TV host opens Gormanston farm shop for Christmas
DARRAGH McCullough has taken the plunge this Christmas to welcome the public into his farm with the opening of a new farm shop.
Darragh, who divides his time between managing the home farm and reporting on rural issues on RTE’s Ear to the Ground TV show, started growing Christmas trees and free-range bronze turkeys for the first time year to complement his thriving cut-flower operation.
“We’ve been selling flowers at the farm gate for the last 10 years, but I realised we were missing a trick shutting down every winter when so many people wanted to source locally grown trees and high quality free-range turkeys,” he said.
The well-known farmer has been over-whelmed by the response so far from friends, family and neighbours.
“We’ve exceeded our expectations with great demand for the bronze turkeys and trees flying out the gate,” said McCullough, who has planted over 1,000 Christmas trees in one his most prominent fields opposite a busy Apple Green petrol station just before traffic reaches the M1 motorway.
“We have over 20,000 cars passing Elmgrove farm every day so it makes sense for us to make this move into retail to try to safeguard the future of the business here,” he said. “I hope that people will be able to come into the farm and literally pick their own tree in the field before we cut it down in front of their eyes - that would freshness that would be hard to beat!”
Elmgrove Farm also produces over 12 million flowers from the 100 acres of daffodils, peony, sweet william, sunflower, gladiola, lily and wildflowers being cultivated on the light coastal lands at Gormanston. Every one of them is hand-picked by an army of up to 40 staff employed in the burgeoning operation.
“Lidl would be one of our main customers but we supply other outlets and even export flowers to places like Holland and the US. It’s great to be involved in a farm enterprise that can take on international competition and fly the Irish flag around the world,” added the Meathman.
“It was really my dad that developed a daffodil enterprise on the back of the country’s oldest onion growing operation. I’ve tried to expand both of those enterprises with garlic and shallots being added to the mix this year for Aldi,” he explained.
While writing columns for the Farming Independent and appearing in front of over 400,000 weekly viewers on RTE’s flagship food and farming programme Ear to the Ground takes up a day each week, McCullough has his eyes firmly fixed on building up the home farm enterprise.
“I take a lot of pride in having a business that is creating lots of economic activity in the area. There’s nothing easy in farming, which makes it all the sweeter to be involved with an expanding business.”
The Farm shop also features a live crib, freshly made wreaths, vegetable boxes from Colpe-based In Season Farm, and even some daffodils that have already started blooming in fields near Donacarney.
“It’s a bit mad to have daffodils flowering in December, but I think it might more to do with the variety than climate change,” said McCullough. “It’s called Martinette, and is just one of the 40 varieties that we farm. That might seem like a lot, but it’s actually only a fraction of the thousands of narcissus varieites that exist out there.