One of Those Weeks

by Kenneth Keavey

Last week was a terrible week. Have you ever had one of those? Where everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. We are a small family business, we are based on our own family farm in county Galway and small things can have a big impact. 

Have you ever faced into a time when you really can’t figure out which way is up? Everything is going against you? Things are unravelling before your eyes? Well if you have then we can certainly empathise. 

Last week was the week, we have had quite a few of “those weeks” over the last two years, and we know we have been the lucky ones, many businesses have not been so lucky, we have managed to stay open and stay going. I think maybe even Florence and George our pet rescue pigs knew there was something amiss last week.

Most of you our customers will hopefully have been none the wiser that there was anything amiss.

The week started with several staff not being able to come in to work due to close contact related stuff, we were down people and were on the back foot from the start. But we got busy, the guys and girls working put in amazing effort.

Then there were delays to deliveries, disruptions to our transport partners that meant we were left with significant stock shortages. Again, everybody got pretty busy both harvesting extra on the farm and changing contents in boxes to make sure everybody got as close to what they wanted as possible.

Then in the middle of it all more of the team were out,  so we had to put a stop on most of the harvest temporarily and drafted the farm team into the packing shed to help with packing. We were working flat out. 

By Wednesday we were stretched, stressed and there was just too many plates spinning.

But on Thursday the ultimate disaster struck our whole website and all the software we rely on to keep the wheels turning crashed and was not back online again properly until Friday afternoon. That left us with a backlog of nearly 300 orders to pack in one day, as close to an impossible task as there is. 

Not only that but an already stretched customer service team were trying their very best to get back to the many queries that were coming in as a result of the outage.

It was intense, busy, stressful, and at times energised, fuelled by pizza and loud music, but the team came through in the end. 

The final icing on the cake was not having our orders ready for our usual transport link to Dublin and we had to hire our own truck, which arrived and was not big enough, so we had to make two runs though the night to get the orders to Dublin for Saturday morning delivery, 4.45 am the last boxes were loaded onto the truck on our farm on Saturday morning.

Not only that but the team were back in on Saturday again to try and mop up the missed pieces and Darragh our Limerick Agent was even packing his own orders by hand on Saturday and Sunday to ensure they were done for delivery on Monday.

It was close to the most difficult week we have had. But you know what we got through it. The team here were remarkable and did an astounding job, and I am grateful for all their hardwork. 

Thank you guys.

Kenneth

George, Florence & Veganuary

by Kenneth Keavey

It’s been a wet, windy and cold start to the year, the water levels in the fields are high. We have been lucky enough to have harvested enough of our key root crops like parsnips before Christmas so we do not have to go out into the muck for them in the last couple of days. It would have proved difficult.

The crops are looking pretty good all things considered, we have some amazing new produce coming in from the fields next week. The purple sprouting broccoli has been flourishing over Christmas and we intend to harvest quite a bit of that for next week. We also have the first new mixed salad, it seems crazy to think it is ready but it is. We will harvest this from our own tunnels starting next week too.

It is difficult to manage all the produce around this time of year especially as we shut down for a week and everybody gets a well-deserved break and we do end up with some waste veggies despite our best efforts. Today it was my job to traverse the muddy fields with a bucket of waste veggies to feed our two rescue pigs, they were waiting and snorting and they always seem very excited about the prospect of food. George and Florence seem content, they don’t like the cold, but they do like their bellies to be scratched, they like roaming in the trees and rolling in their straw bed that they keep meticulously clean, they do not like the rain. Florence is very adventurous and constantly breaks out in search of what, I am not so sure. But I think conversation with George seems not to be up to scratch and she goes in search of more stimulating company!

Pigs are the ultimate food recyclers, but the myth that they will eat anything is far from true. I have learned that like our children, they tend to keep away from broccoli and kale! This I guess is fortuitous as whenever Florence breaks out, she wanders through fields of kale and never touches a bit! They definitely have their own little personalities, and they like to have the freedom to roam and to have access to decent straw bedding. As regards Florence and George they will grow old together on our farm provided of course George’s level of conversation improves!

But whether you eat meat or not, I think there seems to be some consensus that the factory farming of animals is wrong, it does produce cheap meat, but I wonder at what real cost to us as a society and to our health? I have found it interesting that my dad who has been a staunch meat eater all his life, has now changed his diet to mainly vegetables, not on ethical grounds but because he felt it was better in general for his health. He still eats meat, that is his decision and I certainly respect that.

Veganuary can cause all sorts of heated discussion, but I guess it is a personal choice, it is up to each individual whether we choose to eat meat or not, or choose to reduce the amount of meat we eat or not. But one thing that we all know for sure is that eating more fruit and vegetables can only do us good. With that in mind I look forward to next week to our own freshly harvested mixed salad and some gently stir fried purple sprouting broccoli with a dash of sesame oil.

Thank you for choosing the very best food and letting us deliver it to your door.

Kenneth

Happy New Year!

by Kenneth Keavey

I am not one for new year resolutions, it’s not that I am against them or for them I just don’t make them. But there certainly is something about the new year that seems to encourage change. Maybe it’s having passed the shortest day and being on the trajectory to better weather and longer days gives a feeling of hope. Maybe it’s the over indulgence and excess of the Christmas period. Maybe a little niggling feeling that’s been there all along just bubbles closer to the surface.

For the farm it marks at least on paper the start of a new season, the planning begins and the seeds must be selected and the rotation planned. I am always a little bemused at how long ago the start of the last growing season was and at the same time how fast time passes. It is one of those mysteries of getting older, I guess. It’s very difficult to make plans anymore. For the farm last year we were a little too ambitious with our planning, we planned and grew too many crops. This year we are taking a more sensible approach and scaling back a little of certain crops and a growing a little more of others. That being said, the winter has been benign, mild and not too wet and the crops remaining in the fields are in good order and we have plenty to harvest over the coming months.

Whilst there has been plenty of good hearty vegetables consumed here over Christmas we have also had our fair share of chocolate. I am guessing that there will have been few houses or few people in the country who did not encounter a box of ‘Milk Tray’ during this festive Season. Growing up they were the main stay of our family evening, and my mother for some reason never trusted me with them, I can still hear, “only one Kenneth” every time I see a box. That instruction was always reserved for me and never aimed at my siblings strangely enough. These sweets today seem to be a far cry from the sweets I remember as a child.

If you happen to have a box lying around take a look at the ingredients. I didn’t recognise most of them. Apart from sugar I couldn’t say yeah that’s in our cupboard. The result of course is not good, the food itself is now a synthetic engineered product from ultra-cheap and highly processed ingredients. Sugar is the first ingredient, followed by palm oil as the second, for those that don’t know, ingredients are listed in the order of quantity. Then there is the cheap waste by products from the milk industry and more. The intention it seems has been to make the product as cheap as possible and to sell as much as possible for maximum profit, with scant regard for taste or quality. This unfortunately is a common approach to many foods today.

Compromising on taste and quality never leads anywhere good. This race to the bottom can end up costing us our health and the planet too pays a high price for these unsustainable cheap ingredients. So, while I do not embrace the idea of new year resolutions, the one that I come back to every single year without fail is to “Eat more fresh fruit and veg”. I know too that I won’t have to worry about my mum’s mantra of “only take one”! as I reach for another apple.

Have a great new year, thank you for all you have done for us. We are back with our normal deliveries next week. Take care.

Kenneth

A Very Irish Christmas

by Kenneth Keavey

Against all my best inclinations I have decided I am not going to launch into a rant about the damage the supermarket food culture has wrought on our land. I have decided to instead embrace the positive this week, to celebrate the little wins and the amazing things our people, suppliers, and you our customers are doing.

We have the most amazing suppliers, the best in the world, and they are local, Irish and sustainable. Just today I met Titta from Lilly’s eco clean, she exudes positivity and is dedicated to the sustainable cause. Yesterday I had reason to speak to Franck, our local native Galwegian French man who supplies us with his amazing organic wine, he is always in good form.

We have had to give the harvest of our own leeks a little break until after Christmas and therefore I was on the phone to Roy Lyttle one of our amazing potato and leek suppliers. Cameron from Battlemount organic farm supplied us just a couple of weeks ago with his own freshly pressed organic apple juice from apples in his own orchard and the most amazing potatoes on this island.

Ralph Haslam and I go back along way and he supplies the gorgeous organic cheese, yogurt and if milk (I believe the best milk in Ireland) you may know his products better as “Mossfield Organic farm”. There is of course the cultured food company and Synerchi kombucha, and the Little Milk Company and Bunalun Organic, all great IRISH companies. Yorg from Solaris teas makes his tea right here in Galway and Blakes Organic roast their coffee in Leitrim, the fantastic McCabes coffee roast their organic coffee beans in county Wicklow.

Then there is all the other Irish organic growers that supply us at times during the year such as Audrey and Mick from Millhouse organic farm. Joe Kelly in Westport, Padraigh Fahy in Beechlawn organic farm. Philip Dreaper in Coolnagrower organic farm and many more.

But the best supplier of all is our own farm and the amazing hard-working team of individuals that work tirelessly on our farm. They grow the best tasting, healthiest food you can buy anywhere. Our farm is the centre of our business, it is the heart, it is our cornerstone, it keeps us grounded and it keeps us deeply connected with our food, it never lets us stray from the right path.

That is not to say that we do not have the most amazing teams of packers and drivers and customer service people because we do, the very, very best. So we really understand and appreciate the hardwork and effort of all our other suppliers, they are all amazing, struggling with the ups and downs of running and owning a small business and working extremely hard to produce great IRISH products and make their business work especially during the last two years.

This brings me to our last stars, the real hero’s of our story and I guess you may know who that is? That is, you. Your support, your purchases, your positive (and constructive negative feedback) keeps us going, it puts money in our bank account to pay for all of the above. But and this is the big one, it keeps a strong growing sustainable system of food production going. So aside from the very best healthy and (we have no shame in saying) the most amazing tasting produce you are supporting an idea for a better food future.

Thank you and have a very merry, Irish Christmas!

Kenneth

A Plastic Free Christmas?

by Kenneth Keavey

Is it possible?

Here in Ireland we need to do much better on plastic, we are at the bottom of the European league tables when it comes to plastic waste per person. By 2050 there will be more plastic than fish by weight in the oceans.

On our farm and in our business, we have spent 3 years looking at our processes and removing plastic where we can. In contrast to the green washing of most of the larger retailers who have promised and yet have not delivered we are doing what we say.

We do not use plastic in any of our seasonal set boxes, we use paper, and we collect and reuse our boxes, this is a fundamental cornerstone of our business. We realise that paper too has its own carbon cost, and we are looking at ways of trying to reduce that further. It bothers me a bit though, when the idea of using a paper straw instead of a plastic one constitutes progress, it is a small step, but it diverts attention from the real issues, such as the large scale use of plastics in the food industry.

The strain that humankind’s excessive consumption is putting on our planet is eye watering and for the environment and biodiversity the price is too great. We all need to consume less, whether it be plastic or otherwise.

I recognise the irony of encouraging less consumption and at the same time trying to sell our organic veggies boxes. But I have no shame in this, we run a sustainable business, we employ a lot of people in a worthwhile industry we grow local organic food and support so many other small scale Irish organic producers too and in order to pay them we need to sell boxes.

Everybody needs to eat, and it is impossible to assess the environmental credentials of most food businesses. This Christmas and new year if you want to know your food has been sourced and grown sustainably then throwing your lot in with us for your food is the right thing to do.

Our Christmas boxes and many other lovely Christmassy things (gift vouchers, wine hampers, original art and many eco-hampers) are available on our website, and they will be delivered the week beginning the 20th of December. The boxes are brimming with organic local (where possible) freshly harvested sustainable food.

We can deliver by courier all over Ireland and if you can place your order by the 12th you will be entered into a draw for an amazing hamper, it also guarantees you a delivery slot on Christmas week and helps us out immeasurably with harvesting.

If you want the most amazing fresh ingredients and also keep Christmas plastic free, local and sustainable then get a delivery from us this year.

Thank you for your support.

Kenneth

It’s In Our Blood

by Kenneth Keavey

My dad (Michael) was an avid gardener. My grand dad (Martin) had a beautiful vegetable garden and he was also a mixed farmer, my great grand-dad Michael was the head gardener at Cregg Castle (1911) and my great great grandad John was also a gardener at Cregg castle in the 1850’s onwards.

That is 5 generations of vegetable growers in our family, not bad for the west of Ireland. Famous for its perceived poor soil as Oliver Cromwell’s famous quote “to hell or to Connaught” has incorrectly often been associated with. I believe there must be something in our blood that keeps us coming back to the land. Certainly, I believe it was this connection that brought be back from years of working in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry to reconnect with the land and build a sustainable farm.

Back in the early days I had more hair than today, the journey has not been without its hair raising moments! I wonder sometimes what my great, great grandad would have thought of what we are doing here today on this patch of ground in Galway. It was not that long ago when you think about it when my great-great grandad was gardening, the food they were growing back then would certainly have been free from chemicals (there were none; not till the strangely named ‘green revolution’ of the 1960’s did chemical usage become prevalent in agriculture) and would have been harvested fresh for the table.

Everyday, we demonstrate that it is possible to grow the very best of food without the use of toxic chemicals, they are not necessary in our organic food growing system. There was a certain strong seasonality about food back then, there was no other choice, there were no imports or fancy fruits like bananas. There was no plastic, imagine that, a world only maybe 50 years ago when there was little or no plastic! I think I would have struggled with the lack of choice, but how sweet the first season’s apples or how flavoursome the first new potatoes must have been. I think it must have been from here that our obsession with early potatoes came.

I think I would also have struggled with the lack of machinery. While it is enjoyable and hugely rewarding to work in a garden with a spade and your hands it is another matter entirely to be growing enough food to feed 1000+ families per week. That is what we do here on our patch of organic land in the west of Ireland.

I often wonder when I look back at how our recent ancestors farmed and lived how it is possible that we have, in the space of 100 years, done so much damage to our planet? How can we change to reverse the damage, is it possible? Absolutely. I don’t like the idea of new years resolutions and even if I did, it is a bit early to be thinking about them now. Our resolution if you like will not be any different to any other year, we will be redoubling our efforts to do as we have always done, which is to make growing and delivering food to your doors as sustainable and healthy as is possible.

Thank you as always for your support.

Kenneth

Black Friday?

by Kenneth Keavey

The biggest winners from Black Friday are the big corporations, it is certainly not the small independent high street shops who after the last two years are under excruciating pressure to survive and are the very ones who can least afford to offer discounts.

What are we doing for Black Friday? We will not be offering a black Friday discount. This is our business decision, it doesn’t sit right with us, we cannot justify doing homage to this greatest day of consumption, whilst our planet teeters on the edge of collapse. We are doing what we have been doing every other week of the year, working hard at delivering to you the very best sustainable healthiest food you can get anywhere.

We do offer reward points for ordering, we offer double reward points for setting up a regular order, these rewards can be used to get money off your next orders.

We reward you, our customers, with occasional discounts as a thank you or when we have extra produce on our farm. We thank you (and where you want to place a larger order) by offering you free delivery when you order over €100. But these are thoughtful rewards to you our customers for shopping with us. The principle is different.

What else are we be doing for Black Friday?

We are in the fields harvesting, we are supporting several other local IRISH organic businesses, such as Mossfield organic farm whose organic cheese and milk and yogurt is the best in the country. We are packing our produce in paper or biodegradable plant-based bags. We are filling our recyclable boxes with your orders, boxes we collect and reuse again and again. We are, with your help, standing up for a better type of consumption. After all we all need to eat, that consumption cannot be avoided. Can we eat and consume better, can we support biodiversity whilst also supporting our bodies and our health? We would say yes, yes we can. We will be delivering your boxes to your doors in our electric van on some of our routes.

We have seen yet again this year that our farm has struggled to be profitable in it’s own right. How is this possible? We have our own market and yet we can only afford to pay our farm a set amount and the end result is a loss. Primary food production is a precarious business, can we afford to discount to celebrate Black Friday? No, and really what’s to celebrate?

The pressure on small businesses to participate in this voracious celebration of consumption is immense. There is no judgment here, it is difficult enough to exist and survive as a small business and sometimes you must do what you have to do. Conscious consumption of ethical, fair and sustainable food is the cornerstone of our business.

Thank you for supporting us, have a great Green Friday.

Kenneth

Our Broken Food System

by Kenneth Keavey

Do you like carrots? Have you ever caught the aroma of a fresh carrot as you wash the dirt from it’s skin? How about crunching into a fresh sweet carrot, the taste grabs you, it is enlivening. Our grandparents took the taste of food for granted, it was what they expected. Funny that the opposite is true today. 

Those carrots of our grandparent’s generation are a long way from the plastic clad, washed supermarket carrots imported from foreign lands. What do they taste of? Very little indeed.

Not only have carrots lost their taste, but they have lost their goodness. A carrot today will have 75% less copper and magnesium and nearly 50% less calcium and iron that’s its relative 50 years earlier. These are sad facts, published by the British Medical Research Council. Our food system now produces food that is depleted in vitamins and minerals, how can this be?

The answer it seems lies in how we treat one of our most precious resources, our soil. Our one-time rich soils have been depleted by the constant barrage of chemical fertilisers, and the life in them as been destroyed by the persistent use of a cocktail of chemicals. The result: food that is as lifeless as the soil it was grown in. If this is mankind’s ingenuity, I want no part of it.

Have we become too smart for our own good? We all want to believe that modern technology will lift us out of the hole we are in, a hole of our own making, but will it? Look at what we have done to our soil. We don’t need modern technology to fix our soil, we need a thoughtful skilful approach to growing our food. A balanced approach that does not extract every last drop of vitality the land has to offer but leaves something for other life to flourish. 

Mother nature doesn’t particularly care about our degree of cleverness, she is hurting, and the question is are we smart enough to recognise our own absurdity and to take action to rectify the damage we are doing? 

“It is the degree to which a species is suited to its environment, not its cleverness, that ensures it’s survival” Charles Darwin.

For many generations now we have lived more or less in harmony with nature but in the last 50 years the havoc we have wrought on our home has become more and more obvious, when will enough be enough?

I can only talk to what we are doing, I know we can grow food that tastes like food. There is magic in that taste. That taste tells you something very important, it tells you a story, a story of a soil that was cared for, it tells you that the birds and bees and all the other little fellas running around were respected, it tells you that what you are eating is real food with no free hidden chemical extras. 

That taste tells you; you are eating the very best food you can buy and you are taking one very important step to protecting our land and your health.   

That the taste reflects a deep respect for the land. 

As always thank you for your support

Kenneth

Our Food Choices Matter

by Kenneth Keavey

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Meade.

I remember as a child picking peas in my grandad’s garden. He had apple trees, he grew his own veg. I remember sitting on his lap drinking a mug of turnip juice, (I can’t imagine trying to get my kids to do that today!) most of the food was grown on his farm. He was without knowing it, growing, and providing healthy sustainable food for his family. Our food system has changed so much in a generation and our job has always been to turn the clock back and bring us back to the days when food tasted like food.

When was the last time you tasted a freshly harvested carrot, can you remember what it should taste like? There can be such pleasure in the simple foods and eating well. Healthy and sustainable food is what we have been delivering from our farm to people’s doors all over Ireland for the last 15 years.

November is still a month of local seasonal plenty. It is now that the real Irish vegetables come into their own, leeks, parsnips, swedes, kales, winter cabbage and carrots to name but a few.

On our farm the arrival of November allows a sigh of relief. The relentless pressure of the summer is finally winding down and we are settling into a routine of harvest. The trees are turning, the wild-flowers have gone to seed, the hedgerows are full of berries, the bees are getting ready to hibernate, even the birds are relaxing a little, everything seems to slow down. Something we could all do a little bit more of.

November too can be a time for reflection. As a farmer the simple things like tree planting, growing hedgerows and leaving wild patches can give enormous pleasure and there is an immensely powerful added benefit, they lead to better, healthier more sustainable food.

Our organic food and groceries are used to make lunches and dinners, fill larders and hopefully bring health and happiness to 1000’s of homes every week. Your choice to be part of our tribe, not only means that you are making the best choice for your health, you are also choosing to protect our planet and the environment; the absence of chemicals in our food mean a healthier planet and increased biodiversity on farms.

Our parents and grandparents chose well, they ate seasonally and locally, they ate less meat. Who doesn’t remember cabbage and turnip and the endless ways to cook potatoes! Maybe what we eat deserves a little more consideration (and you clearly think so)? Our food choices matter so much more than we will ever know.

So as the saying goes, choose wisely! We have more power than we realise.

Kenneth

Doing the Right Thing

by Kenneth Keavey

It was 2006 and I was working on our little vegetable patch where many of our polytunnels now stand. Our next-door neighbour, a curious, sauntering type of person, one that clearly knows better and one that really wanted our family farm came over the joining wall to inspect my work. “What are you doing?” he asked. “weeding” I said. His response: “that’s ridiculous that won’t work, you need Roundup”. I can’t remember what I said, but as we are still “weeding” and growing vegetables today, we neither used Roundup nor sold the farm.

But that is the thing, what is the right thing to do? That weeding was hard, and seemed futile, I was getting nowhere, no sooner had I finished one part of the field than I had to start again at the beginning. Was it a good decision? Well, I believe it was and overtime I learned to grow better crops and the weeds became less of a problem.

What constitutes good decisions? We are all everyday caught in the cross winds of life, it is so difficult to figure out what is right and then it requires a whole other pile of energy to do the right thing.

By the very virtue of the fact that you are reading this, and you have gotten this far you are amongst the very few who are doing the right thing. If you came on this message in one of our printed sheets you are an active customer, that probably puts you in the top 20% of people taking positive action for the planet and for your health, that is amazing, think about it.

Unfortunately, most people still want to do as the Ostrich does. It is easy to think that the processed food we eat today does not affect us and that factory farmed meat is fine, but in time we find that it is not. That’s the problem with food, doing the right thing can be difficult and doing the “wrong” thing is easy and the consequences of our poor choices are hidden from us by time and shiny packaging.

But you it seems are not that person. You have spent the energy and made the decision that food is worth taking seriously or maybe more importantly you have decided that your health and the health of our planet is worth taking seriously. You probably know that like all good habits (they require discipline, there are no short cuts) the impact is seen in time, no instant gratification here. So, you too are like us, and this is very important to us.

It was close to 20 years ago when myself and my wife Jenny started thinking about taking over my dad’s farm to create a sustainable business. This was a major milestone in our lives, when like you we decided we had to do something to right the wrongs. We were young naïve and didn’t consider in any shape the risks or the pitfalls. But there was one thing that kept us going, and as I look back now it was that unwavering belief that what we were doing was worthwhile.

What you are doing is worthwhile.

You have chosen us to bring decent wholesome sustainable food into your home, we will not let you down, that trust means everything to us. We will never abuse it and we will always honour our founding principles which is to put your health and our planet first in all the decisions we make.

Thank you for being one of us.

Kenneth