If you are looking to treat yourself or loved ones to a delicious, autumnal, easy-to-make bake, this Caramel Apple Galette is the dessert for you. The star ingredient is our in-season Irish apple, and few other ingredients are needed to make this impressive dish.
This galette is best served straight from the oven with a good dollop of ice cream and an extra drizzle of caramel.
Take the puff pastry from the fridge 30 minutes before using.
Preheat the oven to 200°C/fan 180°C/Gas mark 6. Line a large baking tray with greaseproof paper.
To a large bowl, add the apple slices, caster sugar and cinnamon. Mix to combine.
In a small bowl, mix together the butter, sugar and cinnamon.
Unroll the pastry onto the tray. Spread an even layer of the butter mixture, leaving a border around the butter mixture. Top with an even layer of the apple slices. Bring the edges of the dough up and overlap a little over the filling to create a border.
Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes.
When hot from the oven, dust with icing sugar and drizzle over the caramel sauce.
The model of loss leading on fresh produce needs to stop, how is it that the cheap ultra processed rubbish food is not cheap, this is food that isn’t even food, why is it that our most valuable food, the real food actually grown in fields is sold at prices that are unsustainable?
During the week I had the honour of talking on a panel at the Climate Carnival on the future of food in Ireland. One of the speakers was the largest broccoli grower in Ireland, and he was very clear in conveying his opinions on supermarkets, and it was a damning verdict. The behaviour of supermarkets over the last 20 years has decimated the horticultural industry in Ireland. There are maybe only 60 growers left in Ireland growing field scale vegetables.
When the skills and infrastructure that provide us with local food are gone they are gone for good (just looked at what happened to the sugar beet industry in Ireland). There are very few people interested in getting into commercial veg growing and why would you? For low returns? For the hard work? For the unpredictability of the climate and then to be pressurised and squeezed by supermarket buyers that hold all the power. That is some thanks for providing our critical nourishment.
The truth of the fact is the supermarkets use fresh produce loss leaders to get shoppers in the door, and there is no escaping the fact that this squeezes the primary producer it always does, always.
Fresh veg for 49c, it is an illusion to think that food can be grown for this. The reality is that whilst these prices may be perceived as good by the consumer the long-term viability of these offerings is absolutely unsustainable, and we will pay in the long run. Not only does this desperate pricing model embed the idea that fresh produce is virtually worthless, but it also reduces the bargaining power farmers have when they come to renegotiate growing contracts in the following year.
If we lose anymore veg growers in Ireland there will be no horticultural industry left. We simply cannot afford to, if you consider food security, it is so important and with the climate in free fall, being able to grow as much food as we can here in Ireland is critical.
Not only do the supermarkets not play fair they also impose quite frankly ridiculous ultra-tight specifications, meaning vegetables must look a certain way and be of a certain size or they are rejected. For the sake of all that is sane, this needs to be stopped immediately. The model of loss leading on fresh produce needs to stop, that is the bottom line. Our most valued commodity, the stuff that sustains our life force, that can be a force for good needs to be protected and celebrated, not beaten down until it is no more.
As always thank you for your support for our farm and the farmers we support
There were over 400 Irish commercial veg growers in the 90s, today that number is just 60, and we are one of those. We have just had the first delivery of Organic Irish Elstar apples from Richard Galvin in Waterford, and I have to say they are some of the finest apples we have ever received, they are amazing, well-done Richard.
We are serious about supporting Irish suppliers, as you may know we grow loads of our own organic veg, but we also support a wide range of other Irish organic growers. We I believe have the distinct advantage of being both a grower and a retailer, we get to see both sides of the field (no pun intended, oh dear..) so to speak. In fact, it can seem quite weird some days sitting in a meeting with our main fresh buyer Anna and our farm manager Emmanuel, and discovering that nobody will end up happy, not enough for the farm and not enough to run the retail business, and not enough to compete with the crazy discounted prices of supermarkets.
But the key difference between us and the general run of the mill supermarkets is that we actually do what we say. So instead of putting smiling Irish farmers all over their lovely supermarket walls maybe they should back that up by actually properly supporting Irish producers and paying fair prices and buying more Irish produce when it is available at a fair price.
We will always buy Irish first and foremost, always, and we always do. To be honest even when it is more of a pain than a gain and that sometimes too can have an impact on perceived value, because it is always, always more expensive to buy. One thing I know for sure is this, we have tonnes and tonnes of Irish organic produce right now, quite literally and we certainly have Irish apples and not only from one Irish organic farmer but two. I could list out all the other Irish farmers that we partner with or buy from, but that might be boring, but do you know what? I think I will anyway, because it annoys and upsets me that we work so hard, and supermarkets get to do whatever they want and present this idea of being the biggest Irish supporters when it just is not true, and they get away with it because they have all the power, (I think we have seen enough of what people with power do in the world today and how much havoc that can wreck on our people and planet, you know who I am talking about here)
So here goes in no particular order: (So these growers are not only Irish, but also all organic too) in total 18 Irish organic farmers.
Joe Kelly, Mayo – cucumbers, yellow courgettes, radishes, lettuce, coriander, parsley, French beans
Philip Dreaper, Offaly – carrots, beetroot
Cameron – Battlemount organic farm, Kildare, potatoes and apples juice.
Richard Galvin, Waterford – apples, apple juice, apple cider vinegar
Oranmore Farm, Raman – occasionally, French beans, salad mix
Sloe hill Farm – occasionally, herbs (basil, parsley)
Paul Brophy, Kildare, Broccoli
Emmett Dunne, Carrots
Green Earth Organics farm, Kale, broccoli, bunched carrots, parsnips, swede, leeks, spinach, lettuce, salad, onions, celeriac, celery, beetroot, courgettes, cucumbers, tomatoes and more.
So, you see, your support makes a very real difference to us, to Richard (our apple grower) to Emmanuel (our farm manager), to the planet and to all the other farmers that depend on your orders to keep the produce rolling in off organic Irish fields.
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.
Now I am going to go out on a limb here, but if you have ever consumed alcohol, you may know that mixing your drinks does not produce a great feeling the next day, the hangover that can ensue can be quite horrendous, (so I have been told….). Truthfully, having experienced a few in my day, it has often been said if you forgot you were drinking the night before and work up feeling like you can feel after mixing your drinks, you might actually think you were dying!
So it is with chemicals, and this is something that cannot be measured and is not very well understood, but picture consuming small amounts of pesticides regularly in our food, nobody actually knows what impact this may have. Some research suggests overtime the results may be quite detrimental to our health.
Certainly, over the last 20 years, the application of chemicals on our food here in the EU has reduced, with many of the more toxic chemicals being banned. This is a great thing, and we can be thankful to the EU for this control, despite chemical company lobbyists issuing misleading information that we could not produce enough food without these chemicals.
The spraying of our food with synthetic chemicals is just not good for us. All the studies in the world, even if they demonstrate that the chemicals are safe, are not going to convince me that it is ok. Filling a giant tractor sprayer and going out into a field on a scale that has never been seen before and spraying everything in sight, is like taking a sledge hammer to put in a pin in a wall. This is what is happening, there is no selective application, it is blanket application of chemicals and everything gets a coating, plants and biodiversity alike.
Now maybe these chemicals are safe in certain doses under certain lab tests, and that may well be the case, and I am not disputing that, I have spent long enough working in a lab to understand that. I also know I wore gloves, and used extraction hoods, and took great care when handling any of these lab-based chemicals. But a field and our food is not a lab.
There have been some studies done on the cocktail effect of chemicals in our food. A 2012 EU-funded project called ACROPOLIS studied cumulative pesticide exposure and concluded that current risk assessment systems may underestimate real-life risks.
A 2021 review in Environmental Research noted that low-dose pesticide mixtures may contribute to hormonal disruption, cancer, and neurodevelopmental issues — particularly in children.
It is hard to know for sure, and probably close to impossible to prove, but if you wish to minimise your exposure the best way is to know your ingredients, to cook from scratch, know who produces your food and know that they are not using chemicals, organic produce is the best way to keep chemicals out of our food chain.
As always thank you for your support.
Kenneth
PS Your support over the summer has meant so much, we have so much great produce and your help makes all the difference to our farm, so if you can continue to support us, it makes a real difference, thank you.
I remember many years ago meeting two brothers who were growing oats for Flahavans for their porridge. One brother was growing it organically and one was growing it conventionally (With chemicals) The organic farmer tilled the ground, sowed the oats, did some mechanical weed control, and essentially left the oat crop to its own devices.
The other brother was in and out with his sprayer at regular intervals to control, weeds, and fungal infections, using chemicals such as Inatreq ™ (fenpicoxamid) another systemic chemical, Prothioconazole, azoles, and folpet.
Next time you drive past a field of cereal, have a look for tractor wheelings called tramlines up and down the field. This is where the farmer drives up and down spraying the field, and will use the same wheelings for multiple applications to reduce damage to the crop.
At the end of the day although the organic farmer may have had a slightly lesser yield they came out with the same profit due to the cost of the chemicals. Of course, what was not factored in was the cost of the chemicals to our environment and our health, so the question remains why even bother?
While the EU extended the licence for Glyphosate for a further 10 years in 2023, it banned its use as a crop desiccant.
This is the use of a chemical to “dry out a crop”, it is used to reduce the moisture level in cereal crops like wheat. Drier kernals are required by the processors for milling. Even though there is a ban on the use of Glyphosate for desiccation, farmers can still use Roundup for late control of weeds in wheat, so it seems it is still possible to use this toxic systemic chemical for control of weeds in wheat, meaning of course it ends up in our food and in our bread.
I wonder how many farmers are using this loophole to effectively continue to apply roundup prior to harvest?
Roundup is systemic, it gets absorbed into the plant and stays there, classified as a probable carcinogen by the WHO, it is the most used herbicide in the world ever, sales in 2023 reached $10.3 billion.
The funny fact when it comes to roundup is we are allowed to have twice the amount of roundup in our porridge that we are in our wheat. It makes no sense you can’t possibly say the same chemical is twice as safe in a different crop and essentially tell people it is safe to consume twice as much, this of course is rubbish.
But that is the way it is, let me frame this for you, you can have double the helping of roundup in your porridge than you can have in your toast, does that make sense to you? Well, it doesn’t make any sense to me.
I’ll be going with the organic porridge and toast thank you very much.
As always thank you for your support
Kenneth
PS Please remember supermarkets wont miss your custom, but we are completely dependent on your custom to keep our farm running, and every order makes a massive difference, there has never been a better time to get the most amazing seasonal local Irish organic produce as now, thank you.
We were out spraying our crops this week, we were having problems with our sprayer, so I was out there with Brenda fixing the machine and ensuring it was working well. It struck me as I was down near the crops checking to ensure we were getting good leaf coverage with our spray that this is exactly what happens with toxic chemical sprays, they are applied, and they are sprayed directly onto the crops and are in some cases absorbed into the plants.
It was visually striking and although I have known this for years, it really hit me there in the field. We sprayed all our brassica plants that day with a mix of seaweed, boron, Epsoms salts and an herbal tonic.
At the time we were spraying black kale, funny thing is kale is a regular feature on the dirty dozen list, mindful that this is an American compiled list and there are so many more chemicals applied there compared to here in the EU, that doesn’t give us Europeans a free pass though.
Even so, for the life of me, why? Why spray kale? It used to be grown for cattle and is as hardy as vegetables come. We have been growing kale for 20 years and never had a disease problem. The only time we have an issue is with aphids, and that is after we leave the plants to go to flower, and they are exhausted at the end of a long season.
Chemicals that are absorbed into the food are called systemic, that means they penetrate the skin of the plant and get into its circulatory system, washing or rinsing does nothing to remove these chemicals.
You may note from the video that there are plenty of weeds in our fields, one of the most notable differences between organic and conventional agriculture is the absence of weeds. Weeds in conventional systems are managed generally starting with the ubiquitous spray of roundup followed by herbicides applied once the plants are in the ground. Then there is the fungicide and insecticide applications. All in all, whilst it is better in Ireland, the best way to avoid ingesting synthetic chemicals is to choose organic.
If you would like to know the chemical concoction you might find on your kale read on. Fungicides like, Difenoconazole, Boscalid, and Fludioxonil, insecticides such as Lamda-cyhalothrin, herbicides such as metazahlor, pendimethalin may be used, if you are in the US I am sure you can add a whole batch of more toxic chemicals to that list.
As the day went on, we got all our brassicas sprayed, I can only imagine the good the mix we applied is doing the plants, and I hope you can taste it in the flavour, freshness and richness of the produce coming off our fields and the fields of the other farmers that supply us.
Not only that, but I Saw a few bees fly though the spray and of course they flew on, no issue there, maybe it even did them some good, don’t think you could say the same for any synthetic chemical that might be sprayed.
As always thank you for your support.
Kenneth
PS Don’t forget to support our organic farm at this time of the year it makes all the difference to us and all the other organic farms and farmers that supply into us. Thank you. Kenneth
Potatoes are so versatile to cook with and they’re a good source of vitamins, minerals, and fibre. Irish new potatoes are now in season. New potatoes are packed with flavour and are waxy, perfect for potato salads and tortillas, as opposed to the floury winter variety which we associate more with mash.
This potato tortilla, or Tortilla Española as it is more commonly known, can take a little time to prepare, but few ingredients are needed and the result is something truly delicious. It makes for a tasty and nutritious lunch, and serves well alongside some of your favourite salads.
Place the potatoes in a steamer and cook for 15-20 minutes, depending on their size
While the potatoes are cooking, add 1 tablespoon of the olive oil to a deep sided, ovenproof frying pan. Place over a medium heat. Add the onion and turn the heat down low, and sauté the onions for about 15 minutes, until they are soft and golden in colour. Stir occasionally. Once cooked remove to a plate and wipe the pan clean
Add the eggs to a jug. Season with a little salt and pepper and gently whisk together.Peel and thickly slice the cooked potatoes. Season well with salt.
Add the remaining oil to the frying pan and using a pastry brush evenly brush the oil along the side and base of the pan.Place the frying pan back over a medium heat on the stove. Once hot, add a layer of potatoes, about half, followed by an even layer of the onion. Pour over half of the egg mixture, then add the remaining layer of potato. Finish by pouring over the rest of the egg mixture.
Cook the tortilla over a low-medium heat until the top is starting to set, which will take about 15 minutes, Preheat the grill and then transfer the pan to under the grill to cook the top.
Turn out onto a plate or wooden board and cut into four or six slices. The tortilla can be served hot or cold, with a salad on the side.
Have you ever seen those lovely luscious green verges along the roadside, full of life and biodiversity and doing no harm to anyone? In fact, they are a link in the chain that keeps biodiversity alive, they also have the double function of hiding all the rubbish that people still throw out of their car windows.
Then you are happily driving, cycling, walking along and suddenly it all ends and is replaced by an area of devastation, yellow and dead. The good people of the world have been out spraying Roundup again.
So, I ask you this, why?
Why would you do that? It is public ground, it’s one thing if you wish to spray your own fields and your own garden with this probable carcinogen, but public property, surely not. That’s for all of us to decide, is it not?
The ‘Why’ I struggle with, because I just don’t understand it, even from an aesthetic point of view, surely it is better to be looking at a bright alive piece of ground rather than a dead piece of land, if nothing else, it is depressing.
Then there is the double negative, that in this case definitely do not make a positive. Once the vegetation is gone two things happen,
The rubbish that has been dumped there is clear to see.
The most noxious weeds make the first return and usually end up colonising the area. Then you must redo the whole thing again next year. Meanwhile Bayer are rubbing their greasy little hands together as they tot up another sale in their €10.3 billion dollar sales of Roundup business. So here we are today, out in the field with a tractor sprayer, why you may ask? I have to say I am always a little self-conscious when we bring this out, as it is associated with one thing, and one thing only and that is the application of pesticides and herbicides to food. The funny thing is, for us, it is an amazing tool that allows us to feed the crops with what essentially constitutes an herbal multivitamin feed. So, when we take our sprayer out it is to apply, seaweed, and magnesium, and boron, and herbal mixes that strengthen the plants and help them be so much more resilient. This reduces disease and the need to apply “Synthetic Chemicals”. Today though I found it thought provoking. When you actually see the spray hit the food and you imagine that this is not a tonic that is being applied but a toxic concoction of herbicides, or pesticides, or fungicides it really paints a different picture. You can actually visualise the chemical landing on your food.
So, in the end, I wonder which is worse then? The rubbish that is dumped on the side of the road or the spraying of this horrible chemical that kills everything in its wake?
What do you think?
As always thanks for your support.
Kenneth
PS We continue to struggle to keep the orders up so we can avoid wasting food we have spent 6 months growing, so if you can help us and place an order it makes a huge difference.
What a week, we went from having one of our lowest weeks in terms of customers to the highest ever, it was amazing, we couldn’t believe it, and to be completely honest it nearly broke us.
But the team that are working here pulled out all the stops, they were amazing, every single person.It is hard to know where to start to say thank you, for the kind wishes, and thoughts, the orders, the words and energy, every single one meant a great deal.
I can tell you honestly that unless you get big and specialise in one particular crop or two or are really small and it is just you (and neither of those scenarios when it comes to food production are easy either) then it is nigh impossible to make the farming of multiple crops on 20 acres work, and we are not new to this.
So, this year when all the stars aligned and the weather and the farm team and the fertility and the machines and everything worked as will happen every once in a rare while it is fantastic. But then to finally have the crops in the field and to not have a way to sell them it is demoralising. July and August are our toughest months to try and keep sales coming in to keep the farm and the business going.
Thank you for all the suggestions of what to do, we have tried most over the years and our experience with say supply to supermarkets has not been a positive one and I would prefer to close up shop that to go back to that. They do say “never say never” but for me it’s a no.
Ultimately if I have to blame somebody or something for why it is so difficult, it is the supermarkets (Now I know throwing blame around is never a very progressive or useful way to live, I also know we all need and use supermarkets), but our food has ultimately been devalued and fresh produce is classed as something that must be ultra cheap (and I get it that it is hard and the cost of living is real).
But here is the thing, we have the most amazing heads of broccoli grown organically and I am not 100% sure how much each head cost to grow but I do know with all our crops in fine fettle and with the farm in full flow, and with everything aligned and with us charging the prices we are, we find it very difficult to make the proverbial ends meet on the farm. But after the week we have just had and with the farm harvest at least for now looking so promising, I am cautiously hopefully that there is light at the end of the 20-year-old tunnel.
So if you can continue to help us, July and August are the months that we struggle for all the reasons I have said last week, they are the two key months for harvest and it is so important that we have homes for all the lovely veg we and the other Irish organic growers we buy from have in abundance at this time of the year.
So, thank you again, thank you from everybody here, you have made a massive difference, and as always, we would not be able to do what we do without your support.
