I was never going to be a Franciscan monk…

by Kenneth Keavey

I must have been 13 years old when I started working as a helper gardener with the Franciscan monastery in Corrandulla, and no this was not to be my path! It was purely a means to an end for a young lad and to be fair I had an interest in working outdoors and with plants.

The monastery had glass houses and a walled garden, it was amazing and unheard of back then in the mid 80’s. There were tomato plants in those glass houses. I cannot tell you how unbelievable it was to see tomatoes growing in Galway back then. One job I remember in particular was using a knapsack sprayer for the first time. This is a sprayer that you put on your back. The head Gardener filled up the sprayer and I was given the job of spraying the tomatoes, I was told the spray was for the plants and that was it, and off I went to do my job.

The tomatoes were doing really well, so I sprayed the plants thinking I was doing some good. The day finished and I remember it was a Friday, and I went home. On my return to work on Monday I was greeted with a less than happy monk, the plants were all dying, I guess he added the wrong chemical to the mix, it was quite probable it was Roundup. Since Roundup’s introduction in 1974, weeds have out paced the ability of chemicals to control their presence. Superweeds are now well documented such as Palmer amaranth. The chemical company’s response has been to increase the application rate of the said chemical or/and merge two herbicides such as Glyphosate and Dicamba, the second of which is now banned again.

These increased toxic cocktails are not a step in the right direction.

The entomologist Robert van den Bosch coined the term “pesticide treadmill,” a concept referring to the slow escalation in the potency of the chemicals needed to control pests and maintain crop yield. The challenge of course though is in a world now reliant more and more on GMO seeds and heavy doses of one single herbicide, how do farmers in this system produce food when it fails as it is now.

There are different possibilities, but there is little doubt that the years of cheap commodity crops being raised to feed animals may be coming to an end.

The number one reason that organic food is more expensive than conventional food is the labour required to manage weeds. Spraying a field with a chemical is easy and cheap. Having said all of that the potential benefits of moving away from chemical agriculture towards a more holistic approach to food, can be financially viable. The costs associated with less sickness, increased biodiversity, less pollution, clean water, clean soil and healthier food; these hidden costs of the impact of our current approach to agriculture could then be redistributed fairly to farmers to protect our amazing planet. Like the tomatoes in the green house, it was as I know today completely possible to grow these phenomenal plants without any synthetic chemicals whatsoever.

As always thanks for your support.

Kenneth

Why are all the Irish vegetable farmers disappearing?

by Kenneth Keavey

I remember distinctly our first year of growing, which was 20 years ago, it was before we officially started our business, it was my first year back in Ireland after spending 11 years in the UK, it was on a small vegetable patch in my grandads back garden, it was amazingly rewarding and to get food at the end of it was a bonus.

We have been growing organic vegetables here on our farm in Galway for nearly 20 years.

We have seen many changes over that time, but something that has never changed has been our commitment to sustainable local food. We are Irish and grow Irish and support Irish and always have since we started delivering our first boxes in 2004.

Something that has changed since then is the price that the supermarket pays for and charges for fresh produce in the supermarket, which has decreased. Since 2007 the average price paid for 1kg of fresh vegetables has decreased from €1.87/kg in December 2007 to €1.46 in August 2020. This represents a 21% decrease in price paid for fresh produce over 13 years when everything else has been going up.

Back in 2007 the minimum wage was €8.65, that has since risen to €13.50 in 2025, representing a 56% increase in the cost of labour alone. This is one cost of many that has increased, fertiliser, energy, packaging, general farm inputs have all increased dramatically over that time, and yet the retailers have consistently and unrelentingly driven down the price paid for produce.

It is also a fallacy to state that the retailer takes the hit on the price promotions in stores, there and it is the added impact of driving down the price a farmer can get for his or her produce elsewhere.

There is a glimmer of change driven by consumer demand for Irish produce, where Irish producers can now demand a little more for what they are producing. The reality when you walk into any of these large supermarket stores is that they are promoting supporting Irish when mostly the produce is imported, have a look at our video or check it out for yourself when you are next in a supermarket.

The pressure and race to the bottom have driven a lot of good growers out of business, and now as the supermarkets feel the pressure from the consumer and sense the marketing opportunities to show themselves as the saviour of the industry, they are promoting with all their vigour the support for the Irish vegetable farmer.

It’s the sad reality that after 20 years of hollowing out the industry they now want to turn the other cheek, but only ever so slightly, not too much, and not enough in many cases. Any increase in price paid must still be fought for tooth and nail, and after years of devaluing the produce it looks like a very poor effort indeed.

But any change in mindset is being driven by one thing and that is completely down to you,

you the consumer demanding more local Irish produce.

We have growers all over the country of Ireland, from Joe Kelly in Mayo, To Padraigh Fahy and Una Ni Bhroin in Beechlawn in Galway, to Enda Hoban and Orla Burke in Galway, Audrey and Mick in Millhouse organic farm, Cameron in Battlemountain organic farm, Philip in Coolnagrower organic farm in Offally, Richard Galvin with his Irish organic apples in Waterford. Banner berries with their amazing blueberries in Clare, Donnelly with his organic cherries in Dublin, then there is Garynahinch mushrooms, McArdles mushrooms, and leeks from Roy Lyttle in Antrim, plus Joachim and Jeanette in Galway also. And of course, our own amazing organic farm where Emmanuel and his team grow a whole range of fresh Irish organic produce. All of these growers are Irish, all are organic, and all are committed to growing sustainable produce. With your support we get to bypass the juggernaut of the supermarket buying machine, and all the damage it leaves in its wake, and we get to support ourselves and all these amazing other growers, but only and very much because of your support.

Thank you.

Kenneth

No Chemicals. Ever.

by Kenneth Keavey

‘No chemicals ever in our food chain’  It was a pretty simple idea, and before the thought of having to get certified or go down that regulation route (which you must do if you are to use the word “organic”)  that was the cornerstone of our belief. No chemicals because chemicals, (and as somebody once said on Instagram all things are chemicals, and that is true enough), so let me clarify no synthetic manmade, toxic chemicals that kill living beings, kill plants, kills insects and bees, and damage our health, none of those chemicals will ever be used on our farm because they hurt us and they hurt the environment, they hurt the living things we share this planet with and it turns out they even damage our microbiome.

During the last few weeks as we were waiting patiently for our field of wild clovers and phacelia (For the bees) to come into its own there was a distinct absence of insect life. But in one particular part of our farm where we have our brassicas planted there was an abundance of bees and flies and butterflies. In this particular patch of ground (about 3 acres) the previous year we had sown the same mix of wildflowers we were waiting for in another field this year. These flowers had reseeded themselves and came up with the crops of broccoli, and cabbage and kale. They were earlier to mature and to flower as the seed was already in the ground and now, they were providing food and homes to 1000s of insects and bees.

If we had started our year as many conventional farmers do, then the first step would have been to treat this field with Roundup to kill all the plant life that resided there. There then would have been applications of more herbicides to supress any plants that survived the Roundup, followed by multiple rounds of pesticides and fungicides applications. You certainly would have had broccoli and cabbage and kale, but nothing else, no bees no flies, no wildflowers, no weeds here and there that provide homes to all these amazing pieces of our biodiverse puzzle.

So, it is with chemicals they remove parts of our ecosystem, and they are exceptionally good at being nonselective. From my days studying pharmaceuticals, the silver bullet was the holy grail, a highly selective therapeutic that would only target the disease and not healthy cells. An impossible panacea with traditional chemistry, and here farmers are being Advised to go out into fields with bucket loads of toxic chemicals and unload them on our food and nature indiscriminately. And I don’t care one bit for MRLs (maximum residue limits, which are generally set in conjunction with the manufacturer) they don’t protect us. Current predictions estimate the market for these crop chemicals to be nearly $330 billion by 2030! When there is that much money involved lets me clear it is not the planet that these companies want to take care of, it is the same as the petrochemical industry or the tobacco industry.   

So here is to food and a food system minus all these toxic destructive chemicals.

Kenneth

Where have all the insects gone?

by Kenneth Keavey

It was on a very rare occasion that we used to make a trip to Dublin from Galway. Back in the 80s it was a long journey, there were no motorways back then and the all too familiar bottle neck in Athlone could often cause long delays, but it was always exciting. Stopping along the side of the road to eat homemade sandwiches also gave us a chance to clean the windscreen of the mass of insect debris, that would at times stop my dad from seeing ahead. Cleaning of the windscreen was expected and was an inconvenience, how things have changed in 30 years.


If the level of insect splatters is a measure of the health of this very important ecosystem, then by all accounts today it is only one step from total annihilation. Test it for yourself, next time you drive down the motorway, how many insects splatter on your windscreen? Virtually none you will find. So, what has happened and where have they gone?


This year on our farm up until relatively recently there has been a noticeable absence of butterflies and bees. The decline in butterfly populations and diversity is well documented.  Not only that but Experts estimate that flying insects across Europe have declined 80 percent on average, causing bird populations to drop by more than 400 million in three decades, these are astounding figures. Insects are also the world’s top pollinators — 75 percent of 115 top global food crops depend on animal pollination, including cocoa, coffee, almonds and cherries.


In his 2022 book titled ‘The Insect Crisis’, journalist Oliver Milman set out the grim scenario of how our actions as humans are causing catastrophic destruction of this critical world.  Milman describes the insect kingdom as “the tiny empires that run the world”, they are the starting point for all other higher life forms, without whose existence entire ecosystems would collapse.


Did you know that it is now relatively standard practice to eliminate all competing plants from grasslands for dairy production, leaving vast monocultures. The use of herbicides to clear plant diversity followed by pesticides to destroy insect diversity leaves very little for these amazing small creatures to flourish on. If the insects disappear what do the birds eat? What about all our pollinators? What happens to the food crops that rely on these? This typical short-term approach to intensification of global food production will hurt us all in the long run.


The good news is that reestablishing these insect populations before it is too late is easy, it requires some effort, but it is easy. Leave diversity in our fields, don’t spray everything in sight to within an inch of its life. Let’s be clear we don’t need to anyway, all this chemical spraying is quite frankly ridiculous and unnecessary.  Plant hedgerows, plant an acre of phacelia and clovers to enrich the fertility of the ground but also the fertility of the local ecosystems and biodiversity. 


It was when we started planting wildflower strips that we noticed an astounding level of bee life return to our farm. There were honeybees and several different types of bumble bee, and all sorts of other flying insects. We had created a floral reef for insects! On a sunny evening there are hundreds of thousands of bees and insects humming away, and if you stop and listen, it is then that you truly appreciate the magnificent of these little flying creatures and the amount of life a relatively small piece of land can sustain if it is given a chance.


As always thanks for your support
Kenneth

Gardening, smoking a pipe, a penknife and our food……….

by Kenneth Keavey

I doubt my grandad spent any great deal of time thinking about food provenance. But eating fresh healthy food was part of his life. It was excruciatingly hard work producing food back in the 50s, backbreaking, without the aid of machines or modern technology, but the food they grew was healthy and free from chemicals.

If you would like to listen to my little story this week from one of our fields CLICK HERE!

He worked as the head gardener in Cregg castle, and he most definitely as did my dad had a flare for growing vegetables. Now although I am sure food wasn’t something for the after mass discussion on a Sunday it would have been on their minds. Certainly, though there was no need to discuss what was sprayed on the food, was it wrapped in plastic or not, where it came from, was it sustainable, was it healthy, was it ultra processed, as none of that was relevant back then.

I do remember his garden as a child, I distinctly remember certain things such as the little seat he had, where he used to smoke his pipe, and the penknife he always had with him (incidentally an indispensable tool to even the modern organic farmer). He used to make raised beds behind the hayshed and sow all sorts of things, from potatoes to carrots, but he also sowed sweet peas on a trellis and had apples.

Another memory and not altogether a pleasant one I have is of having jam jars from the trees in the summer with water and residual jam to trap the hoards of wasps, and stop them from eating the gorgeous sweet apples.

My other grandad used to come out from town for a bucket or two of potatoes and this was part of the sometimes-weekly trip to the country side. Either that or he would visit the farmers market on Saturday in Galway, back then it truly was a farmers’ market, rough and ready though it was.

Food too was celebrated such as the first new potatoes, this we still do today and we have just started with our own amazing organic new season potatoes from Cameron in Battlemountain organic farm. A point to note here is that the prices we are paying for these potatoes is up 50% on last year.

But what has happened over the last 70 years, how has such a large chasm opened up between the person eating the food and the food itself. Giant retail businesses have grown and made it their business to create this great divide it serves a purpose of control and it drives enormous profits into the hands of investors. The shiny plastic wrappers deflect from the reality, the faces of the smiling farmers, the special offers, it all hides secrets of our food system that we are never privy to. The big mechanics behind the scenes that move vast quantities of food around the world, the hidden corners that are cut, the environmental atrocities that are committed, this is all brushed under the shiny carpet.

It does seem strange to think that the food we put into our bodies, probably one of the most important things we buy, we probably know least about and is frequently relegated to the bottom of the priority list. The connection between what we eat, our health and the health of the planet is clear, and rekindling the connection with our food could be one of the most important steps we take to improve our own health and protect our world from further environmental devastation. It is also the one thing we absolutely have control over and can change.

Thank YOU for making that change.


Kenneth

PS We are right in the middle of full harvest season and having your support during the summer is more important than ever as we always see a marked drop in orders, leaving us with a surplus of our own and other Irish organic farmers produce, please support us for the month of August if you can, click to see our IRISH SECTION HERE.

An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

by Kenneth Keavey

I was delighted to welcome Sean Owens and Callum Patrick Swift to our farm yesterday, two amazing and inspiring individuals, who had driven from Dublin to have a podcast chat about the planet, food and all sorts of other things. I believe our little interview will be on their podcast “climate conversations”  soon, give them a listen, I will keep you posted when it is available. 

They are both environmentalists, but with a twist.

They are doctors and both are members of “IRISH Doctors for the Environment” and “Plant Based Doctors”. Their focus is on caring for patients and people but weaving in care of the environment into their practice also. This is forward thinking, the kind of thinking our planet desperately needs, and gives me hope for the future.

I was, I have to say awe struck as Callum asked if he could use our electric charge point for his electric van which was identical to our electric van that we use to delivery some of our veggies in, how cool was that!

Both are advocates for eating more plant-based foods, the old idiom I used the other day is really true I guess: “no doctor will ever tell you to eat less vegetables”, and as Callum pointed out the 5 a day advice has pretty much been relegated to the back seat now; the current thinking is: eat as much vegetables as you possibly can.

We had an interesting and fun chat; it is I guess easy to speak to the converted, but it was also liberating to be able to talk freely about things that are clearly really important to the two lads and to all of us here on the farm too.

Sean spoke about eating the rainbow and how incorporating an array of different coloured vegetables into our daily eating regime is so good for our health. I think we all agreed that the best way to improve our health is to take small changes and make them a habit. 

We had a wander around the farm, sampled a sea of green kale, and of course went to scratch George and Florence’s belly’s. Funny how our two rescue pigs never object to having their backs scratched.

I took away from our conversation that our mission to grow the most amazing local organic plants here in Galway and deliver them (along with all the other very best healthy food around) to homes all over the country is indeed the right thing to be doing.

So, lads thanks for a decent shot in the arm of much appreciated encouragement.

I think neither of the two fellas would have a problem with the saying. “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”. In fact, as they said themselves, current thinking is moving towards preventing people going to hospitals and for that to happen, we all need to focus more on what we eat and on our health way before there is a problem. 

Thanks

Kenneth

Every Year it Happens

by Kenneth Keavey

Every year it happens, we are waiting and waiting and then bang out of the blue it all starts again. I guess life is like that sometimes, we push and we shove and want to change things, and then when we finally just accept the ways things are (often because what we were doing was making no difference anyway) and least expect it things fall into place.

So it was this morning with my first farm walk in two weeks. We have been struggling with the dark closed in feeling of winter, and then this morning bright sunshine, singing birds, and life were evident all around.

The crops need to have our focus again, they are flying. We have the best kale harvest in years, our leeks are amazing as is the purple sprouting broccoli.

We are out in the fields everyday but today we start in earnest after we have finally shrugged off winters cloak.

Nature is very subtle, we are always on the watch for change, and somehow just suddenly it changes without you noticing. Like a seed germinating, one day it is a seed and the next it is a plant is has germinated, just like that, this is the miracle and power of nature. It is the same with the kale regrowing, it just happens when the time is right. Or the birds singing a spring morning chorus they just begin, and wow were they out in force this morning. 

I get excited at this time of the year, the start of a new growing season and the challenges and opportunities it brings fill me with hope for the year. 

It is a natural cycle and as we emerge from the dark winter months there is a sense at least on the farm of a new slate, a fresh start, a chance to begin the journey anew.

Nature is wonderful like that, and up until this period in man’s history it has been stable and consistent. I read this morning that the Gulf Stream which here in Northern Europe we rely on for our stable weather patterns is not in good shape. 

These complex global climate regulation mechanisms are hard to understand I would imagine, but there are clear signs that climate stability all over our one and only beautiful home is being compromised.

I do admit to getting frustrated with the slow pace of change, it doesn’t make sense to me. There is a phenomenal opportunity now to take the risk and invest in Green Energy, to cut consumption and do so much more. We as a small farm have done it, and we as a small country can do it.

But maybe it is like the kale regrowing or the seed germinating, you can’t force the seed to grow faster or the kale to appear faster, but all of a sudden without even noticing it has changed.

Maybe that is happening now too with movement to cut consumption, power our lives with green energy, moving to more plant-based diets, all these things are happening.

The most amazing thing is you are causing this change by supporting us.

Thank you.

Kenneth

The Rewards of Harvest

by Kenneth Keavey

Lughnasa the Irish word for August represents the start of the harvest season and it is embedded in our culture and identity. It is a celebration of the harvest season, and both myself and Toby were having our own little festival in the field of clover here! 

By September we are celebrating the fruits of many months of labour in the fields it is the true month of harvest.

Growing and harvesting your own food can be so rewarding. Watching the small seedlings transform into robust healthy plants that provide food is truly one of the many miracles of nature. 

Sometimes, it seems that the food is an added bonus, and that the pleasure and the reward of working in the soil is enough. It feeds the soul.  Research has shown that putting your hands in soil can help ease depression and being outside cheers people up.

Rekindling that connection with our food and the land is something that is central to our identity.  

Our grand-parents knew what good food tasted like, they knew where their food came from and they knew how it was produced.

We have handed the control of our food to a handful of global corporations that run an efficient feeding machine, which has disconnected us from primary food production. Supermarkets have added a layer of separation that takes us another step further away from our food. In recent years they have seen the value in putting the smiling farmer on their walls in a weak attempt to give the impression that they are reconnecting us to our food.

We have relinquished not only this connection but the skills and ability to produce our own food.

We have become accustomed to the always available food culture, everything we ever need is always there on the supermarket shelves, plastic clad ready to be added to our shopping basket.

We have paid a high price for this choice and convenience.  

If you are honest, what do you know about the food you are eating today for dinner? Where was it produced? How was it produced? How were the people treated that grew it? Difficult questions and mostly ones that don’t cross our minds.

However, the answers to these questions will not only open our eyes, they are the key to a shift in what we eat and how we approach our food. They can also lead to a healthier you and crucially a healthier planet.

We are right in the middle of harvest season now and it is wonderful. If you ever wondered if you could manage to eat with the seasons, then now is your best shot. 

And if you don’t know why you might start eating seasonally here are the whys: 

  1. Reduce your carbon footprint massively.
  2. Get more nutritious food. Freshly harvested food has a higher nutrient content.
  3. Get an amazing taste experience “how food used to taste”
  4. Support real local jobs.
  5. Support the skills needed to grow our own food. 
  6. If it is organic you are supporting a system of food production that enhances biodiversity rather than degrades it.

So as with the traditional feast of Lughnasa why not get some good local food in, and celebrate the beautiful bounty of your gardens and our fields by a simple meal with family and friends. 

Kenneth

Get a beautiful box of organic veg delivered to your door here.

Resilience

by Kenneth Keavey

Resilience is the ability to recover from difficulties. As an organic farmer growing vegetables in the West of Ireland being resilient then is something that you would think is second nature, hmmm???

Our farm may be a little more resilient than most by the virtue that it is smallish (40acres), organic, diverse (we grow loads of different varieties of vegetables) rich in biodiversity (hedgerows, trees, bees, wildflowers) and alive but it is still a constant challenge to make it all work.

In the short-term resilience costs, there is a cost to planting trees and hedgerows, there is a cost to leaving acres to go wild. There is a cost to growing many different crops and managing all the challenges that come with it, the cost of energy and time of training new people each year, the cost of keeping chaos at bay without the use of chemicals.

In the longer term, resilience in our food chain pays dividends, more bees to pollinate our plants, better soil structure reducing water logging and flooding, vibrant and healthy biodiversity that keeps pests in check. Ultimately resilience helps produce better, tastier, healthier food, so instead of focusing on producing things as cheaply as possible, we focus on producing things as sustainably as possible.

But a long-term approach to food production is not something that the major retailers seem to have any interest in. The short termism of the supermarkets may deliver cheap food but in the long run there will be a price to pay.

Endless machine repairs…

But a long-term approach to food production is not something that the major retailers seem to have any interest in. The short termism of the supermarkets may deliver cheap food but in the long run there will be a price to pay.

This is the question I keep returning to. We certainly do not have the deep pockets of the supermarkets and yet to an extent we are competing with them, they set the pricing, they devalue fresh food by loss leading. How can we compete and be sustainable and resilient at the same time? Well, the answer is we cannot, we cannot sell food for less than the value it takes to grow the food! There is no getting away from the fact that to protect our planet we need to produce different food and we need to do it sustainably; we need a fair and resilient food system.

So, I think in our little patch in the West of Ireland we will continue to plan to be more resilient. But this month on the farm a different form of resilience is being tested and we are being stretched to the limit. The weather has not been kind and it is putting us under a level of pressure that I don’t enjoy. Can you be resilient while falling behind with planting and weeding, never having enough resource, of the land being endlessly wet, of uncovering crops and finding 40% eaten by creatures. Endless setbacks bend your will, stretch your ability to stick with it, they make you want to quit, stop, turn back, and give up, but inside all of this messy stuff there is a deep-rooted commitment to keep going, a conviction (even if we can’t feel it) it will be better soon, it always is!

How easy it is to forget though? I am not new to this and after 15 years of farming in the West of Ireland wet ground and excessive rain in June should not be a shock. Maybe then it is just that I am older, and I wish things would be different. I know too in a month it will all look so different, but I find I must keep reminding myself of this. So that too is a form of resilience, to keep going even when you really do not feel like it.

Squashes being planted into bio-plastic, compostable weed suppressant

Here is to each of us being more resilient and to a more resilient food system!

Thank you.

Kenneth

Food Waste

by Kenneth Keavey

Hopefully we will all be doing what the carrots in this photo are doing soon!

Over the last 15 years we have seen a fair bit, and although generally things are never black and white, one thing stands out for me as being just that: food waste. Whatever way you look at it, it is wrong.

We work really hard here to reduce food waste, it is not always possible, but it is one of our core values. There are times when the quality just is not good enough and we will never ever compromise on the quality of what we send out in our boxes.

We grow our own food so we have a very good understanding of what is ok and what is not. We make sure we harvest as close to packing the boxes as possible, we work with other growers to ensure we have the freshest best produce. 

But there is one thing we never do, we never discriminate based on looks, on wonkiness. If a carrot is wrapped around another carrot will we grade it out? Absolutely not, we will CELEBRATE it, If a potato is showing a little cheekiness, well that is absolutely ok with us. In fact, we want vegetables like that.

This ‘WONKY’ food tastes the same, it has the same nutritional value, it looks the same on our plates it has been grown sustainably on organic land. It makes a lot of sense to us to NOT grade out vegetables like that. I guess we are pretty lucky that we do not have to conform to supermarket standards, that we set out own standards and we can do this because we know you our customers are ok with getting cheeky potatoes every now and again.

Ultimately, we appreciate this because we know how hard it is to grow food. Right now, as I write, this we are behind with our planting, the weather is not being very seasonal, it is to reach 2C tonight and the temperatures have been very disappointing for May and heading into June it is still wet and cold.

I hope we get a break soon, as we have plants backing up waiting to go into the wet fields, and the plants that are already in the fields are behind where they should be. It is hard not to feel a little anxious, will the weather ever give us a break? Every year it is has, and this year I hope will be no different, so, we wait and be patient, there really is very little else we can do.

So, as a farmer when you consider all the effort required to produce the food it would be extremely disheartening to think the end result might be your produce being dumped in a bin. We have designed a food storage fridge magnet flyer to help you in the first step to avoid food waste – correct storage and using your delicate fruit and veg first is key. It’ll be packed in all the boxes next week. We hope you find it useful! Read our blog about food waste here for more ideas on how to cut your food waste.

Many growers of course have these rules imposed on them by the people that hold the keys to the kingdom: the supermarkets. Food does get rejected based on appearance and this is something that gets under my skin, it is wrong for so many reasons.

Many growers of course have these rules imposed on them by the people that hold the keys to the kingdom: the supermarkets. Food does get rejected based on appearance and this is something that gets under my skin, it is wrong for so many reasons.

I believe we are promised warmth and full sun tomorrow and that is good, it means we can get on with the work of growing food, and that makes me happy. Our carrots when they come later in the season may not be perfectly perfect in shape, but they are prefect in every other way.

Thank you for supporting our farm and know that in doing so, not only are you contributing to reducing your carbon footprint, and reducing your waste burden on our planet, you are also contributing to reducing food waste and supporting these cheeky potatoes and loving carrots!

Thank you


Kenneth