Features
Communing with nature
It’s always a pleasure to visit a farm that you feel is working. Deirdre O’Sullivan and Norman Kenny’s farm has that synergy where all of the parts come together to form a whole that functions well.
Going into farming was a natural progression for Deidre and Norman. Both came from an agricultural background – she newly returned from working with an aid agency in Africa and he running an agricultural contracting business.
When Norman spotted ‘a derelict house with fourteen acres’ for sale, he went and bought it on the same day. Nineteen-ninety marked the start of a successful organic growing enterprise and the lifestyle that they wanted. “We weren’t going to go down the chemical route and I knew I wanted a job where I could work and be with my children at the same time and farming was the only option,” Deirdre says. While she took on the growing, Norman continued his contracting business for a further ten years. Now the farm employs both of them full time and they also pay another full time worker.
Ready to adapt
Their farm, since extended to forty acres, near Carbury in Co. Kildare is divided into woodland, grassland, tillage and horticultural crops. Twenty-two acres are permanently under crops.
They grow eight and a half acres of vegetables and fruit and cereals for their hens. They are well established growers who have not been afraid to adapt their system when required. They used to grow six acres of seed potatoes but found that there wasn’t a demand from organic growers and have now scaled back to one and a half acres of ware potatoes to cater for their market needs. Deirdre and Norman grow a full range of crops with tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, courgette, garlic and herbs produced under cover in polytunnels. The tunnels have been undergoing something of a renovation this year. “We didn’t have a drainage system for the run off water and we found that the ground immediately inside the tunnels was becoming very wet,” Deirdre explains. Now they have installed concrete collection drains that will take the water away from the tunnels to be stored for irrigation.
On a field scale, they have a large stand of pod peas which sell very well, a full range of brassicae, carrots, parsnips, leek and onion. “The only crops we haven’t had great success with are celery, celeriac and sweetcorn,” Deirdre says. “I’ve given up on celery and we tend to get a lot of blackfly when we grow corn in the tunnel and the cobs don’t fill well outdoors”.
Salad contract
A new development for them in the past two years is a contract with a wholesaler for baby salad and spinach leaves. This requires weekly sowing and I asked Deirdre how they managed to fulfil the contract in a summer like 2008 when many growers couldn’t get into their fields for months. “Believe it or not, we started sowing on the 4th May and never missed a sowing until a week in August when the weather was too bad,” she says. “Our ground is heavy enough but we have gravel and sand underneath and reasonably good drainage all the time. The raised bed system keeps the soil drier and as well as that we use a light Kubota tractor that doesn’t do much damage, even in the wheel tracks.” The baby leaves are harvested once, vegetation is turned under and beds are sown again immediately.
Their heavy clay retains nutrients so fertility doesn’t present a problem for Deirdre and Norman. “We have our own hen manure and access to good farmyard manure and as well as that we use some rock dust to keep levels up” she says. “We always sow a green manure like phacelia at this time of year. When it flowers in August it looks fantastic and provides a food source for the bees.”
Norman’s background in agricultural contracting proves a Godsend on the farm. His shed is a machinery lovers’ paradise with the best range of modified and adapted equipment you are likely to find on any farm. Along with standard tillage equipment, they use a steerage hoe, brush weeder, de-stoner, bed maker and a variety of seeders and planters. They also use a machine for laying the bio-degradable, vegetable based polythene they use to cover some beds for planting through.
Some weeds have become a bit of a problem on the farm over the years. “We are paying for all the mistakes we made when we started out and didn’t listen to the advice we got,” Deirdre jokes. Charlock, the curse of the growing world, makes a regular appearance and a variety of woundwort is causing problems in part of the main growing area. “We may have to put some of the field back into permanent grass and transfer the growing to another area,” Deirdre says.
Honey bees
Deirdre and Norman keep about three hundred hens to supply eggs for their markets. Originally the hens and their mobile house moved around the farm, fertilising ground as they went. “We had to move them back closer to the house because the fox was causing havoc,” Deirdre says. “We would much prefer to move them around but now they have a permanent, fenced paddock and it is difficult even with that to keep the fox out”. This year they grew wheat and triticale in their cereal rotation for their hens.
Keeping bees is an interest that Norman has had for years and his hives are dotted around the orchard and soft fruit area on the farm. “Most years we produce a lot of honey but because of the bad weather in May we won’t have a lot this year,” says Deirdre. “If the weather stays right we could get a good yield later.” Instead, this year, he has been breeding queen bees to form the nucleus of new hives and there is demand at present because of the battering hives have taken over the past couple of bad summers.
Good markets
Being longstanding growers, Deirdre and Norman have their markets well established at this stage. “I’ve been selling at the Dublin Food Co-op on Saturday for nineteen years,” she says “and Norman does the market in Trim on Fridays while I look after the farm shop which is open on Friday afternoons also. Then we deliver twice a week to our baby salad wholesaler”. While they make it all look effortless, I ask Deirdre if marketing is a drain on their time.
“It’s a balance really. You spend a lot of time out in the field harvesting and then selling. It is difficult to find the time for growing as well but you have to be organised. We have a regular solid core of customers who have been with us for years and I find the long term committed people are also the ones who spend the most”.
Deirdre has no time for the litany of woes constantly coming from the agricultural community. “I look at farmers who have a couple of hundred acres of land and produce nothing, yet they get a fat cheque in the post. They have no interest in farming and don’t care about the land. Things have to change,” she feels. The increasing bureaucracy in all walks of life “drives me mad” she says. Sometimes, she is tempted to give up her symbol status altogether because her customers have trust in how she produces her crops and it would cut out lots of paperwork.
Spiritual help
Making the farm as green and self sufficient as possible was always on their agenda and they have a reed bed system for sewerage treatment, solar panels and a recently installed wind generator. The newest project has the enthusiastic help of their three boys. They are constructing a large water harvesting pond that will be heated by the excess power generated and covered to become a swimming pool.
Organic growing and marketing demand a high level of labour and skill. Many producers become burnt out from the stress of trying to cope. Those who stay in business have to find a successful way to reconcile all the demands of the business. For Deirdre, the spiritual dimension of working with nature is the key. “You have to learn to communicate with the nature spirits, seek their help and come to an agreement with them. And you have to be grateful for their help. Because I feel that my intention and energy is good I will be sustained for as long as I need and I feel that my future is secure,” she says.
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