Martin O Leary's Hill Farm: an epic excursion

Walking around Martin O Leary's farm on the Beara Peninsula is a bit of an epic adventure.

High altitude terrain, patches of heather, broadleaf forest, a 20 acre lake and panoramic views from the heights, next to the house when his father Patrick and the young Martin lived.

(image (c) Oliver Moore: the view towards the Reeks from Martin O Leary's farm)

Thousands of years of history and heritage are visible here too. Myself, Martin and Rover the Sheepdog walked from one stone circle to another. One of the stone circles has a large burial boulder in its centre, and is next to the bronze age cooking location, the fulacht fiadh.

We walked and talked for some hours on a blisteringly hot day - I was delighted when we did encounter that 20 acre lake, as it is brimming with crystal clear drinking water.

From the old farmhouse, to the left, you can see the misty mountain tops of the Mcgillycuddys. In the foreground, Lough Gleninchaquin, and to the right, the rolling mountains that make up some of his 800 acre holding.

Martin O Leary is one of the class of 2010: the farmers who joined the Organic Farming Scheme this year. He has just begun his two year conversion-to-organic period.

One of the ironies of the organic certification system for farms like this is that the vast majority of the land here was always organic: no sprays or synthetic fertilizers were ever used on 778 of his 800 acres. One 12 acre field near the farmhouse was fertilized up to 10 or so years ago.

And yet the entirety of holdings like this, indeed holdings without even the one formerly fertilized field, have to wait two years for full organic certification.

All the while, after 400 years of industrialisation and intensive farming in countries like the Netherlands or Germany, farms there can fully convert to organic in the same timeframe.

Before starting his conversion period, he found that it just didn't make sense to keep doing what he was doing: �We were farming conventionally all our lives, we were getting no returns really. Selling lambs in the autumn for little financial reward. We knew it wasn't sustainable.�

For Martin O Leary, playing to the strengths of the holding made complete sense: �I wanted a unique product to better reflect the land and location.�

That said, the market for organic lamb is weak, with the majority going into the conventional sector.

To deal with this, he has decided to direct sell. �I'll try to sell about five lambs each week at farmers' markets�.

Various cuts, mince and in particular lamb burgers are the main products he will sell. �The animals are finished off grass completely, I don't feed any rations to the animals I'll be sending to the butchers� he tells me.

The lambs will be allowed to mature beyond one year, to about 15-18 months, to grow at a natural pace without rations. This has resulted in a very lean animal thus far.

�My butcher was very impressed with the first animals I brought to him, in terms of leanness�.

�I'll mostly focus on selling a really high quality lamb burger at the farmers' markets. I'm putting all the good cuts into the lamb burgers, so it has leg and shoulder in there, which is very unusual for a burger. Its also just minced once, and there are no binders, fillers, seasonings or additives.�

These burgers are about 85% meat and 15% fat, completely different to standard burgers, which can have equal ratios of both, and plenty else thrown in too.

He has quite a few options for direct selling, and has looked around Munster and indeed further afield to try to assess what will most suit him.

For more images of the farm, see here

For more on the incredible meat that he's producing, see here

The world's first organic and fair trade olive oil from Palestine

Farmers and growers often face obstacles in their line of work. Bureaucracy, erratic weather, the cost-price squeeze, all take their toll.

Spare a thought for the olive growers of the West Bank and Gaza. According to a United Nations report from October 2008: �Palestinian farmers working in their fields have faced incidents of crop theft, tree uprooting, harassment and physical attack�.

�Israeli movement restrictions affect access to fields, markets and processing; raising transport costs and impairing delivery schedules� according to the report.

The report also cites the blockade of Gaza, which has a sea port, as a contributory factor.

These barriers mean that surplus olive oil worth tens of millions of Euro can go unsold, which can in turn effect farmers' returns negatively.

This UN report was released before the 3 week bombing and ground invasion of Gaza in January 2009, which killed about 1400 people, and compounded the situation.

Over 100,000 Palestinian farmers depend on their olive crop for an income. However in the last decade the annual harvest and access to export markets has been severely disrupted by the problems outlined above and �by the conflict between Israeli settlers and Palestinian farmers�, according to the Fair Trade organisation.

A major factor has been the militancy of these settlements. The settlements are �illegal and an obstacle to peace and to economic and social development [... and] have been established in breach of international law� according to the International Court of Justice.

The settlements are populated by especially hardline expansionist Zionists. This inevitably causes tension with the local Palestinian population.

There are 121 official settlements and a further 100 outposts built more recently in the West Bank. These more recent outposts are also illegal under Israeli law.

The Settlements use three times the amount of water as the rest of the population of the West Bank. They also control about 40% of the land of the West Bank, and are connected to each other and Israel itself be a road network, much of which Palestinians are banned or severely restricted from using.

Residents from Settlements like Hallamish and Yitzhar regularly uproot almond, fig and olive tress and also confiscated land.

Hallamish settlers' recent confiscations occurred despite an Israeli court order last December, which awarded property rights to the local An Nabi Saleh population.

Each week, An Nabi Saleh residents protest over their loss of land. These protests invariably end in Israeli Army attacks with rubber coated steel bullets, stun grenades and tear gas. Indeed, the tear gas attacks are so ferocious that they often set fire to olive, fig and almond plantations, according to the weekly reports issued by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)

Despite these sort of agricultural conditions, Palestinians somehow manage to produce olive oil for export.

�Palestine may not be in the atlas, but we have put it on the shelves.� So says Nasser Abufarha, founder of the Palestinian Fair Trade Association.

Abufarha, born near Jenin in the West Bank, was in Ireland last year to promote Zaytoun, the first olive oil product in the world to achieve Fairtrade certification.

Zaytoun is also certified organic and is produced near Abufarha's home town. �At first the farmers were skeptical,� Abufarha says, �They couldn't imagine why anyone would pay them above the market price. But they were willing to give it a try.�

In 2004 Abufarah established Canaan Fair Trade. In 2008, Canaan Fair Trade opened their new olive processing facility, on five acres of olive Courtry north of Jenin.

The facility employs 50, and commercialises the products of between 3000 and 5000 Palestinian farmers.

�Fair Trade isn't just about the price,� Abufarha says, though he acknowledges that the increase in income has been vital to many farmers in Palestine. �We have given farmers hope. An economic exchange that recognizes Palestinian farmers' rights and respects the value of their connection to their land, after years of marginalization under Israeli occupation, is a major accomplishment.�

Zaytoun organic and Fair Trade Olive Oil is available in select stores around Ireland.

Martin O Leary's farm

See the link over on the left or below for my other blog, which is basically my day job: I help farmers go from conventional commodity production to certified organic direct selling their own artisan foods. That's an initiative called Organics with Altitude.

I visited a farm last week from one of the farmers myself and Joe Condon work with. Have a look

Fruity Folk from Munster

Is there anything that says sunshine more than wild berries? The vibrant taste, coupled with wiling away a summer's evening picking the freshest of the fresh, - it's the stuff of Arcadian fantasy.

(pic: Brian Ingram of Wines of the Glen)

Brian Ingram, of Clare-based Wines of the Glen, has turned this healthy hobby into something of a burgeoning business. His country wines are made from fruits, berries and flowers.

�The elderberries and elderflowers are picked wild in the Irish countryside, the soft fruits are sourced from Irish fruit farms, the apple juice from Con Traas's apple farm in Cahir� he tells me as I sip my way through a few of his samples at an artisan food event in the Glor Music and Arts Centre, Ennis.

Wines of the Glen are the closest thing Ireland has to proper table wine. There are a handful of grape growers trying to makes wine in Ireland, but Wines of the Glen make excellent fruit and berry wines from Irish produce.

Based in Kilaloe, Ingram's company produces six of these country wines. �Our wine making year actually begins around now, late May to early June each year, when the hedgerows are full of elderblossom�. After that, there's strawberries from the Blackwater valley. July provides wild blackcurrants and gooseberries, and on into autumn. In the third season, elder and apple are sourced by the winery.

Elderberry, Strawberry and Blackcurrant produce their reds. The elderberry in particular stands out: lightly oaked, it also tastes a little like a new season Beaujolais, the famed Beaujolais Nouveau which appears each Autumn, made from that year's grapes. Ginger, gooseberry and an apple and elderflower blend produce their whites.

A local artist was commissioned to produce pieces that Ingram himself used for the bottle design; he does his own labelling and bottling and distributes about 3000 each year. The wines are available in select stores in Cork, Kerry, Clare, Galway and Dublin.

There are two very distinct benefits to local country wines. The first is that they are local. Many an eco conscious consumer, eager to buy more and more of their food and drink locally, lets it slip when it comes to the contents of the glass beside the dinner plate. And with more and more wines from the far flung corners abounding on the supermarket shelves, country wines, produced not just in Ireland, but mainly in Munster, are a real opportunity to add to your local food and drink repertoire.

The other benefit is health. It turns out that the antioxidant-related benefits of fruit wines surpasses grape wines. Research recently found that elderberry wines had four times the positive antioxidant rate of standard grape wine. Antioxidants are implicated in various health positives, mainly due to their work in preventing free radicals disrupt the cell's normal functioning.

The apples used by Brina Ingram come from Con Traas' farm in Cahir, Tipperary. Anyone on the main Limerick to Waterford road, or on route to Rosslare from the west, will have seen the signs for both the camping and the Apple Farm itself.

Its well worth a visit, being but a couple of hundred metres of a detour from this main road. 60 varieties of apples are grown on the farm's 40 acres, with 15 types grown in larger quantities.

The Traas family, who moved to Ireland from Holland in the 1960s, also grow numerous varieties of strawberry, raspberry, cherry, plums, and pears. Along with these fruits, they also produce the renowned Karmine apple juice, other Karmine juices from the fruits on the farm, and sparkling drinks, cider vinegars, jellys and jams. These, as well as both cooking and eating apples, are available in the well socked farm shop.

�Karmine is a cross between Coxes Orange Pippin and Jonathan - both of those have a strong flavour themselves, and it just adds a really strong aroma to the juice when you make it� according to Con Traas.

Karmine is the main ingredient of their juice, with smaller quantities of the juice of apples like Pinova and Elstar also going into the making of their juices.

The most recent fruit addition was in Spring 2009, when an acre of Opal plum trees was planted. According to Con Traas �one of the most important things we can do as fruit growers is plant a new crop. For some fruits like strawberries, they may only last for a few years, but for others, like apple or plum orchards, they might be there for forty years or more, so it is important to get it right.�

A dwarfing plum rootstock VVA-1 (also Krymsk-1) , which originated in the former USSR, was used. Its size allowed for the planting of 1200 trees on a single acre - � a planting that would have needed 7 acres using the traditional rootstocks�.

Awards have abounded for the Apple Farm: Minister of State for Horticulture, Ciaran Cuffe TD presented Con Traas with the top prize fruit growing at Bord Bia's National Horticultural Food Quality Awards in Dublin on March 31st. In 2009, Eurotoques presented an award for �promoting diversity, retaining Irish horticulture and producing top-quality fruit and fruit juices�.

A real home enterprise of a place, the Traas holding is also an award winning campsite, winning the most unique park in Ireland award at the 2007 Tourism Ireland/Bord Failte awards. The two enterprises compliment each other really well, with off season camping facilities being used for storage of apples and juice, the hardstands outside for storage of empty apple bins.

The Traas apples, blackcurrants and occasionally even strawberries also go into another Munster-based product, Wild Orchard smoothies.

The brainchild of former Pepsi juice business manager Diarmuid Crowley, who, during his time there, saw �a shift away from carbonated soft drinks and towards healthier options�.

Along with import substitution and the Traas fruits, the company also source their youghurt from the Compsey Creamery in Tipperary.

According to managing director Diarmuid Crowley �all the apple juice we use is Irish made, and as its an ingredient in the smoothies too, probably 25-30% of the raw materials are Irish grown.�

Wild Orchard has grown from humble origins in a Glanmire kitchen in 2000: �I purchased barrow loads of fruit and experimented with formulas in my kitchen. It was a leap of fate, but I really believed in my idea and knew from trends there was a growing market for healthy fruit drinks�.

The company, with a factory at the foot of the Galtee mountains, make pure fruit smoothies: For example, a Wild Orchard 330ml blackberry/blueberry smoothie is made up of 26 blueberries and 17 blackberries. Their current range includes ten smoothies and four freshly squeezed fruit juices.

As the smoothie is a relatively new phenomenon in Ireland, one especially suited to a mobile, urbane, health aware consumer on the go, their company history in many ways mirrors Irish recent history: growth upon growth and then retraction, along with some hopeful green shoots for the future.

In 2002 they were asked to produce own label smoothies for a large retailer, which helped with their business growth. A similar arrangement transpired in 2004 for a food company. By then, they had five of their own smoothies and three juices and were making four products for the retailer and three for the food company. Growth rates were strong, and continued in 2007 with export initiatives, by which time they were making over two million smoothies and had a turnover of 1.5 m.

And now, with the recession, things have not been as strong for any smoothie company: �We've come back a bit since 2007; the smoothie market in general is down by 40%and we'd be reflective of that too; we're back at levels we were at in 2006. We're hoping to build again slowly;� according to Diarmuid Crowley.

� Over the last 12 months or so, we're had more of a push on consumer marketing. We've been getting the brand known better amongst consumers � we've always had a very good product, but we weren't pressing all the right buttons in terms of our name or our image�.

One undoubtedly innovative marketing move has included their work with Munster rugby. In an interesting coup for the company, they were recently chosen by the Munster Rugby team as part of their nutritional programme.

Paul Darbyshire, Munster�s Head of Strength and Conditioning Coach said, �We have selected Wild Orchard smoothies because they are a highly enjoyable means of providing the Munster squad with their fruit requirement.� The Munster squad are consuming up to 300 smoothies every week.

This has meant that Wild Orchard have also been involved in Munster rugby ticket giveaways, and have had at least as much discussion on their website's banter and blog sections on rugby as on smoothies.

And that's their second innovation: banter, blogs and the whole social media area. �We are doing a lot of work on facebook and twitter, we have the social sections on the site, and a lot of the talk on these is about Munster rugby� Crowley tells me. �we're building up a line of communication with our end user.�

Distribution has been an area of innovation too: �We now also do distribution for other Irish companies, companies we've met at Bord Bia forums and seminars. As we have vans on the road, we can distribute products like the Apple Farm Juices, Killowen yoghurts, Ishka water. This increases the value of the delivery and has opened up new customers to us, as we can now bring more to an outlet�.

It has undoubtedly been tough for most food businesses in recent times in Ireland. The category within which fruit is located, edible horticulture and cereal, saw exports fall by 18 percent in 2009 to an estimated �218 million.

But there's plenty of hope. Fruit is on an upward curve, with health experts constantly promoting its consumption. Then there's innovative business thinking, from country wines to elite strength and conditioning. To modernise the Herodotus phrase: �all gains are the fruits of venture�.

Point Village Market: First weekend review

The first thing you notice about the new Point Village Market in Dublin's Docklands is its accessibility. Stepping off the train at Hueston, I jumped onto a Luas right outside the door, which took me directly to the market.

(pic: Clodagh McKenna at the new Point Village Market)

Walking in, the scale of the place is immediately impressive. There are four streets of stalls of appreciable variety and well chosen quality: far more recessionista than fleamarket. There's vintage records in great nick, jewelery, art, furniture, clothes, all looking dapper to boot.

Stalls have been setting aside for art and design students, and for house clear out/yard sales, creating a very current buzz about the place.

The smells, sights and sounds of a cornucopia of foods and drinks, from pies and curries to cup cakes and coffees, abound around. Clowns twist balloons for kids, while comedians regale the wanderers on an oversized speaking chair.

Further in, the Gig Rig off in the distance serenades and sways the shoppers with sweet soul music � Dublin's soul music festival is on here today, and there's German wheat beer on tap, popcorn and hot dogs.

I take a right, and the Pi�ce de r�sistance, the farmers' market. This is indeed impressive, with some of Ireland's most prominent farmers market stalwarts having made the trip. Indeed, stallholders at Midleton like Kevin Hillard from Just Food, Philip Little of the Little Apple Company, and Arun Kapul from Green Saffron's spices are all present..

They are briskly busy - Arun Kapul has to be the most implacably engaging trader in Ireland, never short of a way to converse and coax the customer in.

The cookery demo tent features celeb chefs both established and up and coming, from Clodagh McKenna to Donal Skehan.

There's plenty of primary staples, or what the Americans call pro-duce, like Offaly's Quarrymount meats, a slow food cheese stall, Ring of Kerry Lamb and the Dublin and Meath vegetable growers.

Truth be told, the start of day one, Saturday the 29th May, was a bit quiet, due to rain and a lunchtime launch. The Afternoon was certainly busier.

Day two, Sunday 30th started at a yawningly slow pace, as Sunday's often do. However, by the afternoon this was perhaps the busiest market Ireland has even seen, with estimates of up to 11,000 wandering through. It certainly seemed Electric Picnic or Grafton Street busy at times.

The Sunday saw even more frilly extras, with crazy golf, kids bungee, and a second stage accompanying the Carosel and other vintage fun fair rides.

I spoke to nearly all of the stallholders at the farmer's market. Those with pret a manger foods were very happy, those with food to take home and cook were optimistic: hopeful that people would have a look and soon start to bring shopping bags to do their proper week's purchasing.

Thus far, this is a glorious place to wander around, with an awful lot of attractions and distractions. Most attendees seem to be under 40 and plenty have young kids.

This 'civic space' is the brianchild of Harry Crosbie, and it is a core part of the rejuvenation of Dublin's docklands.

"I believe this market will follow on from the success we've had with the 02 music venue and be a part of Dubliners' lives like the Dandelion Market. I used to hang out there when I was a hippie," said Crosbie last week.

A delay in planning has held back some of the more grand elements for now. These include a 40 foot outdoor cinema screen and a permanent outdoor stage.

Other attractions due include a 60 metre big wheel, outdoor yoga, art workshops, graffiti walls, fashion shows, and urban dance/sport demonstrations like Capoeira and skateboarding.

I spoke to one of the organisers of the farmers' market area, John Collery, about this civic space notion. �Its a place for Dubliners to come and socialise, to buy some produce, to learn how to cook some meals, to just bring their kids and have a day out really� he tells me: �to bring a bit of vibrancy back into the city.�

I put it to John Collery, who with his colleague Gareth Granville is also involved in Cork's Mahon Point and Limerick's Crescent Shopping Centres' farmers' markets, that there is something distinct about this Point Village Market:

Unlike other markets, shopping centers and indeed many modern urban spaces, while there is the opportunity to engage in a financial transaction here, there is not the compulsion.

As Tommy Tiernan once put it; try just hanging around in a bank for half an hour, and see how far you get.

�There is no compulsion to spend whatsoever really� according to Collery, warming to the implication. �Look at the layout of the place � the demonstrations are free, the music is free, there's kid's rides, tasters of food. And you can meet your local producer, and some of the best producers from across the country really. You can have a day out here.�

He emphasises the fact that the farmers' market will be specifically about foods to take home and cook: �We want to take back that idea of a farmers' market as somewhere the farmer comes to sell produce�.

�We do have some food to go elements here at the farmers market end� he goes on. �For example, we have Goldriver farm from Wicklow, doing a spit roast pig, and selling their organic vegetables. All of the ingredients that go with the spit roast come from the produce available here. So your apple sauce will come from Holligans in Ballyderrin, your bread from the Pretzel bakery here in Dublin, the leaves from Goldriver itself� he says, pointing out the stalls one by one.

Sure enough, later in the day, I catch a cookery demo from Ballyderrin's Pam Holligan, who is waxing lyrical about the quality of the Dublin Meath growers' fresh basil and salad leaves that she's used for a dish. And that, I suppose, is the point.