what a week

by Kenneth Keavey

What a week. It has been full on, on so many levels. Life can be funny like that sometimes; it comes in waves. 

We have waited and waited for the weather, and it has finally arrived, so the farm has gone into overdrive and to be fair everybody has been putting in amazing effort and we have been busy. 

Busy in the fields and busy in the packing shed, and for that we are thankful. With the weather set to improve, it is one of the ironies of this business, that when the weather improves our orders disappear. 

As we head into a week of nice weather, I am delighted both for our collective Irish mental health and for our farm, but I am also very nervous because ironically this can have a deleterious effect on our orders, the life blood of our business.  

If you can remember us in your weekly plans for food, it makes a tremendous difference, we are not a large supermarket and are completely dependent on your orders. You make a difference.

So, we have been busy, nearly 700 tomato plants are in the ground, and they will need their first side shooting next week, we have ploughed, tilled, and made the first beds on nearly 15 acres of ground, and the first outdoor plants, (later than anticipated) will go into the ground next week: the first new season kale, cabbage and broccoli, onions, lettuce, spinach, chard and beetroot. We have already planted thousands of plants in our tunnels, and they are nearly full now. 

On a harvest front, things are getting a little tight, the most exciting thing coming soon, is the first fresh garlic bunches, no Chinese garlic here. 

I heard a quote during the week that I really liked: “Bees need weeds” and this coincided with a victory by the residents of Cornwall in the UK, to stop the local council from reintroducing Glyphosate, Why oh why would the council even consider that? So well done to the people of Cornwall. 

But the other stark fact is that the use of Roundup in the UK is up 1000% since 1990 to 2,200 tonnes. In the US, 0.5kg of this probable carcinogen is applied for every person living in the US, enough to cause some serious health problems. 

In Ireland 30% of all sales of pesticides are for Glyphosate. And here is the thing that always get me, have you ever seen a field that has been sprayed with Roundup? Well I have and it leaves me feeling quite sad, it is dead, all plant life is dead (a caveat here, the first glyphosate resistant weeds have been found recently in the UK, and in the US they have to revert to more aggressive chemical concoctions to destroy the weeds, as plants are developing resistance to this herbicide).

When a field is sprayed there is no life left for the bees and as our bees are finally flying in full fettle, it would be sad to think that we have destroyed all their food, by spraying toxic chemicals on our land, I could never do it.

You can rest assured that the bees on our farm are safe happy and well fed, maybe in part because we have left our amazing flowering kale forest and also because there are so many (but not too many) weeds left to flower.

So please support us over the next couple of weeks, and in addition to getting amazing, gorgeous chemical free food dropped to your door, you will be helping to alleviate by anxiety about running this stressful business! So, I thank you in advance.

Kenneth

When people are fighting for survival, something must give…

by Kenneth Keavey

A couple of weeks ago Micheál Martin was in the news for all the wrong reasons and ironically it may have been this time 20 years that he sowed the seeds of the discontent that was so visible last week and the beginning of the demise of the horticultural sector here in Ireland.

When I see a bag of carrots on a supermarket shelf for 29 cent, or a head of cabbage for 49 cent, something inside me tightens. If you are a grower, a farmer, or someone who has spent time working the land and growing food, you feel it deeply — it is demoralising.  

But where did all this start? How did we arrive at a place where fresh, Irish produce — some of the finest in the world — became a loss-leader, a price-war pawn, a way for billion-euro corporations to lure us through their doors at the expense of the primary producers? 

The answer traces back to one decision, made in 2006, by one minister: Micheál Martin.

He repealed the grocery order, imperfect as it was, it held a competitive norm in place across the entire market. When it went, the supermarkets turned to fresh produce as a loss-leader to drive footfall. It was perishable, visible, universally purchased, and — crucially — completely unprotected. Growers had no floor, no alternative buyers, and no leverage. The race to the bottom had found its favourite category.

“It would be cheaper to plough the vegetables back into the ground than to accept the prices supermarkets were offering.”— A carrot grower, recounted in the Oireachtas, 2026

This has left our horticultural sector in a critical condition. We import 83% of the fruit and veg we eat, and we export over 90% of the food we produce (dairy and meat), we are about as food secure as a barren rock in the middle of the Atlantic! The real threat to our food supply two weeks ago during the blockade had nothing to do with local food production and everything to do with the disruption to imports. 

But things could be better, we could grow more here. But to do that it cannot be a business with no margin, no fat in the system, nothing left on the table. When that is the model, all it takes is a fuel shock such as what we have seen last week to bring the house of cards crashing down. 

When costs rocket and you can’t get anymore for what you produce the end result is self-destruction. 

Of course we need to move beyond fossil fuel use, this is an absolute no brainer, and we now have a chance to transition to a clean green future (we have 30KW of solar energy on our packing shed and it is amazing). 

But in the meantime, for farmers and hauliers there really is very little alternative and when people are fighting for their survival something must be done. The irony of course is: if a fair price was paid for the food in the first place, then there would be enough leeway to absorb at least to some extent the price rises that have come over the last 20 years. 

As always only through your support can we continue to farm and support others that farm like we do.

Thank you

Kenneth

The Pesticide, the Darkside and the cover up

by Kenneth Keavey

We thought we were finally emerging from a relentlessly wet spring. I don’t know why but I am always surprised by rain, you would imagine at this stage after 20 years of farming and living in the West of Ireland it wouldn’t come as such a shock!

This week we had rain that can only be described as monsoon like, giant water droplets that have again saturated the ground and delayed further progress on the farm. There is little doubt now that climate chang is impacting food production globally.

We are right in the middle of the hungry gap, and we import fruit and more veg at this time of the year, and we can see form talking to other farmers in Spain, France and Holland that the weather has put massive pressure on growing systems in these countries as well as our own and has delayed and reduced harvest, it is proving difficult to get produce at present from anywhere.

This, I think makes it even more urgent to have the discussion around our own food security especially with the closure of one of our largest carrot growers two weeks ago.

But back on the farm we have had a few days of sunshine and the three days of fine weather we got last weekend we took full advantage of. We have spread all our compost, ploughed the land and tilled some of it.

We are still harvesting on the farm too. The last of our own farm parsnips are still available, we are harvesting our own leeks and from the tunnels a bumper crop of rocket and spinach and chard, we will also be harvesting loads of green kale this week and this is the crop I wanted to talk about.

Some of the green kale is on the cusp of going to flower and if the temperature gets back to over 12C then we will have our native Irish honeybees flying all over the farm. The first place they will go is to these beautiful flowers, which we will leave until the first aphid infestation begins.

But here is a couple of facts you may be interested in. In conventional systems up until relatively recently many brassica plants were sprayed with neonicotinoid pesticides to destroy amongst other things, aphids.

These chemicals are thankfully now banned in the EU. 1 teaspoon of Thiamethoxam alone can decimate over 1.25 billion bees. But this is not the end of the story. These chemicals and this one in particular is still manufactured in the EU, in Belgium by Syngenta and is exported all over the world, it is hard to get accurate data but somewhere in the region of 10,000 tonnes of the stuff is exported to other countries. If you assume that one teaspoon is 3g, then is a lot of teaspoons, it is enough to wipe out the global population of honeybees and wild bees 10 times over.

Not only that, and here is the real dark side of this (as if it was not already dark enough) Syngenta knew and did not release data that their chemicals decimated bee population, they kept this from regulators knowing the damage these chemicals did.

So, when we are told by the companies that manufacture pesticides that they are safe, and where they stand to earn billions of dollars in profit. I error on the side of caution and tend not to put too much trust in what they say.

As always, your support, protects and supports a way of farming that keeps these toxic chemicals out of our food chain and helps protect biodiversity and in this instance our native Irish honey bee too.

Thank you.

Kenneth

Cooking without Chemicals with Tom Hunt – Blackened Leeks with Romesco Sauce

by Tom Hunt

This smoky Catalan-style dish is all about the contrast of charred, sweet alliums and nutty, tangy romesco. Traditionally served with calçots, the sauce works beautifully with blackened leeks too – or with almost any grilled vegetable or fish. It’s so moreish you’ll want to spread it on toast.

Tom Hunt is an award-winning chef, food educator, writer, climate change activist and author. This recipe was first published in his book Eating for Pleasure, People & Planet. https://www.tomsfeast.com

Ingredients – serves 4

4–6 leeks (about 1 large or 2 small per person), trimmed

Light olive oil

Sea salt and black pepper

Romesco sauce

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 red chilli, chopped and deseeded

50g almonds or other nuts

50g stale or dry bread, torn

1 shallot or ½ an onion, finely diced

1 tbsp smoked paprika

350g roasted red peppers (from a jar or freshly roasted)

1 tbsp sherry or red wine vinegar

100ml olive oil

Method

To cook the leeks, preheat a barbecue or grill to high. Rub the leeks lightly with olive oil and season.

Place them directly over the coals or under the grill, turning occasionally, until the outer layers are blackened and the insides are soft – about 10–15 minutes depending on their size. If cooking directly on the coals, brush off any ash before serving.

You can also roast them in a hot oven at 220C until tender and charred at the tips. Meanwhile, make the romesco sauce.

Warm a splash of olive oil in a frying pan and fry the. bread and almonds for a few minutes until golden. Add the garlic, chilli and onion and cook for another couple of minutes until fragrant, then stir in the smoked paprika.

Transfer the mixture to a blender with the roasted peppers and vinegar, then blend to a coarse paste. With the motor running, drizzle in the olive oil until you have a thick, spoonable sauce. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve the hot blackened leeks piled on a platter with the romesco spooned generously over the top or served alongside.

Storage

The sauce will keep well in the fridge for up to a week, or longer if pasteurised in the jar.

Where have all the vegetable growers gone?

by Kenneth Keavey

Bordering our farm on all sides are fields of grass, there are no crops, no vegetables, but there are cows and there is grass. But where have all the vegetable growers gone? It used to be part of our culture and our heritage and more important than that we used to produce our own food, today over 70% of our fruit and veg is imported and some reports put it as high as 83%. There are approximately 60 commercial field scale vegetable producers left in Ireland. 

That means the majority of the fruit and veg we eat here in Ireland is now grown abroad. What happened to cause this? 

There are many reasons most probably. But one reason stands out above all others, the constant race to the bottom to give the cheapest possible price to the consumer by supermarkets has had a big part to play. Loss leading of fresh Irish produce over the years has not been kind to the vegetable farmer and you can’t really blame farmers for getting out of the business. 

It is a labour intensive business and it is difficult to attract people into a job that typically cannot compete with wages that other industries offer, and yet we must but the sad fact is that the end product, the fresh carrot or parsnip, does not pay the bills. 

This is something we have seen on our farm for many years. Our farm loses money and if it was not for you our customers and our retail business we would not survive as an independent entity. 

I still figure we need to keep going, need to keep growing, need to persist, it may well be the definition of madness and certainly doing the same thing and expecting different results is definitely that. 

It is a fraught endeavour to be involved in, and these days there is also the added uncertainty of climate change, which is bearing down hard and fast on all of us. But when you are out in the fields and your product is at the mercy of the weather you have much less control. 

All in all, it doesn’t paint a very positive picture, and yet, I love growing organic food, growing local food, and supporting other local organic farmers. There are certain glimmers of hope all round, your support for us, is one massive beacon. Younger people 

So, we will keep banging the drum and keep marching on, to what end I am not sure, but as we embark on our 20th growing season, I am hopeful for the future of local organic produce. 

As always thank you for your support it makes every difference. 

Kenneth

Farm to Table Soup – Cooking without Chemicals with Chef Tom Hunt

by Tom Hunt

Tom Hunt is an award-winning chef, food educator, writer, climate change activist and author. This recipe was first published in his book Eating for Pleasure, People & Planet. https://www.tomsfeast.com

This soup is the farm in a bowl. Adapt the ingredients to use what you have, what’s in season and what’s in your veg box.

Serves 4

2 tbsp ghee or olive oil, plus extra to serve

1 celeriac, trimmed, cleaned, diced – skin left on

3 carrots, roughly chopped – skin left on

1 onion, very roughly chopped

4-6 cloves garlic, peeled

3 sprigs thyme

Sea salt and pepper, to taste

Pinch of dulce seaweed, optional

100-150g kale, stalks finely chopped, leaves roughly chopped

1 can white beans, including the aquafaba

Method

Heat a thick based pan over a medium heat with the fat. Add the onion and whole cloves of garlic. Cook for a few minutes then stir in the celeriac and carrot. Sauce for a few more minutes. Season with plenty of sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper and optional dulce seaweed flakes. Cover with water and bring to a simmer. Add the kale and white beans including their liquor. Once tender serve topped with optional crumbled goat’s cheese and extra ghee or olive oil. Enjoy!

Cooking without Chemicals with Tom Hunt – Beer-battered Kale

by Tom Hunt

Tom Hunt is an award-winning chef, food educator, writer, climate change activist and author. This recipe was first published in his book Eating for Pleasure, People & Planet. https://www.tomsfeast.com

Beer-Battered Kale

Beer is a nifty ingredient for making any number of dishes. Just a drop will transform a slow braise, stew or hotpot, adding notes of bitter caramel, yeast and hops that elevate the recipe while lessening the need for stock. Beer batter is quick to make and deeply satisfying to eat. The bubbles help it puff up when fried, turning wonderfully crisp and flavourful. Here I’ve battered a variety of whole kale leaves, which are magically moreish served with a squeeze of lemon and a dollop of curried mayonnaise. Any leftover beer can be stored in a sealed container in the fridge for up to a month, or frozen indefinitely until needed.

Serves 2

100g wholemeal spelt flour, plus extra for dusting

1 tsp baking powder

A pinch of salt and pepper

130ml beer and/or water

Light olive oil, for frying

200g Kale (green, purple, or black or a mix of all three), whole leaves (but you can also try nettles, halved mushrooms, batons of squash, fennel or turnip, chicory leaves, etc.)

To serve: lemon wedges, curried mayonnaise, or tamari

In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, salt, pepper, beer and/or water, and beat out any lumps. Add a little more beer, water or flour if necessary to reach the consistency of double cream.

Fill a saucepan less than one-third full with oil and place on a medium heat. When hot (test by dropping in a little batter – if it bubbles and rises to the surface, it’s ready) dust the kale leaves lightly in flour, shake off the excess, then dip into the batter.

Shake again to remove any excess batter and carefully lower into the hot oil. Fry for about five minutes, or until golden brown.

Remove with a slotted spoon and place on kitchen towel to drain. Serve hot with lemon wedges and your favourite condiment.

Cooking without Chemicals with Tom Hunt – the Pulp Fiction Burger

by Tom Hunt

Tom Hunt is an award-winning chef, food educator, writer, climate change activist and author. This recipe was first published in his book Eating for Pleasure, People & Planet. www.tomsfeast.com,

The pulp fiction burger

Root to fruit eating is an holistic approach to food that considers all aspects of its production, its impact on the planet and our health. To eat in this way means basing the bulk of our meals on local-seasonal foods and eating them whole, including the parts we usually throw away, like peelings, root greens and other by-products. Whenever possible my recipes include the whole ingredient but sometimes the usually discarded, odds and ends becomean invaluable ingredient in their own right. Like spent lemon rinds which make the most incredible marmalade or ‘aquafaba’ the liquid leftover from cooking pulses, a practically cost-free egg replacement that makes perfect mayonnaise, pastry or meringues. This recipe calls for leftover juice pulp – plant-fibre that’s a vital macronutrient and huge waste if left unused. It turns out juice pulp is perfect for making a delicious textural veggie burger, especially when it contains lots of delicious, blood red beetroot. If you plan to make a juice, plan to make a burger, it’s a rather tasty bonus.

Makes 2 patties

100g juice pulp (about two small juices worth, preferably containing beetroot) or finely

chopped cooked mushrooms

100g tempeh, shredded, or finely chopped cooked mushrooms

2 tbsp tamari

1 tsp vinegar (cider or other)

1 tsp smoked paprika

1/2 large red onion, grated

1 clove garlic, grated

1 tbsp miso,

2 tbsp vital wheat gluten flour or chickpea flour

25g walnuts

Virgin or light olive oil for frying

Serving suggestion

Bun, winter leaves, onion, pickles, ketchup, mayonnaise (recipe below!)

Preheat the oven to 220C

Mix all the burger ingredients together well and season with pepper. Do not add salt as the tamari and miso are salty. Form into two firm round patties and place them on parchment paper. If you have time place in the fridge for at least thirty minutes or even overnight if you want to make them the day before. Fry the patties gently on the parchment pieces, in a lightly oiled, ovenproof frying pan on a medium low heat. Risk the temptation to move the burger, watch the base and when it starts to brown and form a crust (after about five minutes) carefully flip the burger with a fish slice. Put the burger in the oven for five to ten minutes while you prepare the trimmings. Serve how you like in a bun or lettuce leaf with your favourite sauces.

Whole egg mayonnaise

1 whole egg

Mustard, to taste (we used a heaped tsp of whole grain mustard)

Apple cider vinegar or fresh lemon juice, to taste (about 1-3 tsps)

Extra virgin olive oil

Crack a whole egg into a large bowl. Add the mustard, vinegar or lemon and a pinch of sea salt and black pepper. Slowly drizzle in the oil while whisking continuously until the mayonnaise thickens. This will take 3-5 minutes.

Maybe we are not as smart as we think we are…

by Kenneth Keavey

Honestly my grandad walked these fields, he farmed here with two farm horses one called Snowball, and he did not use chemicals. The idea struck me just before Christmas that we are the only species on the planet that will actively go out and cover our food with toxic chemicals to stop other living creatures from eating it and then eat it ourselves. That is an amazing forward jump for civilisation, don’t you think?

Using chemicals to ward off disease is as old as organised agriculture, and up until recently bluestone and washing soda, that is Cupper Sulphate and washing soda was used to help prevent blight on potatoes here in Ireland. This is now restricted under organic rules. My Grandad may have used it in the 1950s, and had it been available in the mid-1800s it may have saved millions of people from starvation during the great potato famine, using it would have been the right thing to do.

The key difference today is the scale, the toxicity and the ubiquity of pesticide use. Yes, the EU have been restricting the use of certain pesticides, but it very much looks like their ambition to clean up chemicals in our food will be put on hold for now.

There is also the argument that the dose makes the poison and for something like copper of course if you consume too much of it is toxic, in fact it is more toxic than Glyphosate, this may seem surprising.

But here are two key differences.

1. The use of Glyphosate worldwide is estimated to be 800,000 tonnes annually. For Copper sulphate reliable date does not exist but use is probably around the 10,000-50,000 tonnes mark. (note it is now severely restricted under EU organic standards). Glyphosate is everywhere.

2. Glyphosate is systemic, Cupper is not. Glyphosate gets into the plant and stays there; Copper sits as a barrier on the outside and is easily washed off.

Things are never as black and white as we may want them to be, the famine and the use of copper to protect the potato crop is a good example, if the option was there at the time it would have been the right thing to do to use it.

But today there are clear alternatives to chemical use in vegetable production. For weeding, mechanical and flame weeding are clear chemical free ways to control weeds. Using crops that are more disease resistant is a no brainer, and new varieties are constantly being bred (not GMO, but using natural techniques), take the potato “Connect” which has exceptional blight resistance and tastes great (the earlier Sarpo varieties had great blight resistance, but nobody wanted to eat them!).

For pests, well some crops will succumb that is the nature of nature!

We are often asked how we deal with slugs on our farm, and whilst at times we do use an organic approved slug pellet it is rare and we have virtually no problems. The ecosystem on our farm may be in balance and provides natural protection, as with any balanced system it just works.

So as always without your support we would not be able to continue to fight the good fight, so thank you for standing by us, and Happy New Year.

Kenneth

Cooking without chemicals with Tom Hunt – A Swede Pretending to Be Ham

by Tom Hunt

Swede might be an unlikely candidate for a centrepiece, but roasted whole, glazed with mustard and sugar, and studded with cloves, it transforms into something deeply savoury, smoky-sweet and satisfyingly ham-like. The result is a gloriously bronzed root that carves beautifully, whether served hot from the oven or cold in thick slices the next day, tucked into sourdough with extra mustard and a handful of peppery watercress.

Enjoy!

Tom Hunt is an award-winning chef, food educator, writer, climate change activist and author of the new book Eating for Pleasure, People & Planet.

Ingredients – serves 4–6

  • 1 swede (about 800g–1kg)
  • Glug of virgin or light olive oil
  • Sea salt
  • 60g muscovado sugar
  • 40g wholegrain mustard (or to taste)
  • 8–10 cloves

To serve

  • Thick slices of sourdough
  • Extra mustard
  • Watercress
  • Sauerkraut (optional)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C. Wash the swede well, scrubbing especially around the root end. Trim any rough patches and cut out any soily nooks or blemishes with a small knife.

Rub the swede lightly with olive oil and a pinch of salt, then wrap it in unbleached parchment and place it in a small ovenproof dish. Roast for 1 hour.

Remove from the oven and unwrap.

Using a sharp knife, score the surface of the swede in a shallow criss-cross pattern, cutting about 5mm deep, as you would a ham. Stud the intersections with cloves, drizzle with a little more oil, and return to the oven uncovered for another hour, or until golden, soft and slightly shrunken.

Meanwhile, mix the sugar and mustard together in a small bowl. Lower the oven to 120C. Brush the hot swede all over with the mustard glaze and return to the oven for 20–30 minutes, until sticky, burnished and aromatic.

Carve at the table into thick slices, or let cool and slice thinly for sandwiches with sourdough, extra mustard and watercress. A spoonful of sauerkraut alongside works beautifully too.

Storage: Keeps well in the fridge for up to 4 days. Delicious served cold.