Local garlic, honest feedback, plus a fantastic offer

May 22, 2026 by Kenneth Keavey

We planted our garlic bulbs back in November and we have just started harvesting our very first fresh garlic bulbs with stems. They are beautiful, Emmanuel and his team, Enda and Daire, are harvesting it with such care, it is a true celebration of local food.

It is a seasonal star and will not be round for long, we have one full tunnel of it, we don’t grow garlic on a commercial scale, we simply could not afford to compete with the cheap supermarket fodder, garlic is seen as a cheap commodity crop.

Much of the garlic on supermarket shelves is from China. The reason we have Chinese garlic and so much of it, nearly 1 million kgs, or one third of all the garlic eaten in Ireland is Chinese, is about price and supply, it is cheap. There is very little Irish garlic production with a couple of notable exceptions such as Drummond House garlic and Taylors of Lusk, but how can locally grown garlic compete with this scale of cheap imports?

Our fresh garlic is about as far from the cheap imported Chinese garlic as you can get. I love our garlic, it is delicate gorgeous and you can use the whole stem. It goes without saying that no herbicides or pesticides have come near it! But it is more than that, here is a crop that can really reconnect us with our food.

So, it hurt a little the last week when as I was dealing with another electricity outage on our farm, getting the tractor generator out (Thanks ESB that is about three outages in as many weeks) when a customer left our farm shop saying they would come back in the summer when we had more of our own stuff. (What about the kale, spinach, chard, garlic, red cabbage, rocket, lettuce, salad, mushrooms and potatoes).

They then sent a follow up e-mail complaining about our pricing. I absolutely agree we are not cheaper than the supermarkets how could we be? They can sell organic carrots for less than what we pay to buy them, not sure how they do this? I get it though, there is a cost of living crisis and food is a hard sell, when it is so cheap, but at the same time we can find it easy to buy that coffee for nearly €6, I do it too. It is supermarket conditioning we have just come to accept.

We love all feedback here and to be fair Darragh and Eddie in customer service get loads and they field it really well. This piece of feedback was no exception, and it reminded me of how hard the business of growing food is and how we just cannot compete on price with supermarkets. Nevertheless, some days it is easier to hear negative comments than other days, and head in hands, on this day, this left me feeling demoralised and upset. It is tough growing vegetables, and we have been mostly succeeding or at least persisting at it now for 20 years.

On the very same day (And the irony here is not lost on me) in Tesco, a man came up to me out of the blue, and said “you are Green Earth Organics, I love what you do, it’s so important, keep doing it” you couldn’t actually write it, and as I said to him, “thank you so much your timing could not have been better.”

Sometimes all it takes is a little comment to snap us out of things, it reminded me that we have a fantastic amazing loyal customer base and you support us the best you can, some every week, some whenever you can, so thank you! I know it’s tough, I know there is a cost-of-living crisis, I know we are not the cheapest, I know you could go down and get stuff cheaper in a supermarket, but you choose to support us instead, and quite frankly that is amazing, so thank you.

So, thank you for seeing past the prices and thank you for your support.

Kenneth

PS I remember having a conversation with Fergus Halpin who runs Abercorn farm and used to run Harvest Day, we were lamenting good weather, I know it doesn’t make sense does it? We love good weather, we need the good weather for the farm, but good weather means our orders drop off, and good weather coupled with a bank holiday can be devastating!

The little ironies of life, anyway as we are promised good weather and as we are coming into a week leading into a bank holiday please do not forget to support us and we have a very special treat for those of you who spend over €80, enter code CAKE80 to get one of these very special amazing cakes (they are free from lactose, refined sugar, and gluten, but they taste amazing they really do, you would never know the difference, try one and see for yourself). We have been working with Rose and Vanilla for the last three months to get this over the line and finally we are there.

Rainbow Chard Parcels

June 28, 2021 by Liz Child

The stunning rainbow chard coming out of the farm at the moment is absolutely fantastic! It’s one of our favourite crops, so vibrant and so tasty. Here’s a recipe to make the most out of its beauty. Don’t forget to browse our farm products and add them to your next order, we’d hate for you to miss out on the seasonal harvest.

Liz x

Ingredients (serves 4)

1 bag of rainbow chard (250g)
4 tbsp olive oil (1 for sautéing, 2 for the mash, 1 for drizzling)
1 onion, diced
4 cloves of garlic, sliced
2 tins of chopped tomatoes
a handful of torn basil leaves
3 large potatoes
1 tin of lentils, drained
2 scallions, sliced
1 tsp chilli flakes (optional)
optional cheese to taste – I like to use my tofeta
salt and pepper to taste

Method

Scrub the potatoes, chop into bites and get them on to boil.
Pre-heat the oven to 200C and find an oven and hob safe pan with a lid.
Sauté the onion and garlic in 1 tbsp of olive oil for about 10 minutes or until soft and starting to caramelise.
Add the tins of tomatoes and the torn basil leaves. Season with salt and pepper.
Half fill the tins with water and swirl the tomatoey juices out of the tins, into the pan. Then bring the sauce up to simmer and bubble away while you make the chard parcels.
Remove the long chard stems, slice them into bites and add them to the tomato sauce.
Mash the potatoes with 2 tbsp of olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. Then stir in the drained lentils, sliced scallions, chilli flakes and optional cheese.
Lay the chard leaves out, upside down on a chopping board with the top of the leaf closest to you and the colourful stalks pointing away from you.
Add a spoon of the mashed potato and lentil filling to a leaf near the top closest to you, roll the leaf over the filling away from you, then fold over the sides and keep rolling until you make a neat parcel.
Take the sauce off the heat and pour it into medium baking dish, then tuck the chard parcel, seam side down, into the sauce. Repeat until you have used up all the chard leaves or filling. Then drizzle the last tbsp of olive oil over the parcels.
Then put a lid or sheet of foil or parchment on the dish and pop it in the oven to steam/roast for just 10 minutes or so. The sauce should be bubbling hot and the leaves should be tender.
Serve in bowls with bread and salads.

Thanks From a Little Robin

December 4, 2020April 23, 2021 by Kenneth Keavey

The money you spend in a local business generally goes back into the locality. It is often the unforeseen and indirect ways in which that support matters, take Green Earth Organics today.

Recently we have collaborated with two local small businesses. Rachel who now makes chutney and cranberry sauce for us and Liz who now writes our recipes on our blog. In the last week we have had dealings with our IT support company based here in Galway, our two web developers one based in Athlone and one in Cork, our electrician and plumber based in Galway. Our van company based in Dublin, our tractor mechanic and van mechanic in Galway. I am just out of a meeting with our accountant, he lives locally. A couple of local builders and steel workers help us out regularly, our agricultural contractors, and the purchases we make in the local hardware stores and shops all send the money back into the locality. Not to mention all the IRISH suppliers we buy from weekly and of course our employees. Here is an interview Liz did with Franck from the French market.

Your purchase today or tomorrow pays for all of this. It is also a well-known fact that a greater percentage of money spent in a small business stays in the locality, while money spent in big retailers disappears into investors pockets, and we know a little bit about dealing with supermarkets. A few years back we stopped supplying supermarkets, we had had enough. Despite what their marketing blurb might say their treatment of growers is the same. The price of produce on the supermarket shelves often does not reflect the real and true cost of food. The lower the price the more that has been extracted for less, from the land, the worker, the farmer and sometimes from all three.

To survive, the modern-day farm needs to expand, it needs to take on debt, it needs to push the efficiency of the animals and the land to the brink. Intensification it seems is the only route to viability. Disillusioned with the industry today, a career on the land is not generally what a young person aspires to, and who would blame them? The traditional model of the family farm is, we are told, “unsustainable”. Our government and the powers that be are insistent that the best way forward for food, is large scale intensification. Supermarkets are putting more and more distance between the farmer and the consumer, it is now impossible to understand where our food comes from our how it was produced.

While the conventional system ignores the true cost of food, and is driven by supermarket dictated prices, the sustainable food movement aims to value food fairly, create a connection between growers and consumers and reward those involved in the production fairly according to their input. Your decision to support us is supporting an idea, a sector, a farm, individual’s livelihoods, biodiversity, the soil, the environment, and other sustainable businesses. You are sending a message to the powers that be that you believe there is a better way and crucially you are taking positive action for a more sustainable future.

Thank you

Kenneth

PS our Christmas shop is now open! Treat your loved ones to some real, honest food this year with a box of organic fruit or veg and have a look at our lovely selection of hampers. Please get your Christmas week pre-orders in soon to avoid disappointment.