The Apple Club Newsletter

Autumn 2008

I have not sent you a seasonal newsletter since last winter. My apologies for the delay, although it is not as if we have really had any seasons since then, though I am now enjoying a late Indian summer as I write. A little more sun would go a long way.

Nationwide

Keep an eye on Nationwide in the next little while. Recently a new Tipperary food website was launched at www.tipperaryfood.ie. To celebrate the launch, a fine banquet was organised in Cahir Castle, and as part of this, Nationwide featured some of the food producers that make up part of the website. On the evening in question we launched our new sparkling apple juice, and it may even make an appearance on the show.

Fizzy apple juice:

As mentioned above, we have been developing a sparkling apple juice. It began about a year ago with the idea, and gradually we sourced the pieces of machinery that we needed, and during the summer we made some trial batches. These tasted so good that anyone who was on our tasting panel has been taking more “samples” home with them at every opportunity.
The juice is pressed just like our normal apple juice, and then some fizz is added. This gives a drink unlike almost all other fizzy drinks, in as much as it is still a juice, rather than a factory-made mixture of water, sugar and fruit flavours.
We are hoping that people will choose our sparkling apple juice as a healthy alternative to other fizzy drinks, as well as because it is a thirst-quenching drink.
For the moment we will only be selling this juice from our farm shop. This is because the bottles that are needed to hold the fizz are rather expensive, and we will therefore need to charge a deposit on these. Obviously, once the bottles are returned, you will get your deposit back. Just like in the old days, but it will be an entirely new concept for anyone born after 1980!

Harry O’Brien

Harry O’Brien has been our Teagasc farm advisor for the last twenty years. He has always been a great help to us and the other apple growers of the region. His knowledge seemed to know no bounds, and his advice was also practical and straightforward. In December of this year, Harry will retire, and all the growers will certainly miss him. At a recent meeting the growers presented Harry with a retirement gift, and we were most fortunate to be able to get a beautiful painting of two Discovery apples, painted by Ella Kavanagh. If you are from the Clonmel area you may remember Kavanagh’s fruit and vegetable shop on Parnell Street, near Dowlings printing shop, and it is here that Ella’s family operated from. Alas the shop is no more, but Ella is still involved with fruit in a way, creating paintings which catch the essence of their subjects. If you ever have a chance to see Ella’s work, at a gallery or exhibition, I would certainly recommend that you take the opportunity.

Irish American apples

Adapted from a column by John Baule
In or about 1900, William Emmet ‘Mick’ Roche, then 20 years old, emigrated to America from Ireland. Before long he was on his way to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he secured a job as a footman for the president of the Northern Pacific Railroad.
His principal duties included the maintenance of the family carriages and driving the teams that pulled the carriages, but saw that there might be an opportunity for him in the railway business with the fruit growers in the Pacific Northwest. By the time Roche arrived in America, the railroads, with the assistance of the U.S. government, had built tracks throughout the West and opened up vast lands to farming and settlement by Euro-American pioneers.
At that time the freight revenue is what sustained the railway, and the produce grown in Oregon and Washington state on the Western coast was a profitable commodity in the rail shipping business. Mike Roche realised an individual could make money acting as a middleman between the grower and the railway. He approached his employer and asked if the railway would purchase whatever fruit Roche was able to buy directly from the growers in the Yakima Valley. The railway company did not normally do this, but Roche had so impressed his employer that a deal was struck.
Thus, in 1918, Mike Roche moved to Yakima in Washington, and rented a small shed adjacent to the tracks. In the beginning, Roche handled primarily fruits such as cherries, grapes, apricots, peaches, plums, and pears. He had no cold storage facilities, and thus, all of the produce had to be packed and loaded into ice-filled railway carriages the same day it was received from the orchards.
It was not unusual to work 18- to 20-hour days to accomplish this. Most of his business was based on LCL (Less Than Carload), which meant that shipments to several buyers were loaded into the same rail car. It was at this time that Roche developed his “Jewel” label, which was to become famous as a symbol of quality in the industry.
The Yak label, which was a playful combination of an image of the large animal and the name of the community of Yakima, was also designed for the company and used in the early 1920s. Originally, the company name was Roche Fruit and Produce Company, but by 1927 labels bore just the name W.E. Roche Fruit Company. The earlier versions of both Jewel and Yak were full-size and much more striking than the redrawn versions used in the 1930s and 1940s.
As the business grew, Mike, who had no family in America, realised he needed help. Therefore, in 1920, Roche paid for his 18-year-old nephew Patrick J. Roche to leave Ireland and join the business in Yakima. Cold-storage buildings were added, and apples became a larger part of the packing operations. The company survived the Great Depression of the early 1930s, and Pat Roche took over the management in 1935. Mike died in 1944.
As apples and pears became more dominant in the Yakima Valley, the company continued to build more cold-storage facilities and changed other operating procedures to accommodate this type of fruit. In 1964, the first controlled atmosphere storage buildings were built. Pat's son, John Roche, started his career in the company while going to school and went to work full-time in 1963. With the death of Pat in 1971, John took and directed the company in its move into grading and sorting apples in one of the most state-of-the-art facilities in the state of Washington.
John's son, Michael, came to work for the company in 1992, and he has led efforts to expand and modernize plant operations even further. In 2004 Michael took over as general manager and has directed the expansion of orchard operations to include 1,300 acres of tree fruit throughout central Washington. That is almost as much as the entire Irish apple growing industry!
The company now grows, packs, and ships over two million boxes of apples world-wide. Many of these boxes still carry the Jewel label. In addition, Michael has led the company in the formation of a new marketing group that handles the sales and shipments of twelve million boxes of apples, cherries, and pears for several packing operations.
Yak and Jewel brands are among the oldest apple and pear labels from the Yakima, Washington, area. The Jewel brand is still being used today by the fourth generation of the label's originator.

Walking on Sliabh na mBan


For those who like a walk in the countryside, why not tackle Sliabh na mBan (Slievenaman), mountain of the Women. I climbed it recently with my 9-year-old son, and we had a very enjoyable afternoon. For the brisk walkers, a trip to the summit and back down will take no more than two hours, and for those who prefer to move at a more leisurely pace, an extra hour or two can be allowed. Sliabh na mBan is the highest mountain in South Tipperary, and the 95th highest in Ireland.
According to oral tradition, Sliabh na mBan is named after the women who raced each other up the slopes for the hand of marriage of Fionn Mac Cumhaill. According to the Druids of Ireland, Fionn needed a wife. His philandering was the cause of national scandal and bloodshed. To avoid favouritism the druids decided that the winner of a race of eligible females to the top of Slievenamon would become his bride. His fancy was the beautiful Gr inne (paradoxically meaning "the ugly one") daughter of the High King, Cormac Mac Airt. Through sorcery he ensured that his favourite would win. However, Fionn was jilted when Gr inne at their wedding feast ran off with his friend, the womanising warrior, Diarmaid U Duibhne.
A darker story, dating from the eight century, tells of the engagement of Sabia to Fionn at the Sidhe ar Feimhin (this being a fairy palace at the peak of the mountain, where the cairn of rocks now lies) which was also the home of her father Bodhbh Dearg, king of the Munster Tuatha de Danann (a mythological race of Irish people, once regarded as gods). She and her handmaidens were ravished and slaughtered by Fionn's rivals, the Clanna Morna. It is suggested that, in their memory, the mountain was subsequently called Sliabh na mBan Feimhin.
The cairn of rocks at the summit of Sliabh na mBan, as mentioned previously, was believed to hide a door to the fairy World. Here it is said Fionn bruised his thumb trying to gain entry and thereafter each time he sucked it he acquired the gift of wisdom. In the 1980’s and 1990’s a race to this cairn at the summit and back was organized for August each year. The quickest runners took only 40 minutes to summit and return from the 2368 ft. peak, which seems incredibly quick.
To access Sliabh na mBan, travel to Kilcash village. From there, follow the signposts.

Bee story:

The Irish honeybee has been suffering badly for the last few years, because of a tiny parasite called Varroa. No bigger than a pinhead, this little mite sucks blood from the bees, making them weak. To make matters worse, it now appears that the mite also transmits viruses, and that these can lead to the complete collapse of honeybee colonies. In a way this story has parallels with the potato famine story. At that time all the farmers relied on a single variety of potato called the lumper, and when blight arrived it raced through the crops, because there was no genetic diversity in the potato crop that would make it more difficult for the blight to get a foothold.
And so we now arrive in a place where all the “cultivated” honeybees of the World, (and many of the wild colonies) can be traced back to the Italian strain, and like the Irish potatoes, they are all genetically similar. But the parasites and viruses come from every continent, and are able to overwhelm the bees with ease. And once again nature is teaching mankind of the importance of diversity to survival of the species.
It is estimated that 80% of crop species produced in Europe are insect pollinated, and some will fail to give any crop unless visited by bees or other insects. Luckily, the honey bee is not the only bee that visits flowers in Ireland. In fact there are 20 different species of native bumblebees in Ireland, as well as numerous other bee species. We share one particular sub-species of bumblebee, called Bombus terrestris audax with the UK. This is a hardy sub-species of the bumblebee found throughout Europe, but it has adapted to our climate by living in very small colonies, and foraging at very low temperatures. In fact, native Irish bumblebees of this species can be seen in fine weather during any month of the year.
However, this species could also be under threat, not because of a parasite, but because of the importation of bumblebees from warmer parts of continental Europe. These bumblebees are similar enough that they can cross-breed with the native Irish bee, but different enough that their offspring no longer keep their survival habits such as living in very small colonies. This process of genetic homogenization or mixing has the potential to wipe out our native bumble bees, with serious consequences for plant, man and society. Guidelines have recently been issued to people who import bumblebees, instructing handlers on how to prevent cross-breeding with native populations. Hopefully they will prove successful, before we learn another lesson on the importance of genetic diversity.

Slow Food

Everyone knows what is meant by fast food, but what exactly is Slow Food?
The Slow Food movement was founded in Italy by Carlo Petrini in 1989. He wanted to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat. He also felt that as consumers of food we should know where it comes from, love how it tastes and consider how our food choices affect the rest of the world.
In short, Slow Food is good, clean and fair food. Slow food members believe that food should taste good and be good for you; that it should be produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment and that farm animals should be well treated. Fair means that food producers should receive fair compensation for their work. As part of this, the Slow Food organization is involved in various programmes to help preserve family farms.
Although the organisation is less than 20 years old, it now has 85,000 members in more than 100 countries world-wide. And it is slowly beginning to make an impact in Ireland.
From September 4th to 7th, on the campus of Waterford Institute of Technology, a Terra Madre event was held. Terra Madre, when translated, means Mother Earth, and this event was about celebrating good food, but also about farmers affirming the need for a new agriculture, and lobbying together for policy changes.
The format of the event on the Friday was that groups of stakeholders (farmers, farm organisations, processors, etc) in various farm enterprises, such as beef production, lamb production, pork, milk, fruit, vegetables etc. held individual meetings to decide what might be changed if we were Minister for Agriculture for a day.
In the fruit group, at which I was present, discussions went on for a few hours, but in the end we managed to agree on a few things, such as the importance of highlighting seasonality to consumers, so that for instance, consumers might not look for strawberries in February, when they need to be flown around the World to get to Ireland. We also asked that regulations should not be enforced in too rigid a fashion, as in many EU countries interpretations differ, but usually it seems that the Irish version is stricter.
At the end of the morning sessions, each group got to present their conclusions to Junior Minister Trevor Sargent, and Minister Michelle Gildernew from the Northern Ireland executive. In fairness to the two ministers, after the presentations they made brief speeches which took in many of the points that the various groups had made, which certainly indicated that they understood the points that had been made.
The highlight of the day was the arrival and speech by the president of Ireland, Mary McAleese. She gave a most thoughtful speech about the importance of local foods to society, and we also learned that she grows vegetables and keeps hens in Aras an Uactaran. She urged us all to spend wisely on food, and to ensure that the children of Ireland eat wisely and well. Wonderful sentiments indeed.


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