Wexford woman produces good food in harmony with nature

Wexford woman Mary Regan has overcome numerous challenges to stay in the market, establishing a highly successful organic chicken and pig enterprise. She has done this in harmony with nature at Dranagh, Caim, Enniscorthy, on land passed onto her by her late father, Tom.

Now she plans to use the farm as a training facility by offering courses to people who are interested in rearing poultry, pigs, ducks, and fruit and vegetables organically.

“My father transferred about 32ac to me to start with from the farm in 1995. I farmed away with him and worked off the farm also.

“We had a contract to grow sugar beet and we grew some barley, had a small flock of ewes and bought in calves and bucket reared them to weanlings,” said Mary, who has a background in agri-science.

Unfortunately, Tom fell ill in 1997 and within about eight months, he was dead. Mary continued to work off the farm and do the beet and sheep.

Organic Feed

Mary was working in a feed mill in Wicklow when they began to do a range of organic feeds. She was given the responsibility of developing this area. It was the first time compound organic feed was made in the country, she recalled.

“That stemmed my interest in organic production as I began to look at what was going into conventional feedstuffs and what was permitted under organic standards for organic feeds.

“I was very interested in the two animals that were being produced so intensively here in Ireland – chickens and pigs – and I had seen at the time the medication that was used in these feeds,” she said.

I had a very small farm and the sugar beet was gone from the country; I decided to go the organic route and do chickens and pigs. I wanted to produce good food in harmony with nature and the environment and to give my animals a good life so that they could exhibit their natural behaviours.

The organic chickens can dust bath and pick at grubs, grasses, weeds and herbs. The pigs don’t have their tails docked and teeth clipped and given iron; they root up the soil and vegetation and get their iron from that. They can wallow in the mud and run and play with each other.

The sheds on the farm, which were built by Mary’s father, were not suitable for poultry. “I wanted to try and adapt them to suit, as I didn’t have the money to put up new poultry houses,” she said.

She learned quickly from mistakes made along the way. “Housing was an issue as the sheds were not warm enough in the winter, so I invested in secondhand poultry houses and the business began to grow in the last few years; mainly by word of mouth and a demand for the product.”

Farmers’ Market

The local farmers’ market provided an effective introduction to potential consumers interested in buying from farmers working with nature.

“I set up a stall there and went in with the chickens. The feedback on the birds was great. People tasted the difference and, although the chicken was more expensive, people began to utilise the whole bird and make soup from the carcass.

“This gave me the encouragement to keep going as I knew very little about rearing chickens at the time, other than the few laying hens that we used to keep. Finding a source of information was difficult because, not only were they free range but organic also, and there weren’t too many people to ask.

“With the closure of the abattoir we had been using in Tipperary a few years ago, I had no choice if I wanted to stay in business but to build a small abattoir for the processing of the chickens.”

The abattoir was built three years ago.

Because I knew I had a good product and the demand there was for it, I chose to stay in the market and build an on-farm EU-approved abattoir. I had to invest in an expensive data logger at the time that was necessary to get a licence and I had to source a unit in the UK, as there was nothing available to buy off the shelf.

Another obstacle was sourcing labour and training staff to get certificates of competencies to handle birds correctly and to get employees with some level of experience in poultry husbandry.

With few others rearing poultry organically, accessing information has been difficult, said Mary, who is assisted in the business of farming with nature by her sisters Ger and Helen. Her husband David assists by doing some deliveries.

Growing the business as the demand grew for the product also posed the challenge of borrowing money; not only to invest in the abattoir but to invest also in mobile sheds that were more suitable for organic production.

“Having mobile sheds, although difficult in the wet year that we have had, gives us the ability to provide the birds with various different grasses, weeds and herbs on fresh pasture. This helps prevent a build up of diseases that could occur from letting chickens graze the same area over a long period of time,” Mary said.

The areas where the chickens graze are then tilled and are well fertilised from the litter from the chickens and sown either with oats or wheat.

Ongoing challenges include the sourcing of organic feed and price hikes due to the bad harvest, as well as the increase in the price of straw, Mary said.

They also supply Probus Deli Cafe; Tinakilly House, Wicklow; The Farm Restaurant; and the Brooklodge Hotel, Aughrim.

The Regan organic farm showcases its practices of farming with nature on the food trail organised by Taste Wexford in collaboration with Lorraine O’Dwyer of Gallivanting Tours.

“Our plans for the future are to develop the pigs and have them available for sale on line. We want to do our own organic liver pate.

“We also plan to have a shop on the farm where people can buy our produce and other local organic produce so that people can stock up on items if they make a journey to get to us,” said Mary.