The strategies for coping with economic challenges are many and varied.
Haggling is de rigeur these days. In food terms, there's the 'farmers' market 5E office lunch' made pret a manger from the produce available that day.
Or restaurants charging no corkage. Remember shopping trips to Northern Ireland? The Sterling Euro price match seems to have halted that one.
Manna organic food store in Tralee has come up with two novel strategies. The first, earlier in the year, involved Ryan Coote of Manna, trained in Ballymaloe cookery school, offering himself as a raffle prize.
Coote cooked a full organic 4 course meal for the winner Pauline Mannix and her book club buddies.
Ryan Coote, is one part of a trio who run the Manna Organic Store at 1 New Street in Tralee.
Coote, along with Claire and Thomas O'Connor all studied Organic Horticulture and Farming in the Organic College in Dromcollogher, Co. Limerick.
The shop is the region's organic haven, an oasis of calm and wholesomeness, adorned with an array of organic foods. Along with their own farm's produce, according to Claire O Connor, �we buy from 2 local organic growers, and excess from the college [Dromcollogher] when they have it�.
Local and Irish organic cheeses such as Kate Carmody's Beal, and Siobhan Ni Ghairbhith's St. Tola's are especially popular.
More recently the trio have decided to kick off their heels and take to the coast for the summer. A surfing holiday?
Not quite. According to Manna's Claire O Connor:
�July and August can be a bit slower for the shop while the coastal areas of Kerry are mobbed with tourists. So we decided to open a temporary shop in the Marahees�.
I asked Claire how the new venture is going: �very well� she tells me. �It's mainly weekend business, whereas in the town its still Monday to Friday.
�The new shop is getting a lot of tourists, and they want different sorts so things than our town customers�.
She elaborates: �lots of people want fruit rather than veg: we've stopping bringing out large quantities of veg to be cooked from scratch. Instead, its fruits like nectarines and cherries that are flying out.� And when its veg there are after, she points out, �its the ready to eat variety � cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers�
In other words, fruits masquerading as vegetables.
�Wholefoods and dried goods are also going well for us out there: pasta and pasta sauces, peanut butter and the like.�
Again there is a convenience dimension to this. People do not necessarily want an abundance of fresh foods going off in the caravan or mobile home.
�We're also selling a lot of drinks � organic cans of fizzy cola, juices, real summery treats. People are constantly asking us about opening a coffee shop out there� she tells me.
The shop is adorned with funky cow print oil cloths on the shelving and the art of Stephen Holt on the walls, which adds to the causal, summery vibe.
Meanwhile, they have a farm to run. The three share a four acre site which provides produce for the shop. Along with this, the O' Connors have 25 acres, 13 of which are in FEPs, the forestry environmental protection scheme.
�We've just planted with 60% oak, 20% ash, 20% shelterbelts of alder and larch, and 10% set aside for trees bought from Ted Cooke grown from Ballyseedey stock, and the organic college�.
They plan to expand on this: �We have planted 1 acre of apples from the Irish Seed Savers, are planning a large soft fruit area, and an experimental fruit tree polytunnel.�
She goes on: �We have 2 tunnels up for growing in already and have our own salad bags, lettuce and wheatgrass in the shop, now being followed by herbs and tomatoes.�
�We also hope to get in geese to weed the FEPS trees and some chickens and ducks for eggs and meat.�
Meanwhile, if you are out at the Marahees this month, you know where to drop by for an organic treat.
Manna is here (too)
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