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

There’s No Planet B

by Kenneth Keavey

Our story this year has many parts to it. The planning and advice, the hard work and organisation of the farm team. The fertility and soil management, the weather and the birds and the bees have all played their part.

Our amazing team of packers, rising each morning sometimes at 4am to get to work at 5am to start packing your orders. Finally, having you our customers willing to supporting our farm and a whole bunch of good luck has got us through to another autumn, my 17th year growing vegetables and our 15th year in business.

Growing vegetables commercially is a tough endeavour and in the stony wet land of the West of Ireland it is particularly challenging.  

The skill and art of growing our food is so important and we need to preserve this knowledge. It is invigorating to see so many small-scale growers embrace sustainable growing.

Yet, many commercial growers are struggling, the work is too hard, the price for their produce is too low, the seasons (due to climate change) are unpredictable, and planning for a market that is ever changing and is sometimes 12 months in the future makes it a precarious undertaking indeed.

As with everything and it is no different in our food system, decisions based purely on financial gain with no regard for our environment are causing devastation to our planet.  

It is much easier for a large supermarket buyer to import cheap produce, grown abroad where labour is inexpensive and where very often the working conditions are poor, and the attention paid to biodiversity is scant than buy more expensive IRISH grown crops.  

I am glad we have you our customers and that we do not need to knock on supermarket doors to sell our produce.

Our harvest is overflowing, now we have parsnips, carrots, swedes, cabbage, leeks, celery, pumpkin, kale and Brussels sprouts, the last of the broccoli and the soon to start purple sprouting broccoli and the first time in 10 years we will have celeriac.

I think you might taste the flavour in your in your boxes, tell us if you do! You will also notice the size of all our crops, the warm September and a soil temperature that is 5C above normal means growth has continued well past when it should have slowed leading to bigger produce. 

The days are closing in now and the weather is wet and it should be cool, but as I write this, we have temperatures here in Galway of 17C and it is 8pm, is this climate change in action right here on our doorstep? 

Our promise is simple, “When you get a box from us you do not need to think about whether you are choosing sustainably, we promise you are”. 

Your support for us means our farm survives and thrives, our people stay in jobs, and we get to mind our little patch of land here in the West of Ireland sustainably.

Thank you

Kenneth

Simple, Real Food

by Kenneth Keavey

Yesterday my daughter Ella went down the fields and harvested a big bunch of kale she wanted to make kale crisps. I was impressed, who am I to stand in the way of a child who wants to voluntarily eat kale, I thought to myself!

Mostly though it is the other way around, often getting our kids to eat more vegetables can be a struggle, why is this? Why isn’t eating an apple, (or indeed kale crisps) instead of a chocolate bar easier? Why is doing the right thing sometimes so difficult? 

Why is our food system not better, healthier, kinder to us and our planet. How did we get ourselves into this crazy retail race to the bottom and how come it is so hard to value and want to eat real food? 

Both questions are linked. I did a stent in a major pharmaceutical company in the US as a research scientist. A friend of mine at the time worked in the food division, occasionally she would bring cookies to lunch for us to try that had been engineered in her lab to within an inch of their lives. Texture, flavour, taste, and crumbliness had all been optimised in the lab to allow just the right amount of sugar fat and salt to hit our taste buds in the right way at the right time to make them irresistible.  

Many of the processed foods including health bars and vitamin drinks that line supermarket shelves are about as healthy as eating spoonful’s of sugar, generally they contain high amounts of processed apple juice or conventional cereal and sugar substitutes. They rely on wonderfully creative science and marketing to make us believe how good for us they are, and of course they taste amazing.

We are sold the idea of free choice, but the reality is that nearly all of the big brands on our shelves are made by 10 giant multinational conglomerates. An industry built on cheap commodity products wrapped and packaged and sold as healthy, driven by profit, derived from a complex unsustainable food chain produces most of our food and it is damaging our health and destroying the planet.

So how is this system fair? How is it that these processed products have taken centre stage and are often seen by us the consumer as a prized food that can be sold for maximum profit? This is the carefully constructed reality we have been fed, it is not our fault it is just the way it.

It is simple, cheap commodity ingredients are processed and packaged to be sold as healthy alternatives to real food, that achieve maximum profit for manufactures and retailers. 

Deciphering what is good for our health and the planet is next to impossible these days. But it doesn’t have to be so complicated. 

There is one extremely straightforward step any one of us can take right now to revolutionise our food choices, the principle is simple: 

“EAT MORE FRESH ORGANIC PRODUCE”

We cannot eat too many vegetables and vegetables in all their guises are good for us. That’s pretty simple right?

So, choosing fresh organic locally grown food and working more fruit and veg into our daily routine is a magnificent way to improve how we feel and our long-term health, not to mention the benefits for the planet. 

So, Ella, go for it, all the kale in the world is yours!

Kenneth

Get a box of real, simple organic food delivered to your door anywhere in Ireland or Northern Ireland here.