Is Céide wheat making a Mayo comeback?

An ancient wheat variety similar to that grown at the Céide Fields in north Mayo 5,000 years ago could be harvested once more by local farmers.

Plans are afoot to get farmers in the northwest to grow the Stone Age and Bronze Age wheat for bakers in the region who produce high-quality breads and those who work primarily with historic grains.

Since the bread produced with this grain commands a premium retail price, it is envisaged that north Mayo growers could similarly secure a healthy bonus for their wheat on the back of its provenance.

Justin Sammon of Mayo North East LEADER stressed that the plan was still in its “embryonic phase”, but he said the framework for the project was being put in place.

Indeed, a small plot of the wheat crop, known as Emmer grain, has already been grown and harvested at Mayo College of Further Education and Training in Westport, with the grain milled and used in the making of a sourdough bread by the local Cornrue Bakery.

Michael Murphy, who is principal of Mayo College, is a key driver with Sammon of efforts to promote the growing of ancient grains as a niche activity that could boost local farmer incomes and their spread of enterprises.

“The idea came from a conversation with Justin Sammon, and we both started to look at what needed to be done to make this happen,” Murphy explained.

Sammon was conversant with the findings of Seamus Caulfield and his team at the Céide Fields, where a network of ancient fields was identified and mapped.

Caulfield’s research indicated that mixed tillage and livestock farming was practiced by the community from the Stone Age into the Bronze Age, with the cereals grown in ridges rather than drills.

Interestingly, oats and barley were still being grown in ridges – like those associated primarily with the cultivation of spuds – in some parts of Mayo into the 1960s.

Bread products

Sammon was also aware that historic grain varieties similar to those discovered at the Céide Fields site – which is located near Ballycastle - were being used by bakers in the northwest to produce various breads.

Murphy and Sammon believe there are opportunities for farmers to benefit from the increased demand for ‘historic bread products’ by providing a source of locally produced flour made from locally produced wheat.

While Sammon is assessing the level of interest in growing the wheat among farmers, Murphy is putting in place a series of education and training modules which complement the historic grain project and other niche farming activities.

It is envisaged that these courses will encourage farmers in the northwest to diversify their businesses away from traditional cattle and sheep production.

The agriculture faculty at Mayo College has been actively involved in the historic grain initiative.

Horticulture and crops specialist Cormac Langan grew the small trial plot of the ancient two-row Emmer grain in the polytunnel at Mayo College’s Westport campus.

The two-metre by five-metre plot produced 2kg of grain. At a stem length of 1.2m, Langan said that Emmer wheat is far taller than modern commercial varieties.

This will certainly pose problems for future growers of the wheat in Mayo, given that today’s climate in the northwest is wetter and windier than it was 5,000 years ago. Other challenges and hurdles await.

For the overall plan to fly, enough farmers will have to take on growing the wheat; a miller is needed to produce the flour; and bakers in the northwest will have to buy into the concept and commit to purchasing a proportion of their flour locally.

However, these are issues for down the line.

The immediate concern at Cornrue Bakery on the day that the Emmer wheat from Mayo College was first included in a sourdough batch was how would the flour perform in the oven and would the bread be tasty.

The answer was positive on both fronts. The first hurdle had been jumped.

The Céide Fields are among the oldest known field systems in the world.The stone-walled fields extended over hundreds of hectares along the coastal hillsides at Belderrig outside Ballycastle, Co Mayo.

The lands were farmed from the late Stone Age into the Bronze Age – from around 6,000 years ago – with the community keeping cattle and sheep, as well as growing cereal crops.

However, as the climate grew wetter and colder 3,500 years ago, the field system, houses and tombs were abandoned and their remnants were covered by the encroaching blanket bog.

The fields were rediscovered in the 1970s and 1980s by UCD archaeologist Professor Seamus Caulfield who is a native of the area.

There was a “malty aroma” and a “fulsome look” to the early batches of the bread produced using the Emmer wheat from Mayo College.

This was the view of Patrick O’Reilly founder of Cornrue Bakery in Westport.

O’Reilly admitted to playing it safe with the mix, using just 15% of the Emmer flour in the overall mix because “he didn’t want to take a chance with the batch not working out”.

To the untrained palate, the sourdough batch that O’Reilly produced was extremely tasty.

“I can’t say that we’d go a much higher percentage [of the Emmer flour] without doing more research,” O’Reilly admitted.

The Westport baker didn’t have that much of the ancient flour to play with anyway, since there was only a limited quantity produced from the 2kg of Emmer grain harvested from the trial plot.

The flour was produced by Mayo College in a small milling unit that the school’s agriculture department purchased.

Looking to the future, O’Reilly said he would use more local grain – particularly ancient organic grains – if he could get guaranteed supplies.

“I always keep space for local grain, and I’d use more of this [local flour] if we could get it grown and milled locally – and if the price was right,” he said.

“I use wholegrain rye from Germany, so why wouldn’t I use organic flour from grain grown locally,” O’Reilly told the Irish Farmers Journal.