Organic champions, and going back to our roots

I was delighted to be a judge at this year's Bord Bia National Organic Awards. After all, spending
a day eating and drinking fine food and drink... me? Never...

What was particularly interesting in sampling and examining all the shortlisted entries was the development that the organic sector has experienced in the last ten years; it really has been phenomenal. Yes it's only a small part of the national grocery spend, but as a sector it has developed large successful brands like Glenisk and also promoted Irish artisan food businesses in general.

When I was a producer on Ear to the Ground in the late 1990s I remember an editorial meeting about an organic cheese story we were planning to shoot. We vacillated over the decision as we felt for a farming programme organics were considered niche and outside the box. The situation is totally different today. We know that the marketplace for organic food in Ireland is worth 104 million euros annually. In Germany one in every five euros spent on food is spent on organics. There's no reason why we can't grow our domestic demand and also our share of export product in Germany with the expertise and development farmers and producers here have built over the past decade and more.

Crowes Farm (pictured above and below) won the overall award for their dry-cure rashers. The Crowe family have been farming in Tipperary for over a hundred years and switched over to organic certification in 2007. They now rear and butcher their own pigs (TJ is the butcher in the family) and their short listed rashers were pretty outstanding. We felt this product really deserved the overall award as it just had great eating quality. As it's low in salt and added water it didn't leave the customary mess when cooked. It tasted of good quality pork, not nitrates. Imported bacon which is a problem for Irish pig producers has even

higher levels of added water and nitrate than is allowable in bacon processing in Ireland. So many consumers are eating something which doesn't resemble any type of pig meat but a white mess on the pan, and has shrunk to one third of its pre-cooked size.

That's why Crowe's bacon impressed; it looked and tasted great. The packaging was also simple but contemporary. Many of the products we judged had too much or too little information on the labelling and while I know it's something that's difficult to get right, it's really important for the consumer who pulls that product down from the shelf. I chatted to TJ after the awards ceremony and when I complimented him on the labeling he said it had taken months with the designers to get right. Goes to show hard work pays off.

While there were plenty of unusual foods short listed in the awards we felt as judges that some of the most notable were traditional Irish foodstuffs - Crowe's bacon, Pat Lawlor's porridge oats (pictured right) and Keogh's potatoes; all of whom also won their category. It chimes with where we are economically that the foods we are turning to and interested in again are far from complicated and Irish to the core. If it's a sign we're going back to basics then that can only be a good thing.

Congratulations to all the shortlisted entries and award winners, the quality of everything we judged shows a vibrant organic sector which in uncertain times, is still ploughing ahead offering great food, great food stories and food on the plate that you really want to eat.

"Back in the bottle"; how Irish milk can be more than a cheap commodity food...

This week in the Irish Times I'm examining "single estate milks", or milks produced from single farms and sold at a niche level. It's a fascinating way of adding value to a traditional product that has huge price vulnerabilities. Here's the piece. -

The milk van may have disappeared from our lives, but the clinking of glass bottles and the creamy first pour is back on the Irish breakfast table.


The Irish Times, 9th June 2012
Suzanne Campbell

“Single estate milks” – milk produced by a single farm – are a new growth area in Irish food. They’re the non-homogenised alternative to milk from the large agri-giants that most of us put in our breakfast cereal every day.

While it sounds glamorous, “single estate” milk was how milk was originally sold in Ireland. One household with spare milk sold it to another – or it was bartered for pig meat, beef, or poultry. The recent rise in organic milk sales has given other farmers the cue to do the same. Now milk produced from single herds, including Darina Allen’s tiny Jersey herd at Ballymaloe, is available to the consuming public.

The glass bottles and cute labelling of Ballymore Farm milk hints at the innovation and sense of fun behind some of the single-estate milks. Down on their land in Co Kildare, Mary Davis “does a bit of everything”, as well as yoghurt-making, alongside her husband; farmer Aidan Harney (pictured above), and business partner Joey Burke. Earlier this year the team made the brave move to bottle and sell their milk direct to consumers.

“Bottling it ourselves seemed to be a completion of what we do – we manage the herd, milk the cows and then sell it, otherwise the milk goes off in a big tank and you never see it again.”

Their 50 cows are thriving on the spring/summer grass and since going organic five years ago, Davis has seen big changes on the farm, and not just the orders from top-range retailers such as Selfridges in London. “So many things have improved. Our herd are on deep straw beds in a big, open shed, they’ve more room.” Most notably, Davis says their cows now find calving a “non-event”. What’s the reason? “Because they’re happier.”

The bottled milk from Ballymore Farm is pasteurised to kill bacteria, but unlike mass-produced milk, it’s not homogenised, a process used in the large creameries to break up fats and give milk from many different herds more consistency. When you unscrew the cap from a bottle of Ballymore milk, the cream has risen to the top. For Davis, this is about more than nostalgia.

“Many people can’t tolerate milk because homogenisation disperses fats down into the milk. Ours is easier to digest, and that’s one of the reasons why many consumers now want non-homogenised milk.” In Donegal, An Grianán, one of Ireland’s largest organic farms, produces milk from coastal land on the Inishowen peninsula, with its milk and yoghurts now stocked by Dunnes, Tesco and Superquinn.

In these lean times, why are customers choosing more expensive milks? “Many of our customers are young mums, who don’t like the thought of fertilisers and things ending up in the dairy products they give their kids,” says Sheila Gilroy Collins from An Grianán. “But it’s also that our milk simply tastes fantastic.”

For coffee-maker Colin Harmon, the taste factor is everything. At his coffee shop 3FE on Grand Canal Street, the coffee changes every week according to seasonality. but Harmon realised he wasn’t paying the same attention to the milk. “I went to visit some farms, looked at cows, and now we buy all our milk from the An Grianán herd in Donegal. “It’s organic, but more importantly for us, it tastes great,” he says.

Next week, Harmon travels to Berlin to compete in the World Barista Championships, and is taking milk from An Grianán with him for his cappuccino entry.

“I travel a lot throughout the world and I think we don’t realise how incredible Irish milk is,” he says.“The milk market is very like coffee in that most of it is based on cheap product at commodity prices. Farms sell milk into a system; it’s mixed together at the creameries, so there’s no incentive to really up the quality.”

Tommy Relihan began producing glass-bottled milk on his farm in Adare (pictured below) two years ago.“When I started, there were 20,000 dairy farmers in Ireland but only five were licensed to sell their own milk.”

His Adare Farm milk isn’t organic, but is from a single herd and non-homogenised. “I get great satisfaction from bottling our own milk. Consumers love it; first the glass bottle catches their eye, then they say – ‘that’s real milk’.”

Ballymore Farm; David Tiernan, who makes of Glebe Brethan cheese in Co Louth, and Darina Allen also sell single-estate “raw milk”, which is unhomogenised and unpasteurised. Raw milk is preferred by many Irish consumers who have dairy intolerances, or who find it helps in the management of ailments ranging from asthma to eczema. In Ireland, raw milk is caught in a food-safety loophole, but at the moment, dedicated producers and supporters want raw milk to be kept on the market.

Single-estate milks may be voguish but there’s no doubt customer demand is there. “Not just raw milk, but unhomogenised milk, is an issue of consumer choice,” says Mary Davis. “Our milk tastes great but it also has so many health benefits for people, that’s why they want to buy it.”

Spring Lamb from farm to fork

From Farm to Fork: Sweetbank Farm, Wicklow
The Irish Times 15/5/2010





WORDS: SUZANNE CAMPBELL
PHOTOGRAPHY: ALAN BETSON

To stressed out city folk, organic farming may seem like an idyllic occupation, but as Co Wicklow farmer Debbie Johnston explains, it's not all home-baked pies and eco-glamour.

ON A SPRING day, when the white cuddly lambs are frolicking in the fields, you could be forgiven for thinking that farming is one of the nicest occupations on the planet. At Debbie and David Johnston’s farm in Newcastle, Co Wicklow, the scene is perfect. From cut-stone farm buildings, the couple go about their work, managing 90 head of cattle, a summer fruit farm and their biggest enterprise – more than 100 organic certified ewes. But though it may seem a bucolic idyll, the Johnstons have just finished lambing, and they have a more realistic take on things.

“Lambing!” says Debbie. “The BBC did a week of television shows on it and we were just laughing watching it. For us it’s hard work, we’re exhausted now that we’ve got to the end of it.” Their ewes began lambing in mid-February. “My husband, David, does all the work. To be honest, I’m really the support crew. He goes in and out of the sheds all night and makes sure that every ewe is doing okay. You could leave them on their own but he doesn’t take that risk.”
And it can be a risky business. Debbie showed me two adorable orphaned lambs whose mothers had died. “It does happen, you do everything you can to avoid it but every farm will have a couple this time of year.” These two are well-loved characters, climbing up the fence to see us, or more accurately, to see if there’s any chance of a feed. It’s no surprise that the antics of an orphaned lamb are a current YouTube sensation.

But having cute livestock doesn’t necessarily pay the bills. Over the past year many farmers have been weeping into their mugs of tea as milk prices fell to below the cost of production, and beef and grain incomes weren’t much better. Then winter set in, which we’re only just emerging from. “In a normal year you expect your grass to be growing by St Patrick’s Day,” Debbie says. “This year was like nothing we’d seen before. We had no grass, we had to use up stocks of feed and spent days breaking ice on water troughs, sliding around the yard and praying for the weather to change.”

Luckily, spring seems to have finally arrived and it’s with spring lamb that the Johnstons have carved out a niche business for themselves. They sell direct to customers who come to their farm to pick up a box containing a whole or half lamb during the months May to October. “We did many things over the years to diversify. The land had been in David’s family for four generations but he saw the writing on the wall in terms of farm incomes dropping and knew we could no longer rely on producing the same thing year after year.”

The Johnstons’ first innovation was growing summer fruits, something they are still involved in. They opened a farm shop which they ran successfully for 10 years. “It was really lovely but we found most of our customers were coming to the coffee shop and not really buying our produce. The reality is you have to be selling what you grow, and when we costed the time and effort to run the shop, we called it a day.”

At the moment, a mix of beef, summer fruits and organic lamb is working well. “You always have to be thinking on your feet with farming, and what we do is to offer top quality, grass-fed lamb at a really attractive price. Our product is up to 30 per cent cheaper than the supermarkets and selling direct is a way of controlling what we produce, all the way to the customer. We are not waiting for market fluctuations or depending on someone else to set the price.”
Debbie keeps a close eye on the business end of the farm and the minute something stops making money, “that’s when you change your strategy. It’s hard when there’s such a drive to make food cheaper, but cheap imported food is a false economy for all of us. After all, farming and food employ 300,000 people in Ireland.”

What keeps her doing what she’s doing when margins are so tight? “Sometimes you really wonder why you keep going,” she says with a laugh. “But I do really love it and I still get attached to the livestock, I even get a bit sad when animals are loaded into the trailer.”
Nevertheless, attachment to their lambs doesn’t stop her giving me her top cooking tips. “Keep it simple,” she advises. “The flavour is there, so you don’t need much seasoning. I like to butterfly the leg, stick in some sprigs of rosemary and roast it on the barbecue. Or if you’ve a few people coming, use the loin of the lamb, tie in some herbs and cloves of garlic, pop it into the oven and serve with some new potatoes.” Cute or not, now I want to start cooking.
The Johnstons’ lamb is available from their farm at Tiglin, Newcastle, Co Wicklow. A half lamb is €85 and a full lamb is €190. A half lamb cut to customers’ requirements is roughly the size of an average freezer shelf.
See sweetbankfarm.com; tel: 086-1730497

FROM FARM TO TABLE
Ring of Kerry Quality Lamb is a group of 27 farmers who sell their lambs direct. All lambs are matured for a minimum of seven days and cut to the customer’s specification. ringofkerryqualitylamb.ie.

Fieldstown Farm in North Co Dublin delivers half or whole lambs, butchered to your specific requirements, to addresses in the greater Dublin area (whole lamb minimum for delivery). Customers from further afield can collect their order. irishfood.ie.

Lambdirect.ie is a group of eight farmers from Mayo who farm, butcher and sell their own mountain and lowland lamb. They offer cuts packed in sealed trays ready for the oven or freezer. This summer they plan to offer a barbecue pack. Free local delivery once a week in their van. Contact: Ray Cawley, Shanvallyard, Tourmakeady, Co Mayo.

Doolin Farm Direct supplies local limestone-reared lamb direct to the consumer through box schemes, on-line orders and farmers’ markets. Contact Alan Nagle, tel: 086-4014132, doolinfarmdirect@gmail.com.

Comeragh Mountain Lamb in Waterford offer boxes of lamb; a full lamb includes legs, shoulders, cutlets, loin and gigot chops, and mince. Recipes included with every delivery. comeraghmountainlamb.ie.