20 years…

by Kenneth Keavey

This time 20 years ago I had just quit my job in the pharma industry and had started Green Earth Organics. My grandad’s farm was sitting here, my dad was unsure what to do with it, it is a small farm, and it was very hard to conceive how anybody could make a living off 25 acres. 

I passionately believed we should be growing our food without chemicals, and I wanted our food and the food for our family to be free from toxic pesticides. I cannot convey how strongly I believed that farming without chemicals was the right thing to do. I was coming at this with a Ph.D in Chemistry from Cambridge University and nearly 10 years’ experience working in the pharma industry, chemicals do belong in a lab, but definitely do not belong on our food. 

This was at a time before it was fashionable or trendy to grow local organic food. I believed wholeheartedly that our food and our land should be free from chemicals. We believed that our land deserved to be treated with respect, that trees should be planted and wild areas left, that biodiversity should be protected, and that all the other living creatures we share this earth with should be protected and not exploited. Nothing about this belief has changed in 20 years. 

The idea of growing vegetables without Roundup, and in the west of Ireland, without having a clue was deemed in a word “Madness”. Maybe an element of madness was necessary, and it was this madness and the eternal optimism of youth that got us off the ground. So yes, we were mad, totally mad, everybody was leaving agriculture, not getting into it. 

It was the maddest and best thing Jenny and I ever did, we sold our house in the UK, moved back to Ireland, scraped together as much funds as possible, with loans from our parents, credit card debt and the bit of cash we had ourselves, we ploughed it all into the farm. We were broke and didn’t/couldn’t take an income from the farm for the first five years. We lived off Jenny’s wages. 20 years of madness have passed now. 

The founding principles of the business never changed and have never been compromised. Creating a fairer chemical free food system and making this food accessible to all has been our charter and continues to be. We continue to farm, to grow good wholesome chemical free food but priorities changed at least for me from growing food to managing a business. 

At the beginning we had nothing and that was hard, now we have a team of people, we have, loans, tractors, sheds, machinery and a small smattering of experience and knowledge, it is still hard, but the challenges have changed. Since its very modest beginnings in 2006 GEO has grown into the biggest home delivery business of organic 

food in the country with our own farm and a network of other Irish organic farms that we support and buy from each week. 

It has kept on growing (which is positively amazing) and after 20 years I have come to realise that there are no quick fixes to a broken food system. But there is hope, and a growing desire by you our loyal supporters to see a better food system take shape. You are helping turn that into a reality, so thank you for sticking by our side, we hope we can continue on this path for many years to come. 

Kenneth.