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