What happened to our food?

by Kenneth Keavey

Isn’t it funny that if you or I choose to grow our own food we will always, always choose to grow our own food without chemicals! Funny that this is a criterion in our own gardens but less of a consideration when it comes to choosing in a supermarket.

My Grandad grew peas, and turnips, and carrots and potatoes as did my dad. My mum had raspberry bushes, blackcurrants, and goose berries. We were picking and eating our own fruit and vegetables and that was in the 70’s and 80’s. What happened? Where did all the back garden growing go? Not only that where did all our commercial veg growers go? 

In our 20 years we have seen so many changes to our food system we have seen the number of vegetable producers here in Ireland fall dramatically to just 60 commercial field scale producers, down from over 600 in the 90’s. Supermarkets have had a hand in this, squeezing the farmer to the extent that there is just nothing left. The consolidation of the packing and distribution process into the hands of a few middlemen has not helped either. 

In the space of just one generation, we have become disconnected from our food. Where is our food grown, who grows it, how is it produced, how is it handled? 

This disconnection is not our fault. We have had school kids come on to our farm and been completely mesmerised by the fact that carrots come from the ground, having thought they begin their life on supermarket shelves in the plastic packaging. 

So it is that the shiny plastic packs that line the supermarket shelves give us the impression that our food system is unlimited, vibrant and fair, but of course this is not the case. The problems occur when we try to apply factory type controls to a natural system, but nature is not a factory, and the same rules do not apply. 

Over the last few weeks, I have gone out to meet some of the organic farmers that are growing for us, Philip Dreaper growing amazing organic carrots, Donal and Cameron Treacy growing the amazing organic potatoes that grace your boxes each week. We are getting the very best Irish organic apples from Richard Galvin in Waterford. The first Brussel sprouts and savoy cabbage from Padraigh and Una in Beechlawn. Amazing salad and rocket from Mick and Audrey in Millhouse farm and so much more.

We here on our farm certainly know where our food comes from, and we know that it has been produced without chemicals. 

When it comes to the apples though there is another special substance contained in each bite, a mini time machine, these apples will take you back in time. They certainly took me back to the orchard my grandad used to have in his back garden, the apples there which I picked as a young lad were full of flavour. I believe there is a distinct flavour and taste to an Irish apple, and Richard’s apples are that if they are anything.

It is exciting to see that our food and our food producers are becoming a revered part of our culture again, thank you so much for being part of that transformation!

Kenneth

Why were so many people upset by this last week?

by Kenneth Keavey

We were blown away with your support for our celery plants last week, thank you so much, you have saved the celery from certain doom by a fungus called Septoria. But before we reached for the synthetic fungicide spray (We never do) we harvested it all and sent it out to you, so thank you so much.

We don’t and won’t supply supermarkets, it’s not for us.  We have you guys each week supporting our farm, and I will tell you now that you are amazing for doing so, thank you. There are few and far between businesses like ours that operate outside the €22 billion supermarket grocery net, but there are some. When you find them support them if you can. 

Now supermarkets are important we all use them, and they have a role in keeping us fed, we would not survive without them. But we as a farm and business have decided that we would prefer to operate by connecting directly with you, our customers rather than handing out power to the supermarkets.

The main reason for this decision, is it means we can operate in the way we see fit. So, we can do things sustainably, we can avoid plastic use by using compostable or paper packaging, we can work in a way that protects biodiversity and your health, in a way that is fair to our land, our planet, and to other growers we share this journey with, and in a way that keeps chemicals out of our food and land.

On that note, last week I got a load of agitated souls getting quite upset about the facts I shared around glyphosate, for instance, it is a “probable carcinogen, not my info, that of the World Health Organisation”.  It is fair enough through I suppose that conventional farmers would be annoyed, they didn’t design the system, but why advocate for big agri-corporations that make billions off our food system? 

Our food system has glyphosate embedded in it. How do we function without it? How can we grow food, the transformation will not happen overnight, it will take time and money to transition to a new food system, and with climate breakdown bringing all sorts of extreme challenges to our doors, transition we must.

How ever you feel about the health implications of glyphosate, for me it is the intensive agricultural industry it props up that I have issue with. Imagine a world where we did not have factory farms with animals being fed genetically modified glyphosate drenched maize and soya, where over 70% of the land we use is used to farm animals, or the crops that feed them (all sprayed intensively) to provide only 17% of all our calories, this my friends is not a future that will end well for any of us. 

AND NO! Not all soya is used to feed vegans, it is in fact all (nearly) used to feed cows, and right here in Ireland too. Next time you are in your local calf nut provider place have a look at the ingredients on the label of your GMO nuts, I think you may find it interesting.

So where do we go from there, well I certainly know by virtue of the support we have for our farm that we go to a place where a better fairer food system is possible and a place where we can all benefit from a thriving nature, that feeds our bodies and souls and protects our land.

So, thank you from the bottom of my heart for the uplift last week, keep us in mind, don’t forget, I wish I didn’t have to do these things to get your attention but I know we are all busy and have so many conflicting pulls on our time, so thank you for stopping for a moment of awareness and supporting us.

Kenneth

An emotional rollercoaster of a week

by Kenneth Keavey

Supermarkets have a stranglehold on our food system, whatever way you look at it they set the rules, they control 93% of a €22 billion pie, that is some power when you think about it. The argument goes that supermarkets are only giving us as consumers what we want, but how would we know what we want?

Please watch my Instagram video this week. http://instagram.com/greenearthorganics1

There is immense psychology around getting people to buy high margin low value products (think ultra processed food). I was at panel discussion during the week chaired by Aoibheann O’Brien who runs Food Cloud, and the title was the “myth of choice in supermarkets” a very interesting discussion.

We have been conditioned for instance to expect vegetables and fruit to come in a certain shape and size and look a certain way, if we only ever shop in supermarkets how would we know that fresh produce comes in all sizes, and in fact comes out of the ground with soil on it, and that this is, ok? In fact, it is more than ok, it is amazing and wonderful.

The shiny plastic packs keep us in our box so to speak; they convey a very comforting all is well and this is the way things should be feel. But you know what it is not “all is well” and don’t even get me started on all the plastic rubbish generated by these single use plastics. At the excellent Climate Carnival discussion there was a discussion on plastic, and the big elephant in the room, is what truly happens to the contents of our blue recycle bin?

We pack in paper and compostable bags, and the reality is supermarkets will not pack their veg in compostable bags because they are expensive.

I spoke to a man who knows the food system and knows the buying behaviour of supermarkets, and his take was ultimately fresh food is too cheap, and supermarkets are responsible of bringing us to this point, end of story. I spoke to Philip Dreaper who is an amazing carrot grower, and he reminded me that we as consumers paid more for a kg of carrots 20 years ago that we do today. He also reminded me that growing is getting more challenging as a result of climate change.

We had an amazing day of celebrations last weekend at our 20 year anniversary Sustainable Festival.  It was emotional and uplifting and enlightening and I cannot begin to convey my thanks to all of you who came, to all the suppliers and vendors, and to all our amazing team that made it all work.

It was then with all of this as a backdrop that we faced into our usual Monday morning with orders not at all where they needed to be for mid-September, each week we had been waiting for the routines to set in and things to improve for our deliveries, and we were left with a massive glut of cherry tomatoes, for us we counted nearly 400kg which is a true mountain of tomatoes. It was with a bittersweet taste in my mouth that I had to go to the tunnel and ask again as I did in the summer if you could support us this week. I would much prefer not to have to do this.

We I am sure could improve so many things, and so many things we need to address such as cost. We know there is a cost-of-living crisis we know our produce is expensive relative to supermarkets. But we simply cannot compete on some things with them, but we would hope that how we conduct ourselves as a farm and business and community, and the value that is in the fresh organic food would speak for itself.

I am sure I am missing something, so please if you know of ways we could make it easier and better for you to order from us and help us to ensure we keep more of you our customer supporting us, please send us an e-mail (info@greenearthorganics.ie) or leave us a comment. We will take it all on board.

Thank you so much for the last 20 years, and here is to the next 20 years.

Kenneth

PS We have reduced prices on several key items to help address some of the cost issues, check out our website. Also, as an added celebration of the start of Irish apple season, we are giving away a FREE portion of IRISH organic apples from Richard Galvin in Waterford when you spend over €80, just enter the code FREEAPPLES

What a week

by Kenneth Keavey

There has been loads happening on the farm this week. For one I don’t think I could have eaten finer food at a Michelin star restaurant. We have had Tom Hunt, Guardian recipe writer and eco warrior chef here for three days and wow did he cook some amazing food right out in the middle of our fields. Rustic and amazing on a wood fire, we can’t wait to share these amazing, seasonal, eco-recipes with you. They blew my taste buds away, all vegetarian, some vegan, and all 100% taste explosions. Keep an eye on our weekly recipes and on Instagram for more.

On top of that we had a national organic farm walk here on Tuesday afternoon and had an amazing group of people come along to talk and share information. You couldn’t write it though, on the button of 2.15pm as we were about to kick off the first drops of rain started to fall, (cue a little rain dance by all farmers in attendance) it then rained straight for the next 4 hours. You could tell that this was a seasoned crowd as the rain made no difference, in fact considering all the drought conditions it was more than welcome.

We had some of the farmers who supply us present as well as all the professional bodies, Bord Bia, Dept of Ag, Teagasc, IOA, and OGI. Thanks to everybody who came along it was I hope an informative and open discussion, in particular thanks to William Deacey of Teagasc for organising it.

Not to mention pallets of produce being harvested by Emmanuel and his farm team, from kale to the first carrots and parsnips, beetroot, spinach, salad, lettuce, tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers, in fact today he told me 23 different crops were harvested this week, amazing.

We have also been very busy getting ready for our 20-year celebration festival.  A celebration of sustainable food and it promises to be an amazing day, there are still some tickets left, so if you haven’t gotten yours yet, please click here to reserve now, all the info can be found on that page.

It is a strange time though as if you are like us, we haven’t fully gotten back into routine yet, in fact as a family we are all over the place, between some bits of school started, some not just yet, having one girl going off to college, one starting in 5th year and our youngest just starting in secondary it is all change. Not sure I know whether we are coming or going. We have seen this reflected in our orders also, completely understandable. I think next week is when we will have to settle down and I am hoping it’s the same with many of you, our customers.

So, it really feels like autumn is beginning in earnest, like any change there is a little element of loss and sadness at its passing, loss of the long summer days and bright sunshine, but the swallows are still here, and if anything September can and has been in years gone by a beautiful month, fingers crossed that we have a good one.

As always thank you so much for your support, it keeps us growing, now really is the time of Irish seasonal plenty.

Kenneth

This is a plea, can you help us?

by Kenneth Keavey

As I write this, I am sitting in field of courgettes, of which there are about 700 I think, next week we will probably harvest over half a tonne, and currently many of those courgettes we just don’t have homes for. 

The worst-case scenario is we harvest these and must put them on the compost heap. This is deeply demoralising, we have worked hard for at least 6 months to get the land and the food ready and now it is and not to be able to sell it, is an impossible situation.

We are one of only 60-70 field scale vegetable growers left in Ireland, but if you are reading this you probably already know that. Over the last three weeks we find ourselves in a desperate situation.

Many of you our customers have stopped ordering for the summer, and we have seen a drastic decline in orders, all for completely understandable reasons: Schools closing, people going on holidays, and ironically the hot weather, which has disrupted cooking routines, nobody wants to be in a hot kitchen cooking in the heat. 

This is ironic because the good weather has meant that our farm is now overflowing with produce, and not just our farm but many other small scale Irish organic farms up and down the country, the kind that do not supply supermarkets, those that frequent farmers markets and many of which also supply us. 

Last year as most years our farm made a loss.  We would love that one day we could say, do you know what? This year was different we made it; we covered our costs. Making that difference starts right here at the end of June, as the season is relatively short, the weeks and months of seasonal plenty need to be just that, busy weeks.

It is the most amazing time to source local seasonal organic produce, and a time when Ireland desperately needs more sustainable vegetable growers, in fact there couldn’t be a better time.  

The last thing I want to do is have to put pen to paper to ask for your help, but as I sit here in our field of courgettes, I am not sure what else I can do.

“Can you help us?”

If you can spread the word, share this note, tell a friend, obviously if you can place an order that would be wonderful, or just send us a small bit of positivity, all would be amazingly received.

Your help could be the pivotal factor in keeping our farm and farms like ours operational. We have built our farm and business on the principle of fairness and reconnecting people with their food, and we work hard at that, we do not supply supermarkets, and so we depend on orders like yours.

And I would like you to know, even though I say it every single week that your support fundamentally makes a difference, to us, to our farm, to other Irish organic farms, to biodiversity, to nature, to the planet, and finally to your health, it really does.

So, thank you so much for taking the time to read this and for whatever you can do we will be deeply grateful.

Kenneth

PS. If you are away and you cannot order, please remember the summer is long and every week for us during the summer can be a struggle, so please order when you are back. But if you would like to support us anyway, then why not order a charity box, which will be donated to St Vincent de Paul, or gift an order to a friend, who would not appreciate the gift of sustainable food delivered to their door anywhere in Ireland.

Where have all our insects gone?

by Kenneth Keavey

Next time you drive down the motorway check your windscreen, is it covered in splattered insects? This used to be the case, but now sadly there are so few insects left that in fact our windscreens are mostly clear.

In 2019 a study published by Danish researcher Anders Møller showed that insect numbers splattered on cars declined by more than 80% between 1997 and 2017. An earlier landmark study by Hallman et al in 2017 stated that “There has been more than a 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas”. This study was breathtaking in its scope and involved nearly three decades of continuous, data collection across 63 sites.

This German study tracked insect biomass in nature reserves— protected land. The insects were gone because the fields around them were sprayed with herbicides and pesticides. Have you ever heard of tramlines? The tramlines I am talking about here are tractor tracks through in particular cereal fields (and vegetable fields).

Next time you drive past a field of wheat or barley, look for these tramlines — those tracks running through the crop. They’re permanent spray lanes, put there at sowing so a tractor can enter the field over and over to apply chemicals. A typical Irish cereal crop gets sprayed four to six times between October and June.

Cereal fields (and increasing grass monocultures where all diverse plants are removed by selective herbicides) are essentially a chemical monoculture from October through June — no flowering weeds (removed by herbicide), no insects able to complete life cycles in or around the crop, nothing for birds to eat. The tram lines are the visible manifestation of the chemical applications. The crop looks green and healthy. What isn’t visible is the biological silence inside it. They’re the signature of an industrial spray programme, written in bare soil across every tillage field in Ireland.

There is more evidence of the devastation wrought by chemical agriculture, populations of European grassland butterflies are estimated to have declined by 50% in abundance between 1990 and 2011. In England, the total abundance of butterfly species declined by 58% on farmed land between 2000 and 2009, despite a doubling of conservation spending.

And finally in the USA in the last three decades, monarch butterfly populations have declined by 80–95%. Researchers studying monarchs found on average traces of seven pesticides in each individual butterfly studied. But the application of glyphosate and the destruction of milkweed a key plant that Monarchs feed on is a critical part of the population collapse.

So, the next time you drive down a motorway and you notice those tram lines, have a look at the insect splatter on your windscreen and remember the application of herbicides and pesticides and fungicides do not only impact our health but also the health of our little living friends that we share this earth with and whom we rely on for pollination and our food. (Over 75% of human-cultivated crops worldwide depend directly on insect pollination. About 88% of all flowering plants are pollinated by insects.)

As always thank you for your support, it means a great deal.

Kenneth

PS It is definitely holiday season and we are seeing harvest rolling in from the fields and also a marked increase in the absence of orders. If you are considering ordering please do, it will help us enormously especially at this time. Thank you.

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

Another Irish Veg farm has closed. Who’s next?

by Kenneth Keavey

Another vegetable grower has gone out of business. This time it’s one of the largest carrot producers in the country, supplying nearly 12% of the island’s carrots.

Hughes Farming and Agriculture, a major operator employing 45 staff, has closed its doors overnight and declared bankruptcy. Watch this week’s Instagram video on the topic here. 

How can this be? And where will we be if we continue down this road?

In the early 1990s there were over 600 commercial vegetable growers in Ireland.

As of last week there were 74. Now there are 73.

The sector is in serious trouble. Why?

There are many factors, but the biggest is simple: the price paid for produce by supermarkets versus the cost of producing it.

Since 2010, inflation and wage costs have increased dramatically. Vegetable production is hugely labour-intensive. The reality is that the price paid for vegetables has actually decreased since 2003, while the cost of producing them has soared.

In 2003 the minimum wage in Ireland was €6.35. Since then it has increased by 123%.

Yet the price paid to farmers for their produce has fallen. That is not sustainable Supermarket pricing and buying practices have played a major role in bringing us to this point.

So we need to ask ourselves an honest question:

Are we comfortable seeing all our vegetable growers disappear?

Ireland today imports over 84% of its fruit and vegetables. Are we happy for that to reach 100%? Because if we continue as we are, that is exactly where we are heading.

And it’s not just pricing.

Vegetable growers now face the increasing risks of climate instability. This year we have not ploughed a single field yet because of relentless and unprecedented rain.

Why would anyone choose to take on that risk, for returns that often don’t even cover the cost of production? I see it on our own farm every year.

Growing vegetables can be a loss-making enterprise. The only reason we can continue is because we have our own retail arm, which gives us some control over where the small profits in the business are allocated. 

Without that, we simply could not keep the farm going.

But it should not be like this.

Supermarket price wars, loss-leading vegetables, deregulation, and consumer buying habits all play their part.

The work is hard, physical and relentless. The thanks are few. Yet what we do is fundamental. It is about food security.

There will be very little we can do with iPhones if we run out of food.

And perhaps the saddest thing is that we have reduced food to something it was never meant to be: a plastic-wrapped commodity, sold as cheaply as possible, offered up on the altar of unrestrained capitalism.

Food should be a celebration of who we are.

So what happens now?

What happens to the 45 employees who worked there?
What happens to the supply of local food?
What happens to the skill and expertise built up over decades?

We can still take action.

We can choose to support Irish growers — not just when their produce is on discount, but when it reflects the true cost of producing real food.
We can support local farmers, farm shops, markets, and box schemes.
We can visit farms, go on farm walks, and learn what is involved in producing food.

There is a lot we can do.

I just hope it is not too late.

This year we begin our 20th growing season, and I find myself wondering what it will bring.

As always, thank you for your support.

It truly makes all the difference.

Kenneth

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