Blueberry-picking on Connemara farm revives an old Irish custom

In a world of geopolitical divide, climate change and rising racism, where local small-scale community and family farming is under threat from huge conglomerates and the human-made climate crisis, and when so much biodiversity is threatened by extinction, it is inspiring to see people come up with innovative sustainable solutions to these problems by putting into practice the old green mantra of Think Global, Act Local.

Over a number of Saturdays in August the Tuatha volunteers of Terryland Forest Park organised, along with a series of trips to heritage sites across County Galway, groups of young people from multiple nationalities to pick blueberries on a Connemara farm at Derreighter, close to Oughterard.

In a country like so many others that has been experiencing a massive exodus of people away from farming and the countryside over many decades, John O’Sullivan, his son John Junior and his daughter-in-law Kate are implementing a new type of mixed farming that potentially offers a way forward to Irish farmers living on peatland soils.

They are part of a EU Horizon project involving sites also in the UK and the Netherlands that aims to develop an alternative income stream for farmers through planting crops on rewetted peatlands (paludiculture) as well as rebuilding the carbon sequestration and biodiversity of these bogs.

They are growing blueberries to supply the local hospitality and retail sectors whilst at the same time expanding the project to restore depleted bogs to act once again as ‘carbon sinks’ by transferring sphagnum moss from donor sites to areas of bare peat.

The farm also provides tourist ‘cottage’ accommodation.

Not only did these young volunteers pick blueberries and happily agree to return during the late autumn in order to transplant sphagnum moss to the degraded bogs, they also stacked (‘footed’) the turf on a working bog as generations have done for millennia in Ireland.

However, this harvesting of peat is only a fraction of the scale that took place on a bog that once provided the fuel to the former ESB power station at Screebe as well as the hospital and army barracks in Galway city.

Likewise, the farm also keeps sheep. Only a few decades ago, the wool of sheep provided approximately 20% of the income of many family farms in Connacht. Today it is almost worthless, being replaced in an era of fast fashion worldwide by synthetic fabrics which are doing so much damage to the global environment particularly with generating microplastics in our oceans.

A fleece is a sustainable product that traditionally kept the people of Ireland clothed and warm. No sheep is killed in the making of a woollen jumper and one animal can provide fabrics over many years.

The O’Sullivans are looking at alternative markets for wool with Forum Connemara that are economically and ecologically beneficial such as being used as mulch for the base of fruit trees and bushes or as organic barriers within drains during the rewetting of bogs.

Almost fifty volunteers from ten countries were involved in a harvesting that represents one element in the revitalisation of Irish rural heritage within a 21st century context.

This includes restoring a tradition which existed in Ireland until the 1960s and in parts of Europe up until the 1990s, namely for city dwellers to go to the countryside to help in the picking of fruits during the harvest season. The initiative also shows the potential to develop a new type of sustainable or eco-tourism that will greatly benefit visitors and local farmers.

In the process they also had the opportunity to experience the physical and mental health benefits of working with others in the ‘Great Outdoors’.

Finally, the Tuatha donated to the O’Sullivan family farm an oak sapling that was nurtured from seed in their tree nursery in Terryland Forest Park. The seed came from a tree that was planted by volunteers in the park twenty five years ago.

This gift though was not only ecologically important but also symbolic. For the townland where the farm is located is called ‘Derreighter’ which comes from the Irish language wording of “Doire Íochtair” (lower Oak woods).  Only a handful of trees now grow in a locality whose lowlands were covered in ancient times by dense oak and pine forests.

Tuatha will this year and in the years to come provide the O’Sullivans hopefully with hundreds of suitable native tree saplings that will form part of the native tree reforestation of Connemara.

• Brendan Smith is chairperson of the Tuatha and a founding member of the Terryland Forest Park.

Pictured: One of the groups of volunteers involved in blueberry picking at the O’Sullivan farm at Derreighter, Oughterard, with Brendan Smith on the right.