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I farm: “In Lispopple, Swords, where we have a 16-acre apple orchard, 31 acres of outdoor courgettes and about 10 acres of pumpkins and squash. There’s also a small amount of plums that we grow, plus winter and summer flowers.”
Halloween:“Without doubt Halloween is our only market for pumpkins. This year we grew roughly 30,000 of them. We grow our own seeds and these go to a poly tunnel from April until May. After the frost they’re planted in the fields to be harvested in October.”
This week:“With the pumpkins harvested we are now delivering them. Most of our wholesale orders are finished, so it’s our shop orders next. We’re also harvesting our red apples.”
Drought:“This year has been extremely stressful for the horticulture sector. We had no rain for 10 weeks and we had to irrigate all the plants. We’ve only really begun to see what it cost us. I know of two people who have left the sector and if we hadn’t got a price increase there would have been more.”
Fresh produce:“We need people to support fresh Irish produce. Our courgettes are picked, packed and on the supermarket shelves in two days. If you were to import them it could be five or six days and you have to think of the air miles and carbon footprint of that too.”
Labour: “One of the hardest things for us is getting good labour. This year our farm manager, Anthony, had great help and you can see the difference. We rely heavily on seasonal workers from Bulgaria.”
Quotable quote: “Every year my wish is that I clear my costs with my revenue and people laugh at me. As someone said at a recent meeting there’s no meat left on the bones and I can’t see any young person coming along to replace my generation.”
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