Castlebar garda has become a natural cropper

By Tom Gillespie

GREEN-fingered Castlebar-based garda Mick Toland has created a unique home-grown vegetable farm in what was once a bog at Raheenbar, outside the county town.

Now his vast range of fresh vegetables are available to the public to pre-order, but it’s first come, first served.

Together with his Keenagh-born wife, Denise, they have formed Meara Glas through which they sell the vegetables and home-made brown bread and scones from their home at Derrycoosh.

I visited the 12-acre farm at Raheenbar, three miles from Castlebar, which Mick acquired three years ago.

Mick told me: “I come from a small farm at Malin Head in Co. Donegal. I would have been reared on the farm and I would have learned a lot of this from my father, my uncles, my grandfather and the older men who would have lived in the village when I was growing up.

“I always had an interest in growing vegetables as well as a huge interest in food and knowing what we are eating.

“In today’s climate, with climate change and biodiversity, you are very much thinking of your carbon footprint and the fact that we can produce quality vegetables three miles from the county town is great.

“At the moment we are selling our salad bags while my wife, Denise, is doing her home baking. Now we have the Queen spuds. When I was a young fellow in Donegal the highlight of the summer was tasting the first spuds with a bit of salt, pepper and butter, washed down with a cold glass of milk.

“In the autumn time we will have the soup bags and stew bags. That will take us up to the winter and the whole process starts again.”

Mick added: “We are online, on Facebook. We sell all our produce pre-ordered from our home at Derrycoosh (post code F23 YO68) on a Wednesday and Saturday from 12 noon to 2.30 p.m.

“We have a limited supply of spuds and they are going to fly out the gate. So it's first come, first served.”

Mick is 16 years in Castlebar, and three kids later he said he was here for the long haul, adding: “I would be a staunch Donegal man but I absolutely love where we are here. If we got one thing out of this pandemic it is that it has slowed us down a bit.

“This is our second year developing the site. The method we use here is the ‘no dig’ method. Basically it is based on the concept of the forest floor. We have piles of well-rotted manure and we just keep larning it up. We are not disturbing the ground, so the earth worms are doing all the work. I would have been brought up in Donegal with the traditional methods of the delving, digging and the ploughing.

“But what you are actually doing by digging is bringing the seed to the top, which produces weeds, grass and nettles. That is then competing with your veg.

“We did an experiment this year in the lower garden which is all ‘no dig’ and the upper garden we ploughed and rotated it. You can see the grass in the upper garden. What we plan to do going foreword is to develop the top section and put an orchard in the bottom half.

“It’s all about the biodiversity with the bees, the butterflies and the ladybirds. We don’t use any chemicals, pesticides or any sprays. Everything we do is natural.

“The likes of an orchard and the planting of flowers around the garden actually brings in your ladybirds. The aphids attack the vegetation but the ladybirds control them as they see them as a steak dinner.”

Mick continued: “Everything here is naturally grown and our range of produce is the salad bags which consist of green salads, iceberg lettuce, red lettuce, spinach, chard, cherry tomatoes and scallions. The soup bags contain carrots, parsnips, leek, onion and spuds.

“We are preparing for next year. We are naturally killing off some of the ground here which will be turned into a bed next year. We have covered it with a woollen carpet to blind off the ground so it is not getting light. We put pallets on top to act as drainage so the pots where spuds are growing will not be sitting on the ground. So when it rains the water can get away. When they are harvested it will be topped up with manure ready to go again next year.”

The Meara Glas home-grown vegetables, brown bread, scones and chocolate queen cakes are on sale on Wednesday and Saturday at Derrycoosh (post code F23 YO68) from 12 noon to 2.30 p.m. and you can pre-order on (086) 1608029.