I farm: “150 acres of vegetables in Ashbourne, Co Meath, with my father and my brother. The 150 acres is broken into two lots of 75 acres. One lot is for cabbage and the other 75 acres is for Brussels sprouts. We scaled back our operations a bit over the last few years as it can be tough to manage costs.”

Sprouts: “The cabbage is grown in two batches, spring cabbage and winter cabbage, but the sprouts are very seasonal. They are a specialist product with not many farmers growing them. This year we will have about 13,000 plants per acre over 75 acres. Each plant yields about 2kg. That’s a lot of sprouts.”

Crops: “This year has been great for crops with a really strong yield and pretty much zero disease. We really couldn’t have asked for anymore that way.”

Family: “I farm with my brother and my father. We also have some other staff, but it’s hard to beat working with your family. In the run up to Christmas, we have the machine pretty much working 24 hours a day to meet all the demand. We’ll be working flat out until Sunday to have sprouts fresh in store by Tuesday. You couldn’t do that unless you were working with your family.”

Supplier: “We supply to Donnelly Fruit and Veg as well as Superquinn and Aldi. This is our last year of supplying Superquinn before they are taken over officially by Musgraves and SuperValu. I have to say that the Donnellys are fantastic people to deal with, pure gentlemen. They respect growers like us. They agree a price at the start of the year and that’s honoured throughout the year. Some retailers try to change prices weekly, but Donnellys do it the right way.”

Quotable Quote: “It’s great working with the family. There are always a few rows between us, but it wouldn’t be a good day if there wasn’t at least one!”