Sweet things

As humans we have always been attracted to sweet things. Millennia ago, our ability to find sweet things was limited by season and nature. The sweetest thing we could find in the wild was honey, and aside from that, we could eat sweet fruits, berries, and sometimes roots, if we could find them.
Apart from the significant periods of scarcity, it was probably as well that sweetness was found in natural foods, as without modern medicines and healthcare, it was the consumption of the fruits and roots that kept us all healthy.
About 2500 years ago, in India at first, people began extracting sugar from sugar cane, though only on a small scale. It took until the 18th century for sugar to become widely available in Europe, but it was only in the last 200 years that it became popular.
Nowadays, thanks to the production of sugar from sugar beet in temperate climates (including Ireland up to recently), and its production from cane in tropical areas, sugar is everywhere.
Average Worldwide consumption is equivalent to 2 bags (of 1 kg) per person per month. In Europe and the US, sugar consumption is about 5 bags per person per month.
That is a lot of sugar, given that in our natural diet, we would have had access to none of it.
Of course, our use of much of these sugars is blind. They come in everything from breakfast cereals to cakes, desserts, ready meals and so forth.
One source of sugar in the diet is soft-drinks. Some of these are fizzy “sodas”, and others are called “energy drinks”.  They are considered especially unhelpful in our diets, as they contain nothing useful for our bodies, and are thus considered a source of “empty calories”.
In Ireland our government loves to tax things. If they could, I am sure they would tax the weather. Recently, James Reilly suggested that a tax on sugar-sweetened drinks would be a good idea. A lot of vested interests are against it.
Personally, I would agree with a tax on sugar-sweetened drinks, and the more the better. Clearly they contribute to obesity; basically they’re bad for our health..
Now, by itself, the tax might not help our diets much. And maybe we should have rules about the largest portion size that can be bought where the drinks are meant for immediate consumption. And perhaps also, sports people who pretend to drink brand X or Y after a match when they would not normally touch the stuff should be more like Paul O’Connell, who decided to promote milk instead. And really, could school vending machines not be filled with healthy drinks rather than 500ml bottles of you-know-what.
There are so many options that could be tried; perhaps every option should be deployed. But right now, I am just thinking about the tax on sugary drinks.
Of course, the big business lobby says that the tax won’t make any difference to people’s diet. If that is really the case though, I wonder why they are opposing it so vigorously?
So then I did a little calculation. If a tax on these sugary drinks resulted in everyone in Ireland buying a fruit juice instead of a sugary drink just once a week, about 600 jobs would be created. That is because the jobs input in making a fruit juice (which is typically done on relatively small scale compared with the sugary drinks), is so much higher.
So what should we do? We all dislike taxes. And we all love sweet things.
But we like to do the right thing as well. And helping us decide on a fruit juice or water instead of a sugary drink by changing the price of the “soda” might be just what the doctor ordered.

Food writers

There are many people who write about food. I sometimes think it must be great to be a restaurant critic; to go to fine restaurants and eat delicious food, and to get paid to do it. But then, you also sometimes have to say or write some harsh things about what you experience, and that cannot be easy. But there are also those who write about food in other ways; who write about cooking it, or growing it, or about the producers of food.
But I was not aware that there was a guild of food writers, at least until early this year.
It was back then that I got a call, to say that we had been selected for an award, and to make our way to Dublin for a lunch to collect it (so often the awards are in Dublin).
After an exceptional lunch in Derry and Sallyanne Clarke’s L’Ecrivain restaurant; a place I only knew through reading the glossy pages of the weekend newspapers, it was a real treat to be presented with the award by Myrtle Allen, the woman behind so much of Irish food culture (and Ballymaloe House) for fifty years or more.
The award (for services to the apple growing industry “lifetime achievement”) was co-presented by Simon Coveney, our minister for agriculture, who then had the pleasure of listening to me tell him about things the government could do to encourage more apple growing in Ireland. Whether any of that rubbed off on him is difficult to say yet, but it can’t have done any harm. As food writer Biddy White-Lennon (formerly Maggie in The Riordans) said to me on the day: “It is an opportunity to make the most of.”

ITV

Once again we had the camera crews at The Apple Farm this summer and autumn. This time is was for a programme to be screened on ITV in the UK next spring, provisionally called Ireland with James Nesbitt. The idea of the programme is to show all sorts of positive stories about Ireland, especially those that might encourage tourists to visit here.
And so, given that we have a farm that a tourist might visit for an hour or two (or maybe stay on the campsite for a day or two), and perhaps have a look at what we do here, or enjoy themselves picking some fruit, we were included. As usual, there were many hours of filming, for what will be a few seconds or a minute of footage, but the producers assured us that the farm looked well, and that they were getting the type of shots they wanted.
As luck had it, during the summer we were preparing for our first ever apple and cider festival on the farm, and as part of that, the lead-in and the day itself were filmed for the program. The only pity was that James Nesbitt did not come here himself for the filming, so we did not get any autograph. We will just have to be happy with having him narrate our little story.

Competition for kids:

This time we have some questions based on the newsletter.
Q.1 Does Ireland’s Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, grow apple trees in his garden?
Q.2 What drink does Ireland and Munster rugby star, Paul O’Connell support?
Q.3 Who is Ireland’s minister for agriculture? (Hint: He has the same initials as Santa Claus).

When it is ready send it to:
Christmas competition,
The Apple Farm,
Moorstown,
Cahir,
Co. Tipperary.

   Competition prize:
    1st: €20.00 Easons voucher
    2nd €10.00 Apple Farm voucher
Closing date: January 14th, 2013

Blame the weather

Good Food Ireland is an organisation whose aim is to link food producers with tourism providers, so that tourists coming to Ireland can experience the fine food that we have to offer.
For me, the concept makes such sense, as one of the main things anyone spends money on while on holiday, is food.
A few years ago, a Nenagh shopkeeper, Peter Ward, said it was national sabotage if a hotel or B&B served a breakfast with Danish rashers, Dutch sausages, supermarket sliced pan and Californian orange juice, when they could have local rashers, sausages, free range or organic eggs, homemade brown bread and Irish apple juice instead. Not many people cared when he said it first, but now our tourism providers are getting the message. They need to sell what is unique about Ireland at every opportunity, and that includes the food they serve.  Aside from the fine hospitality that we give, that is what tourists will remember when they return home, just as much as the cliffs of Moher. It is what will bring them back, and encourage them to tell their friends to come.
That is the Good Food Ireland message, and that is why I joined them as a producer member a few years ago.
As it happens, each year, Good Food Ireland has an awards ceremony, aimed at chefs, hotels, shops, pubs, restaurants and café’s, to acknowledge those doing a superb job at linking local food and tourism. This year, they also had a “come and see” producer of the year award.
And so, our farm was nominated in this category, along with some other very worthy establishments, one of which in particular, I felt was sure to pick up the award.
As the awards ceremony was in Dublin, we headed up, as we knew a fine meal (of good Irish food) was in store, and it is always nice to meet fellow producers and old friends.
Towards the end of the meal, when the awards were announced, it turned out we won the category. It was a real surprise, and a dubious treat to be asked by Taoiseach, Enda Kenny (who was presenting the awards), why the apple trees in his garden were not giving any fruit.
If I had been quick enough, I would have said he was cutting back too hard in the pruning. Unfortunately, I don’t think that fast under pressure, so could only blame the weather.

In the farm shop:

We have our usual range of apples, including really beautiful Elstar, as well as that traditional favourite, Karmijn de Sonnaville. We are just finished with the popular Wellant, but will soon have lovely sweet Pinova. Bramley cookers are also available, as are Golden Delicious. Jonagold will also be available quite soon.
In addition, we have a number of new products especially for Christmas, the most seasonal of which are our mulled juices, which we have as mulled apple or mulled apple & blackcurrant. These are juices with spices, which make a lovely warm drink, but without the alcohol. Simply heat before serving, and warm yourself up on a cold winter’s evening.
Our juices are as popular as ever and really good value, with a case of 12 large bottles flying out both to people who call in and by courier as Christmas gifts.  In fact, if you like you can even include a personal message when ordering online, and we will include it with the box when sending to your lucky friends.
The sparkling juice is going from strength to strength, with people coming from all over Ireland to get it, as well as online orders.
All the juices and jams make a great Christmas present, either in a presentation basket or bag, or with a few fruits. The apple jelly goes especially well as a glaze for the Christmas ham.
Lastly, we have hampers of juices, jams and fruit in our farm shop. A popular and practical Christmas gift.

Apple and Cider Festival

As mentioned above, this year we ran an apple and cider festival on our farm, and in our local town of Cahir. The idea had been mentioned to me a few times in the past, and it was something that we long-fingered, but when Paul Deegan of Slow Food approached us this year, it became a little harder to postpone for yet another year.
As it happened, we had earlier in the year been approached by the Irish Seedsavers Association about holding their apple day at our farm, instead of their usual venue in Scariff, Co. Clare, as they hoped to get some extra supporters by moving for a change. As enthusiastic supporters of the Seedsavers and their aims, we agreed to provide the venue, and drum up publicity, so that was already scheduled for Sunday, September 23rd.
So when the idea of cider was brought into it, we decided to make it a two-day event, with the cider scheduled for the previous day.
Luckily, when Paul went searching for funding, the South Tipperary Development Company (Leader) was very generous, and agreed to cover costs associated with parts of the festival, as without external funding, it would not have been possible, as we wished to keep it free of charge to enter.
And so we were able to hire a “cider tent”, and space for the band, as well as print publicity, fliers, and take out some advertising.
On the Saturday, we had seven small-scale cider makers from around Ireland explaining about their wares in the cider tent, a talk by Seamus Sheridan on matching cheese and cider, a talk by Sean Mac An tSaoir on the history of cider-making in Ireland, and a demonstration of cider-making as you could do it at home by Dick and Ann Keating of Bay Lough Cheese fame.
As making, tasting and discussing cider are pursuits that create an appetite, we had well-known chef, JJ Healy on site with Crowe’s Farm, preparing some fantastic foods for a fiver.
We also organised a meal for the Saturday night, where a menu of various dishes was paired with ciders, and this was nicely run by Cahir House Hotel.
And to finish the evening, we had a tour of pubs in Cahir, who had agreed to stock artisan ciders for the evening in question.
As everyone knows, when you drink artisan ciders, you never get a hangover or headache, so early on Sunday morning we were ready to go with the Seedsavers Apple Day. This was another great success, with huge interest around their story, and also in the demonstrations of apple tree pruning and farm tours that we had organised for the afternoon. It is always good fun to see how amazed people are when they see what looks like a lot of the branches being pruned off an apple trees.
For the kids on both days we had face-painting and the likes, and also the highly popular tractor & trailer rides through the orchard, which oddly enough, sometimes also had some very mature looking children aboard!
So for a first year event it was very successful. We had about 1000 visitors over the two days, which was much more than we expected.
The plan is to run it again, but hopefully centred more on the town than the farm, as if it is bigger next year, it might get too large for the farm. In the longer run, who knows how big it will get.