Growing interest in putting your own food on the table

Cáit Curran hates Brussels sprouts. She’s not too wild about broccoli either. And for that reason the woman who is one of the county’s best known organic gardeners, who has a stand at Galway and Moycullen markets every week, doesn’t grow them in her garden.

That’s the sort of approach she recommends that people take if they are thinking of planting vegetables or fruit on their little patch of earth this year.

“There’s no point in growing something unless you like it,” she points out.

Cáit is an inspiration for anybody who has started to grow their own vegetables or who is thinking of doing so. Reared on a hill farm in South Kerry, she joined the Civil Service when she left school, moving to Dublin where she spent several years.

In the 1980s, Cáit took a career break and “never looked back”.She moved to Clonmel and worked in a food co-operative where local growers would bring in their produce. She got to know them and became interested in the idea of growing her own.

Any experience she had at that stage had come from childhood on the farm, where “whether, you liked it or not, you were beaten out the door to help”.

After a period in Clonmel, Cáit moved to Galway because her husband, who worked in Digital, was transferred here from the Tipperary town.

“When I came here I knew I wanted to grow things. We bought a small holding in Athenry. It was three acres but it was good land and the first organic course in the country was being run here back in 1990.”She got on that and began to grow food, first for themselves and then commercially.

“I added a bit every year,” she says, explaining that the first year she grew potatoes, carrots, turnips and root crops.

She then added a polytunnel and within a few years, she had six of them and about an acre outside.

For the past 20 years Cáit has had a stand at the Galway Market, where in addition to selling her own vegetables, she sells for several other growers in the county. Out of season, she imports veg and fruit, although she has limits and won’t import soft fruit, because it just doesn’t travel well.

As well as being a grower and trader, Cáit provides training for people in gardening and her expertise has benefitted many in Galway and further afield.

That started in 1995 under the auspices of the Irish Organic Farmers Association in a project funded by Europe under the Leader Scheme.“It ended up that I did a project on the offshore islands from Donegal to Cork,” she recalls. She also trained people from Portumna to Connemara and got great pleasure in watching them reap the fruits of their labours.

That’s something that still gives her enormous pleasure “and if people look for me to do stuff, I’ll do it”.

“There’s a huge revival of interest in growing and I’m seeing it all over. It’s probably a combination of unemployment and a greater awareness of the environment.”

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.