MEET THE PUMPKIN
Life’s a treat for Tom Dillon, who is carving a niche in pumpkin farming
ADECADE ago, Tom Dillon was enjoying the cut and thrust of Ireland’s media scene. Working as a journalist at the coalface of social media, Dillon had turned his back on a lucrative career in finance, after graduating from Trinity College
with a degree in politics and economics, to pursue his dream.
From the outset, he showed plenty of promise, securing jobs at some of Ireland’s most dynamic media organisations. ‘I had always imagined working on magazines, and doing editorial or investigative work,’ he recalls. ‘I loved how the industry worked and the 24-hour news cycle. I thought it would be a great kick to have people read your stuff. There were plenty of blags and ligs going on — there was always an opening to go to, or a lunch with free food and wine on the go.’
Little did he know at the time that a whole new vocation lay ahead, growing some 13,000 pumpkins a year at his family farm in Fordstown, Co. Meath.
Tom’s is a story that many Irish families can relate to; as someone who came from a long line of farmers, it was perhaps inevitable that one day he would return to the ‘family firm’, and tend the farm just as his parents Ben and Maureen had done.
‘I always say I come from a long line of people who don’t like to move,’ Tom says, laughing. ‘My parents, grandparents and then their parents were farmers.
‘Growing up, you were always busy helping out as best you could. You’d start off doing the fairly basic things, like standing in gaps trying not to let animals out of a field, but then as you get older, the responsibility increases a little and you get to do more interesting and cooler stuff. I’d tell my friends what I’d got up to on the weekends and they were always saying, “I’d never be allowed to do that”.’
While it was clear that the farm would never be sold, Ben and Maureen always placed a huge emphasis on education. Both Tom’s siblings moved to Britain — Tom’s sister is a pharmacist while his brother is working as a barrister.
‘Basically, if we wanted to do something else, we would have been able to,’ explains Tom. ‘When I got into Trinity my parents were delighted — my brother went to Trinity before me.
‘Back in 2005, graduates were pretty much guaranteed jobs,’ he adds. ‘Everyone in college felt like the ruler of the world at the time. The world was definitely our oyster.’
Before long, Tom had a career in banking in his crosshairs. ‘When I started out in finance, I went into it naively thinking it would be like the movies or TV,’ he says smiling. ‘I wanted to wear a suit and live in a flat in the city and have power meetings, all that jazz. It became more obvious as time went on that it was nothing like that, and there was a lot more drudgery involved.’
He changed tack quickly, yet, as Tom’s journalism career took flight, a fateful call came in from home.
‘My mother told me that Dad had to go to hospital, that he’d been in with the doctor,’ Tom recalls. ‘It was all very sudden – it turned out that his kidneys were failing and he had to go to hospital right away.’
Back on the farm, nature waited for no-one. Cows were starting to calve, while lambing season was just around the corner.
‘I figured I’d go back and do a few days a week on the farm to help out while all of this was going on,’ he says. ‘A few days turned into weeks, and one thing led to another. It became apparent that my father was going to be in hospital for a long time — he was on dialysis, so he wasn’t able to do
‘I realised I had to give up my Dublin job and stay here’
anything physical —much less work a farm — so I realised I had to give up my job and stay here.’
How did he feel, leaving his dream career in the city behind? ‘It was all very organic,’ he explains. ‘It was no big deal to work here the whole time. I’m not going to say I regret anything I did. I was very happy to help out the family.
‘But it was a tough transition — I had all my friends in Dublin so it definitely meant that I lost touch with a lot of people up there. ‘As a young man you like a bit of action, and it was certainly a great time to be living in Dublin in 2007.’ Within months, however, Tom began to realise that far from being a family obligation, he loved working on the farm. Irish farming certainly isn’t without its challenges, and soon he began thinking of new, creative ways to use the farmland. And then, with his father Ben finally on the mend, Tom started to look into travelling options when fate intervened.
‘I saw an ad in the paper about going to work in America on the harvest from April to October, and it sounded great,’ he enthuses. ‘I started in Arizona and worked my way towards the Canadian border and back down again.
‘I started to see pumpkins absolutely everywhere. They’d close off four lanes of petrol stations to create these pumpkin patches. It was a massive deal over in the US.
‘When I came home I was looking for something to do and realised we needed to do something a bit fun and different, but also good for the farm. I could see Halloween becoming increasingly popular in Ireland, too. We used to go trick or treating when I was small in the most rudimentary costumes. It would very much come and go with no fanfare.
‘In America, meanwhile, you’d see all the celebs picking pumpkins and posing for photos in pumpkin patches. I thought maybe in Ireland, we could do something similar.’ The first year Tom planted pumpkins, he planted what he felt were, in a fit of enthusiasm, far too many.
‘A friend came to help me and while it was fun for the first hour, it come became quite a chore,’ he says laughing. ‘But then I couldn’t believe it when they grew really well. My girlfriend at the time said, “You should have a go at selling them.”’
In 2012, Tom was slightly ahead of his time, as many people in Ireland hadn’t yet fully embraced the pumpkin trend.
‘It took a couple of years for things to take off,’ he recalls. ‘I opened up for business, and it was me standing in a field alongside the road with all these pumpkins. My dad was like, “Come on, we have to start our winter sowing”, and “We have to do this and that with the cattle and sheep”, and I was adamant I had to be here. He was like, “Sure there’s no-one here”.
‘By year two or three he was like, “That’s it, you’re cracked. You’re making an eejit of yourself at this stage.” Of course, now he thinks it’s a great thing altogether.’
These days, Alright Pumpkin — one of Ireland’s only pumpkin farms and patches — welcomes thousands of visitors every year in the run-up to Halloween. Visitors can pick their own pumpkins, and often send Tom and his wife Natasha pictures of their Jack-o’-Lantern creations, which Tom says is a favourite part of the job.
Yet as most Irish farmers can readily attest, some years in the job are tougher than others.
‘When growing pumpkins, you’re trying to dodge frost at the beginning and the end of the year, and because of this year’s drought there was a lot of walking up and down the fields, thinking, “There are far too many of these bloody things”. I plant them in a greenhouse at the beginning of May and leave them for about a month until they have three true leaves.
‘In farming, the biggest challenge is undoubtedly the weather,’ he adds. ‘We had to close things down because of Storm Ophelia this year, and then Storm Brian. These extreme weather moments are coming more often and the weather seems to be changing so much from year to year.
‘Other than that the only problem is finding a chiropractor to put me back together when Halloween is over.’
What’s more, Tom barely misses his old, glamorous lifestyle back in Dublin’s media world.
‘I like living in the countryside,’ he affirms. ‘I can still go out and see all my friends in the evenings in Dublin if I need to — it just takes a bit more driving.’
Dad said, ‘You’re making an eejit of yourself’