Welcome to our winter newsletter. I would like to wish all our customers and friends a happy Christmas. From a farming perspective, what can I say, except that 2013 has been an exceptional year. Crops were good and livestock were happy. Hopefully we can look forward to a continuation of the same in 2014.
It is often the case that when we hear
or read about something happening somewhere else, that we do not pay
too much attention. So it was with me also, when I heard about plans to
put electrical pylons “up the country”. However, when “up the country”
became “down the road”, it was time to find out more.
The company planning the work is Eirgrid, a state-owned company charged
with looking after the transmission network. They are currently making
plans to put up high-voltage overhead cables across Ireland; a project
with a budget of about four billion euros.
The project is part of a Europe-wide upgrade to power networks, to
facilitate the movement of electricity from country to country, and to
accommodate renewable power.
But not every country is approaching the issue in the same way as
Ireland. For instance, in the Netherlands all new high voltage lines
must by law be buried. The decision has been made in order to gain
public acceptance for the project. Instead Ireland is opting for
old-fashioned overhead cabling like we might have expected or accepted
fifty years ago. The European Commission, more than ten years ago, said
that undergrounding should be considered as part of the Europe-wide
grid plan, as the savings to be made by having a Europe-wide grid
outweigh the costs of undergrounding in any case. Hopefully someone in
Ireland will see the light, before the power goes out.
Two years ago I wrote briefly about the
native bees we had on our farm. Since then, bees have hardly been out
of the news. And unfortunately, as is so often the case, it is bad news
that makes the headlines.
It is reputed that Einstein said (though apparently it was somebody
else), that if bees disappeared, that mankind would also perish within
two years. The point of course being, that bees pollinate our flowering
crops, and without the bees, we would have a very limited range of
foods to live on, and we could not survive on these for long.
For the past few years, bee numbers have been on the decline, because
of habitat loss, bad weather, more parasites, and new pesticides.
Because it is of much concern, governments as well as citizens are
worried.
And so, due to concerns about specific pesticides, earlier this year
the EU decided to limit permissions for the use of three neonicotinoid
insecticides. These are a class of insecticide, resembling
nicotine, which have become widely used in the past decade. They work
by being taken into the plant, usually from a seed treatment, and
moving to the foliage and flowers, which when fed on by pests (or
bees), are toxic to them. At the time of introduction the chemical
companies involved produced data to show that they were safe for bees.
However, in more recent years, data has accumulated which shows that
they are not as safe as originally thought, and that the original
company data underestimated real-life exposure levels, and non-lethal
but nonetheless damaging effects.
Needless to say, the companies making the chemicals are not happy that
they can’t be used for the next two years, and say that billions of
euros worth of crops will fail, and tens of thousands of jobs will be
lost in agriculture.
Having spoken with farmers here in Ireland, they don’t seem as
concerned. In fact, many of the farmers were unhappy that, when buying
seeds, the only ones they could source from merchants came pre-treated
with these chemicals, whether they wanted them or not. Indeed, farmers
could not understand why only treated seed were available, when they
knew themselves that certain fields would not need insecticide-treated
seeds, due to low levels of pests, cropping history etc. Of course, the
fact that the same companies produce the pesticides and supply the
seeds might explain why the seeds mostly came treated, but that is a
story for a different day.
So now we have a Europe-wide suspension in use of these neonicotinoids.
The question is whether the bee populations will improve as a result.
Farmers will still have to use insecticides under certain
circumstances, but will revert to using ones that pre-date the bee
decline, and are definitely not as harmful. Will the bee populations
stage a recovery? It is very difficult to say for sure, but I suspect
they will. If they do, it will be a major embarrassment for the
manufacturers continuing to lobby for a reintroduction of these
chemicals, and the politicians siding with those companies.
We have our usual range of apples,
including really beautiful Elstar, as well as that traditional
favorite, Karmijn de Sonnaville. We are just about to begin with our
newest variety Wellant, and will soon have the famous Jonagored, which
I mentioned above. Bramley cookers are also available, as are Golden
Delicious.
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.
These are popular and practical Christmas gifts.
This time we have some questions based
on the radio interview you can listen to here.
Please ask a parent or adult to help you listen.
Q.1 How many trees did Marie tell Sean we have?
Q.2 How many apple varieties did Marie-Louise tell Sean we grow?
Q.3 Why did Sean say he would have to cancel his lunch?
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 15th, 2014
The Sean O’Rourke show on RTE
radio 1 decided to do a piece on apples, and who did they send but
reporter Marie-Louise O’Donnell. Such was her enthusiasm for apples
that she turned a five-minute slot into twelve minutes. She elaborated
on the smell of the apples, the “green soldiers” of trees, “golden
orbs” and “red orbs”, not to mention “green spheres” hanging from the
trees like Christmas decorations. “Sour and sweet, full and frothing”.
For anyone that missed it, you can listen to it again here.
If you fancy a smile and have 12 minutes to spare, listen back today.
Customers who call to our farm for
apples regularly comment about the difference between Irish-grown and
imported ones, and how ours so often seem juicier.
And when I chat to the customer about the reasons for this, my mind
always goes back to my days in UCD, and to what we learned about the
physiology of apples; that is to say, how they grow. The reason, as
with so much else in Ireland, comes down to the weather.
Apple trees go through a very distinct cycle when producing apples.
First they blossom, and then, once pollinated, the base of the flower
expands to become the fruit we will eventually eat. The growth of this
basal part of the flower from a few compressed cells to the many
hundreds of thousands bursting with flavour in a fully-grown apple
follows a very predictable route.
For the first seven weeks after blossom, the small fruitlet grows by
cell division, which is one cell becoming two, these two becoming four,
these becoming eight, and then sixteen, with many doublings to give
what will, by sometime in June, be the total number of cells that that
apple will have. No more cells are added after the seven-week period.
For the rest of the summer, through July, August, September, and maybe
even October, the apple continues to grow, but now by cell expansion
rather than adding more cells.
So how, you might ask, will this make Irish apples different to
imports? The answer lays in the weather, or rather temperatures, during
the seven-week cell division period after blossom. In warm weather,
cells divide quickly; in cool conditions they divide slowly. In
countries where May and early June are warm, the cells will divide more
often than in countries like Ireland, where temperatures at this
critical time are cooler. More regular division will lead to apples
with more cells; perhaps twice or three times as many as we might
expect here.
So while our apples may be just as large come harvest time as those
from warmer countries, ours will contain less cells, but each cell will
be individually larger; perhaps twice as large as a warm-climate apple.
And when you bite into an Irish apple, the chances by breaking open a
cell, releasing the juice, rather than biting between cells, are
increased. So our apples seem juicier, with a particular type of
crispness. The imported apples, with more but smaller cells will seem
more dense, because the cells require more biting or chewing to release
all their juice. They may also seem harder when handled, which is a
difference that apple pickers sometimes also comment on when they pick
otherwise similar apples in regions with different climates.
Apart from commenting on the difference in perceived taste, Irish apple
growers are now hopeful that the cell size can be used as a sort of
proof of origin. Unfortunately, while consumers are eager to buy Irish
apples, some unscrupulous sellers pass off imports as Irish, fooling
consumers and causing problems in the market for genuine Irish
producers.
This year University of Limerick are running a project to define the
typical number of cells, and size of cells, found in apples of
Irish-grown varieties. These are being compared with apples sourced in
the UK, France, Poland, and so on. Once the benchmarks are known and
defined, it will be possible for a body like the department of
Agriculture to scientifically determine the type of climate an apple
has grown in, by just taking a few samples and examining the cell size
under a microscope. Given our uniquely cool May and June temperatures,
it will be possible to say for sure whether or not the apple is Irish.
One of the apples that is widely grown
in Ireland is Jonagored (properly called Morren’s Jonagored). It is a
natural variant or clone of a variety called Jonagold, originally from
the United States, though this variant was discovered in an orchard in
Belgium in 1980.
And so began the story of the Jonagored apple, because this apple did
not appear in any old orchard, but rather that being run by Jos and
Rose Morren. Seeing the potential of this bright red version of what
was typically a faintly coloured fruit, they decided to commercialise
the apple, and given that Jos was the farmer, it fell to Rose to bring
the apple to the World and sell it.
This she did with great enthusiasm, propagating trees and selling them,
and encouraging growers to try her new variety, which she knew would
sell on its good looks and productive nature. She brought apples to
competitions around the World, and won accolades such as “tastiest
apple” in the UK and USA, “finest dessert apple”, “best skin finish”,
“best new apple variety” and “best stored apple” in various other
countries.
Seeing the potential, Rose pursued the idea of having the apple
categorised separately from its siblings, which though similar in
taste, looked somewhat different. She succeeded in this too, and within
twenty years of its discovery, the apple was the 7th most important in
Europe, with an annual production of 270 thousand tons (more than a
billion apples a year).
The first plantings of Jonagored in Ireland were in 1990, and growers
here were also delighted with the fruits, and because of the
productivity of the trees, it marked the end of the rapid decline in
Irish apple production that had proceeded from about 1970 until then.
Rose visited Ireland on a few occasions, to see how her trees were
doing here, and to keep in touch with growers, including myself. She
also said that she thought her husband’s name of Morren may have had
Irish origin, as Moran, so maybe we can claim this apple as partly
Irish too.
A few days ago I received the sad news that Rose had died after an
illness. She was just past retirement age, though there was no sign of
her retiring. Her success in creating one of the World’s most
successful apples in an incredibly short time will mean her name will
remain known long into the future.
Certainly every time I bite into a Morren’s Jonagored, I will think of
Rose, her visits to Ireland, and her love of apples.
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