14th December 2021 8pm Building short supply chains – direct selling veg in east Galway with Galway farmer Fergal Anderson.
Register here: https://bit.ly/AsktheFarmerFA
The ‘Ask the Farmer’ series runs this Winter and Spring where a number of our amazing Ambassadors will be on-line to tell us a little more about their farm and farming system and to answer your questions about farming for nature.
Fergal Anderson & Emanuela Russo run a market garden in Loughrea county Galway. The farm is comprised of 30 acres in total, 25 of which is mixed forestry. The remaining 5 acres are used to produce a vast range of agroecologically produced vegetables and fruits, including but not limited to, beets, chard, kale, radish, blackcurrants, gooseberries, loganberries, apples, plums, pears and a range of medicinal herbs. They sell their produce direct to customers and supply restaurants in Galway. Fergal and Emanuela have been working on the land for 8 years – gradually building the soil and transforming the land into a productive farm that is economically and ecologically sustainable. Bees are kept on the farm and they plan to reintroduce chickens and include them in their vegetable rotation system. They use a diverse range of green manures on the farm to increase the fertility of the soil as well as enhancing the soil biology and structure. They grow summer green manure crops to provide food for insects. The farm is full of biodiversity – there is a stream in the woodland which has crayfish and otter in it. There are two small ponds on the farm with frogs and newts. There are red squirrel and pine marten, foxes, hares, bats and sparrowhawks. They have planted ‘natural edges’ around the land with hazel, hawthorn and other native trees. They leave ‘wild spaces’ around as much of the land as possible to further increase biodiversity on the farm.
