Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think….?

by Kenneth Keavey

“Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think? Alanis Morissette, to add our line to this great song “We have tonnes of fresh Irish organic produce and all our customers go on holidays, isn’t it ironic don’t you think?” We asked last week if you could help, and you certainly did, we were bowled over. Can you help again next week and continue to support us during the summer when we need it most?

It is Thursday the 25th of July as I write this. I have spent the morning in the farmyard grappling with one frustration after another, it is a fact of farming life when you have machines you are given near daily opportunities to practice patience. Today has been a great day for that practice. Our net machine that unrolls the nets to cover the crops and conversely rolls it back in when we need to harvest decided to stop working and after visiting a couple of places it was the kind help of a neighbour that hopefully eventually has set us on the right track.

Our planting machine decided it was time to break a drive chain, and again after visiting 2 fixer type shops it was the kind help of the individual in the second shop that set us straight and fixed the chain, enabling us to get on with the final tranche of brassica plantings.

Then there is the weeding machines. Maybe, it is just that July is so insanely busy or maybe it is that these machines pick their moments and they all go caput together, is it a planned assault on a farmers sanity? Our trusty and old intrarotovator came apart in the field, again it was the timely and very kind help of a metal working neighbour that put it back together and dropped it back to us all in the space of a day.

The final machine to play truant this week was our usually very reliable brush weeder, it hasn’t exactly broke, but because the conditions for weeding have been so exceptionally poor, wet and sticky, the brushes have worn away to nothing and we need to replace them, this we are still working on.

That is just this week! But I realised if it wasn’t for the connections we have with people and other businesses in the area and their willingness to help us in our time of need and get us the fixes that we urgently required everything would have ground to a halt.

I tell you this because you are one of those people, you helped us out in our plea last week. Your amazing support and help this week just gone kept our wheels turning so to speak, we saw over 300 extra orders and that has made an enormous difference to us. All the sharing, comments, orders, good wishes, it all matters, it saved the day.

Our weeks keep going, our harvest keeps coming in, our machines keep breaking and we keep going and whilst I was messing around with all these bits of machinery the farm team were busy harvesting all sorts of fresh lovely produce from our fields.

But next week is a new week, with new challenges and opportunities, we will still be here harvesting and working away on our farm, and if you can continue to support us over the week and weeks ahead it keeps us going especially for the ironic (loads of produce, not loads of customers) months of July and August.

You can watch my weekly Instagram update by clicking here.

Thank you as always for your support
Kenneth

PS I have just eaten our very first freshly harvested cherry tomatoes, over 1 month late this year, and I am not promising there will be very many next week, but we certainly have loads of other freshly harvested Irish organic produce, to see it all click here.

And a Garda knocked on our door…

by Kenneth Keavey

Imagine it was less than 20 years ago when somebody erecting a polytunnel in the west of Ireland was looked upon with mild suspicion.

Or so it seemed as we were eating our dinner one night and we had a visit from the local Garda: “what are you growing out there?” “Do you mind if I take a look around?” he was of course referring to the polytunnel. I am sure the pepper and aubergine plants and even the tomatoes would have looked foreign to him, and of course they would have. Where else would you see these plants growing, certainly not in the West of Ireland, not since the supermarkets stepped in and went on a rampage of destroying our industry. Anyway, we showed him around and alleviated whatever concerns he may have had…. If you would like to listen to my little story this week from one of our fields CLICK HERE!
The second interesting occurrence, well to be fair there were many on this journey, but on this instance again it was a recommendation by a well-meaning neighbour. He could not believe, just could not get his head around, why we were not using Roundup and his advice was “just a touch of Roundup, here and there will sort you out”. Well, that was never going to happen, there is little doubt though considering we were fighting with a field covered in “scutch grass” that it would have made our lives so much easier. 
It is hard to fathom how the discovery of Roundup revolutionised farming, it found its way into every aspect of farming, from grass reseeding to tillage to horticulture and to many older farmers it must have seemed like a miracle.   All that hard work of weed control was suddenly controlled out of a can, it was easy and it was safe they were told.  It was like the iphone of weed control, it really did change everything. Or maybe a more likely analogy would be the heroin of the drug world. Because once farmers started using it, there was no going back, and whole systems were established around its use. You had to keep using. And of course, people then forgot that there were once other ways and we were not always reliant on an armoury of chemicals to mark our stamp of control on the natural world to grow our food.
Never mind the bees, or the insects, or the myriads of plants that support life, all of that was cleared away in the name of a new efficient chemical controlled system. So that is where we are today, that is our food system, and the precarious nature of this production is never really revealed. It doesn’t take much to mess up our food supply. Roundup for all its perceived benefits has bred even here in Ireland super weeds that cannot be controlled and are more rampant, they have evolved to not be susceptible to the chemical anymore. 
Anyway, I think of that Garda sometimes, and I think of all the good things, and all the positive change that has occurred and all of the support, and all of the awareness that you good people have and I feel in earnest that things have improved. Nobody looks with suspicion anymore, I think in fact more and more people understand that relationship between our food, our planet and our health. They are all interlinked. Afterall, we have only one life, one body, one planet, one shot at doing things right, and don’t we owe it to our selves to take care of it all, and if we do one thing isn’t it worth leaving the world just a little better each day by the actions we take.
Not saying it’s easy, or we get it right all the time, but that is what we try and put into action every day.
Thank you for your support.
Kenneth PS We are seeing our orders drop as the summer kicks in, if you can at all don’t forget about us, now we are getting right into the the very best Irish product of the season, we will be harvesting broccoli at the end of next week, and hopefully the first of our own tomatoes. Check out our IRISH SECTION HERE

Plant Powered Pasta – One Pot – Vegan

by Lou Robbie

When the veg box is brimming with beautiful colourful veg it’s so great to roast up a pot or tray with diced (veg) plants for a delicious nutritious summer pasta supper.

Our family schedule is jam packed this summer with work and holidays, summer camps and playdates. One pot meals are fantastic. Adding lots of organic vegetables to your meals gives everyone a healthy boost that’s needed to get through the busy day.

Make the most of the plants in your veg box this week.

Lou x

Ps The roast bulb of garlic can be added to the pasta or used to mix into butter for your bread.

Ingredients: serves 4

  • olive oil
  • 12 x cherry tomatoes (250g), quartered
  • ½ courgette, diced 1cm
  • ½ red pepper, diced 1cm
  • 2 small sweet potato, diced 1cm
  • 1 red onion, diced 1cm
  • 1 bulb garlic, top cut off exposing the cloves
  • 300g dried spaghetti or any pasta
  • 750ml hot veg stock
  • 2 tablespoons tomato puree
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • To serve:
  • 3 tablespoons butter, softened (50g)
  • seedy bread toasted
  • basil leaves

Method:

Step 1: Preheat the oven 200ºC. Chop and prepare all the veg. Using a wide pot or deep tray add the diced onions, cherry tomatoes, red pepper, sweet potato, courgette and bulb of garlic. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and put it in the oven to roast for 30 minutes. Checking half way through, add more oil to the garlic if needed.

Step 2: Make the hot veg stock in a jug and stir in the tomato puree. When the veg is roasted put the roast garlic to one side. Make a space in the middle of the pot for the pasta then pour over the hot tomato stock. Put a lid on the pot if you have one, or cover with foil and either return the pot to the oven for 30-40 minutes or cook on the hob on a medium heat until the pasta is cooked.

Step 3: Make the roast garlic butter. Wait until the garlic is cool enough to handle then squeeze out the cloves of garlic and mash into the butter.

Step 4: Toast the seedy bread and spread it with the roast garlic butter, serve with a bowl of plant powered pasta and some fresh basil leaves.

This is still happening today, is it not time it stopped?

by Kenneth Keavey

When we started our farm and business it was with the aim of keeping chemicals out of our food chain. Chemicals applied enmasse out in nature destroy biodiversity and hurt our health. 

Many years ago, I had the pleasure of sitting with Darina Allen and directing questions at a Dept of Agriculture official on why the residual level for glyphosate (Roundup)  in oats was much higher than that in wheat. His answer, people eat less oats! Apparently, you can have a higher concentration of this probable carcinogen in oats because people in general eat less oats than wheat. The limit “deemed safe” in wheat is 10mg/kg and in oats it is 20mg/kg, twice that of wheat.

If you would like to listen to my weekly rant in video form CLICK HERE

No herbicide in the history of our planet has been applied so heavily as glyphosate (the active ingredient in the weedkiller ‘Roundup’) it is quite literally everywhere and in everything. 

Virtually all known conventional foodstuffs containing some processed product derived from soya, wheat or corn will have had an application of glyphosate.

The people who watch out for our health set maximum residue levels (MRLs: this is the highest limit of chemical that is allowed in food). These MRLs are supposed to protect the consumer, but they can also be set based on what is required by agriculture to be an effective dose to control a pest or disease. The concentration required to kill a weed can often be much higher than that which is considered “safe” to consume (if consuming toxic chemicals can ever be deemed safe).

These limits are often arrived at *in partnership with the Agri-chemical companies* who manufacture the herbicides and pesticides!

Take the maximum residue level of glyphosate in wheat by country:·        Canada 5 mg/kg·        EU 10 mg/kg·        USA 30 mg/kg 

Apparently, it is safer to eat more glyphosate in the USA than it is in Canada ….!? As the application of glyphosate has grown exponentially the assessment of what is safe in our food has also increased and so MRLs have increased.

The increase of allowable glyphosate residues in crops is directly correlated with the introduction of genetically engineered crops that are resistant to glyphosate. 

In 1990 3.5 million kgs of glyphosate were applied in the USA, in 2014 that number was 113 million kgs. At these rates of application, the total volume of glyphosate applied in 2014 was sufficient to treat 30 % of globally cultivated land. Nearly 9 billion kg have been sprayed since 1974, this is a mind boggling number.

Glyphosate has been labelled as a “probable carcinogen” by the world health Organisation. The state of California labelled glyphosate as “Carcinogenic”.   The conventional agriculture industry, and even the EPA, often claim pesticides are safe right up until the moment they are banned because of overwhelming evidence showing they are toxic to humans.

We are all doing what we can, conventional farmers are stuck in a broken food system, we all are, but eating organic where you can is the very best chance you have of avoiding free helpings of the chemicals like glyphosate. There are some rays of hope breaking through and although the EU granted a further 10 years of use of glyphosate in the EU, the use of this toxin for drying (desiccation) crops before harvest has been prohibited and this is a very positive step.

Through your support we are supporting a system that keeps chemicals out of our food chain.

Thanks as always, here’s to clean healthy food.

Kenneth 

PS We are coming into the season of loveliness now, loads of fresh Irish produce, we are just waiting with bated breath for our own tomatoes, they are much later this year due to the cold spring, and you would be forgiven for thinking it was the middle of November at times during the week, I keep waiting for the “summer” to “start”! Anyway in the meantime you can check out our wonderful farm and farmers produce here:  See our IRISH SECTIOH HERE

Air Fryer Courgettes w/ Garlicky Cashew Cream -Vegan

by Lou Robbie

In the summer months the tunnels are brimming with courgettes. They grow so well and are delicious in so many recipes, and we’ve shared lots. These courgettes can be air fried or oven baked. I like to keep the temperature low so they cook slowly, soften in the middle and turn golden on top.

This easy garlicky cashew cream is full of flavour and deliciously morish topped with nutty breadcrumbs you’ll be coming back for more.

Let us know if you’d like to try it,

Lou x

Ingredients: serves 1 as a starter or 2 as a side

  • 1 or 2 courgettes (use 2 if you can fit them in your air fryer basket)
  • 1 bulb garlic
  • oil
  • Salt and pepper
  • For the cashew cream
  • 1 cup of cashews soaked in boiling water for 1 hour
  • 3 tbsp nutritional yeast
  • Juice of 1/2 lemon
  • small pinch of salt
  • Ground black pepper
  • The roasted bulb of garlic – prepared in step 2
  • Around 60-80ml of water for blending consistency

Nutty breadcrumbs

  • 1 slice of bread
  • 1 handful of whole almonds
    To serve:
  • Fresh basil leaves
    Lemon zest

METHOD
Step 1: Preheat the air fryer or oven to 160ºC fan.

Step 2: Prepare the garlic bulb, cut the top off the bulb exposting the cloves, place on a square of tin foil and drizzle with oil. Close up the tin foil to make a parcel.

Step 3: Slice the courgettes in half lengthways then lightly score the white flesh in a criss cross shape, sprinkle with salt and place upside down on kitchen paper to let some of the moisture drain out. After 10 minutes, cut in half to fit in the basket, drizzle in olive oil and place in a preheated air fryer or oven add the garlic bulb parcel to the basket too. Slow cook for about 20 – 25 minutes, checking half way through.

Step 4: To make the garlicky cashew cream. Discard the water off the cashews, then blend with all the other ingredients as well as the roasted garlic, just squeeze out the soft cloves. Taste and adjust the seasoning if needed.

Step 5: To make the nutty breadcrumbs, whizzed up the bread and almonds in a blender. Pour onto a frying pan drizzle in olive oil, salt and pepper then toast until crispy. Let it rest on a plate lined with kitchen roll until ready to use.

Step 6: To serve, spread the cashew cream on a plate top with the golden courgettes, sprinkle with the nutty breadcrumbs, lemon zest and fresh basil.

Enjoy

National radio interview and a few thoughts…

by Kenneth Keavey

During the week I was asked to come on the Sean Moncrieff show to talk about the supermarket practice of loss leading with fresh produce. Only 1% of farms in Ireland now grow veg, there are only 60 commercial growers left in the country down from over 400 in 1998.   

You can listen to the interview here

Not as glamorous as talking from a box in the middle of the field I think, but we gave it a go anyway!  

And if you are inclined to listen to my rant from a box in a polytunnel CLICK HERE

Here’s an example to illustrate exactly why this is happening, a few years ago most of the celery and scallions during the season were grown in Ireland, now that situation has changed dramatically. This year there has been a massive decline in Irish grown celery and scallions on supermarket shelves, and why is this? The bottom-line growers, who are struggling to cover production costs (they have gone up by 43% in the last 3 years!) could not negotiate a very small cost increase, and we are talking cents single digit here, as a result the farmers decided to stop growing the produce.

Two years ago one of the biggest sprout growers in the country closed after three generations due to lack of supermarket support.

The irony of this situation is that as supermarkets continue to practice squeezing the primary producer here in Ireland for short term gain, they must look to source the produce elsewhere.  But there is pressure on growing systems everywhere due to climate change and as a result they can end up paying more for imported produce.

Because after all, with the disastrous growing year we had last year, if you cannot put a little aside in the good years how do you survive the bad years and if your only outlet is the supermarkets, and they won’t help out then there is no other viable choice but to stop growing food.

We, who once were a nation of food producers and vegetable growers have let our primary vegetable growing industry virtually disappear.

I strongly feel that it is a very sad reflection on this retail model and the mindset and expectation it encourages in us as consumers that fresh produce is worthless. Not only does it make the craft of growing food financially unviable, but it is highly demoralising to growers to be told that their produce is essentially worthless.

At the very same time that fresh produce is used to get consumers in supermarket doors by devaluing it to nothing, you have a production and retail industry that thrive on making high margins on junk food. This food, ultra-processed rubbish, is nutritionally worthless and is making us sick and lines most retailers’ shelves.

The solution is simple, primary producers need to be paid more for the produce they grow, this can come about through the celebration of fresh produce, food that will make us well and healthy and in the long run ironically will save us all money and will save an industry.

As always thanks for your support.

Kenneth

PS We have amazing Irish organic produce now, from our own farm, kale Green, Black (Cavolo Nero), Purple, salad, lettuce and courgettes, we have Irish produce from Joe Kelly in Mayo, Padraigh Fahy in Beechlawn, Marc Michel in Wicklow, Enda Hoban in Galway, Mick and Audrey in Millhouse, John Mc Ardle for mushrooms, and so much more.  See our IRISH SECTIOH HERE

“Roast and Serve” Butter Bean, Courgette & Feta Salad

by Lou Robbie

Roasting vegetables for salads really intensifies the flavours. Sweet and bitter notes added with salty feta and sour lemon juice make this a really tasty salad.

Summer is all about gathering friends and family and sharing good food. This salad is perfect for a BBQ, a gathering or a picnic. Not to mention a healthy its also a healthy plate of food with organic vegetables, gut friendly beans and protein packed nuts and cheese.

We really hope you try it this summer.

Lou x

Ingredients:

  • 1 courgette- sliced into 2 cm cubes
  • 1 red pepper, deseeded and sliced into cubes
  • 1 red onion, sliced into wedges
  • 1 tin butter beans, drained 240g
  • 1.5 tablespoon cajun spice (or a teaspoon each of paprika, chilli, cumin, coriander mixed)
  • 100g feta cheese
  • a handful of leaves, spinach, rocket or similar
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • juice of 1/2 lemon
  • salt and pepper to taste

Method:

  • Step 1: Preheat the oven 200ºC fan. Line a large baking tray with parchment paper. Put the courgette, red peppers, red onion, butter beans on the tray. Generously cover in the cajun spice. Drizzle with salt, pepper and oil, shake or rub to coat everything. Roast in the oven for 30 minutes, checking half way through.
  • Step 2: Put the pecans on a separate tray and toast in the oven, along with the veg, for about 5- 10 minutes, check half way through- they may need more or less time.
  • Step 3: Let the veg cool for 20 minutes then crumble over the feta and top with the green leaves, sprinkle with pecans, drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice, gently mix everything. Lift the parchment paper and tip into a serving dish.
  • Enjoy!

A story told sitting on a box in the middle of a field…………

by Kenneth Keavey

I found myself the other day sitting in one of our fields on a box, as you do, contemplating what to say in this weekly update.

To watch this post from a box in a field click here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8L39NDs9qi/?igsh=MmZxZ3lkdHAyejRn!

A couple of days earlier I had been attaching a slightly modified version of my grandad’s old stone roller to our tractor. He used this roller 2 generations ago to roll the land, pulled behind two fine workhorses he used to own, one of which I remember was called Snowball, because he had a white snout that looked like a “snowball”! I was rolling the land because we had just sown two and a half acres of wild-flowers, a mix of organic clover varieties, phacelia and flowers for the bees and for our soil. All that seed was certified organic which means even in raising the plants to produce the seed the land was treated organically.

So, As I was sitting there on my box, I was thinking about all your support over the last couple of weeks and I just wanted to say a huge ‘thank you’. I also thought that maybe it might be nice to explain the impact or the reality of what that support actually means. So that 2.5 acres of wildflowers, which are doing so much for local biodiversity would not have been sown without your orders. Just behind the box I was sitting on, I had just sown a bed of wildflowers to allow a proper bee corridor to run the length of our farm.

Emmanuel and his team were out the other day, and they planted several thousand brassica and celeriac plants, all of this was done without the use of artificial fertilisers, which are highly water soluble and when it rains they end up in our waterways and lakes, leading to eutrophication and pollution. Of course, everything here is planted without the use of herbicides and pesticides, these chemicals cause cumulative damage to our biodiversity and our health. Your support means these chemicals do not touch our soil and do not interfere with all the biodiversity on our land.

The trees that we have planted over the years, and there are thousands of them would not have been planted, the hedgerows that house a myriad of life would not be thriving, the two pigs Florence and George would not have been rescued, without your support. The 8 polytunnels would not have been constructed, the 700-800 tomato plants would not have been sown, fresh Irish organic tomatoes (if we ever get any proper heat this year) are only 5-6 weeks away, none of these things would have happened without your support.

All of these things are happening because you are buying from us and placing an order each week. Whilst you are supporting a new system of food production, you are also getting the best, freshest and chemical free produce in Ireland.

Your patience with our new IT system is so much appreciated and I can only again apologise if your experience has been less than positive. We are nearly there on this journey, and we hope in the next couple of weeks to have ironed out many of the issues and glitches and we hope then we can finally look to really introduce you to all the amazing features this new website provides. This is our portal to connect our produce and the produce of other Irish organic growers and so many amazing sustainable groceries direct to you, our customers.

As always thank you so much for your support and now I feel it is time to pack up my box, my seeds and go home.

Kenneth.

PS We have amazing Irish organic produce now, just use the little filter on each page to see what is Irish.

Thank you so much and an inconvenient truth……….

by Kenneth Keavey

Thank you so much to everybody who ordered from us last week, we were blown away by the level of support, it made a massive difference. When you buy with us, we notice, supermarkets don’t, but we do. So, thank you so much from everybody here.

We had three little remarkable surprises this week (not counting all your amazing orders), we received Irish organic cherries (Can you believe that!) from Darragh Donnelly in Dublin. Emmanuel our farm manager found a small robin’s nest in our farm shed and finally after 18 years of picking stones we found a solution to our stone problem! The cherries are amazing, and I guarantee that you will not find their like in any supermarket shelf, so thank you Darragh.

As to the robin, he or she, I certainly can’t tell, (can you tell?) chose a very inconvenient location to build (I will go with a she) her nest: right in the middle of where we are coming and going all the time. But we are going to be careful and the three little eggs that are in the nest will not be disturbed.

The stones have been, and I have to go a little further here than calling them an inconvenience, they have been a devastation for so, so long. But completely by chance this week I got the number of a contractor that has a stone crushing machine for farms, yes there is such a thing, and it is quite remarkable. So, in the space of 12 hours, this very nice fella and his tractor crushed all our stones, releasing vital nutrients back into the soil.

Afterwards we tried making some vegetable beds, this usually can be quite a fraught process, shaking the machine, destroying tines, and frequently lifting the whole machine out of the ground when you hit a big stone leaving the bed in less than an ideal shape. But the bed forming in our “new, stoneless” farm was quiet and smooth, and just nothing short of amazing.

Watch a little video from our fields here.

So, stones and robins making nests in odd places, two inconveniences, can we live with them? The robin yes, but the stones, they just had to go! This is the issue with our approach to agriculture these days, we aim to eliminate anything that is inconvenient, and there is a long list of these inconveniences. Weeds, eliminate them with a quick spray of roundup, aphids reach for the next can of spray and so on and so forth, it doesn’t stop; hedgerows, take them out if they are taking up valuable space, trees cut them down make way for production. What is this madness? The shortsightedness, the relentless focus on extracting the last cent from the land to the detriment of all the other aspects of our living world that we need. WE NEED BIODIVERSITY it is not and optional extra!

Maybe there is no other way, while the cost of produce continues to be so devalued, maybe that is the true price that must be paid. The price you or I pay at the till for the plastic clad supermarket produce absolutely does not reflect these sacrifices the natural world makes for our convenience.

So, the question is: can we afford these inconvenient truths? Is it worth it to get the very cheapest price possible? Well, I will leave you to decide, and judging by your support for us last week and hopefully in the week and weeks ahead again you have already made your decision.

As always thank you for your support

Kenneth

Organic Beetroot ‘Overnight’ Focaccia – Vegan

by Lou Robbie

This is a fabulous way to celebrate bread and Irish organic beets! I made this a few times last summer to share with visitors to the Green Earth Organics farm walks and it was a huge hit.

The focaccia is a super simple no knead recipe – the dough develops and slowly proves in the fridge overnight. The next day, smear it in beetroot puree and bake. It looks amazing and has heaps of sweet and savoury flavour.

Make sure you save the recipe and serve it alongside our gorgeous green lettuce this summer.

Lou x

Tips:

Tips for getting this right:
✨This bread needs time in the fridge to prove.
✨Use strong/bread flour.
✨Make sure the dried yeast is in date.
✨Use a neutral olive oil, or rapeseed oil not extra virgin
✨Try not to knock too much air out of the dough when you add the beetroot puree and make the dimples.

Ingredients:

Makes one focaccia
-500g strong flour/bread flour
-2 teaspoon salt
-1 (7g) sachet dried yeast
-430ml lukewarm water – made up by mixing 130ml boiling water with 300ml cold water (it should be body temperature, 36ºC)
butter for greasing
-4 tablespoons olive oil

For the beetroot puree:

  • 3 cooked beetroots approx 200g
  • 1 clove garlic, chopped
  • pinch salt
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil

Method:

*Steam or boil and peel the beetroots. Cool and keep in the fridge ready to make this bread.

Step 1: Pour the dried yeast into the lukewarm water and let it sit for 15 minutes then stir.
Measure the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl and stir to combine. Pour in the yeast and water and mix with a wooden spoon to form a sticky ball. Oil a second mixing bowl and transfer the dough into it. Using your hand lightly oil the top of the dough – the oil is important to stop it drying out. Cover the bowl to make it airtight with a lid, cling film or a damp tea towel and put the bowl in the FRIDGE for at least 12 hours (ideally overnight).

Step 2: Prepare the baking tin 9inc x 13inc. Line with parchment paper or grease really well with butter, this is really important to stop the focaccia from sticking to the tin. I recommend using parchment paper.
Now oil the baking tin with 2 tablespoons of olive oil.
Oil your hands and scoop the dough out of the bowl and put the dough straight onto the baking tray. Rub the oil over the dough and smooth and push it into the corners of the baking tray. Cover the tray with a clean plastic bag, or cling film and let the dough rest for 3 to 4 hours to warm up and double in size

Step 3: Make the beetroot puree, add the beetroot, chopped garlic, salt and oil in a small powerful blender. Blend until smooth.

Step 4: Preheat the oven 220ºc. Pour the beetroot puree over the dough and rub lightly with your hands, using your fingers press straight down to create deep dimples.
Bake for 25-30 minutes, until cooked through and the bottom is golden brown.
Transfer to a cooling rack. Brush with some olive oil. Cool for 10 minutes before cutting and serving.

Storage: This will keep in an airtight box for 3 days or in the freezer for 3 months.