The green gospel of organic farming
REPORTER DAVID MEDCALF CALLED TO THE ORGANIC FARM, SHOP AND ECOLOGY CENTRE RUN BY THE DOMINICAN ORDER OF NUNS IN WICKLOW WHERE THE HOLY SISTERS BELIEVE THAT THERE IS MUCH MORE TO SPIRITUALITY THAT FORMAL PRAYERS
IT is a farm, a farm with such crops and animals as may be seen on most farms. Yet it is a farm like none other.
The 60-plus acres of the Dominican Farm are set in suburbia rather than in the deepest countryside. And this most unusual of agricultural holdings comes complete with a shop and an ecology centre. Other farmers erect notices proclaiming private property, often backed up with warnings that trespassers will be prosecuted.
The Dominicans in Wicklow have made their unique landholding venture an international attraction with everyone invited to step inside the gate.
The place often rolls out the welcome mat for school parties and other groups who wish to come to witness their stewardship of the hilly fields on the edge of town.
Rather than being controlled by a farmer who brings generations of experience to the job, the Dominicans have Sister Julie Newman.
She is a teacher by profession and boasts no green certs or degrees in agricultural science.
Though she was brought up in rural Meath, her family was more concerned with running a business than with tilling the land.
She and her colleague Sister Marian O’Sullivan are both long retired from the classroom but impressively keen to pursue this new direction.
Soft-spoken and light on her feet, Sister Julie has long been a familiar figure in the town she has come to call home. She taught in the Dominican school here for ten years and then served a further ten as school principal.
She was professed a Dominican nun in 1960, more than half a century ago, and was on the staff of the order’s school at Eccles Street in Dublin for a while before coming to Wicklow.
Appointed to the staff in 1979, she says she now feels that she has been in her adopted home for most of her life. When she stepped down from the head teacher’s office, she remained in the convent, but quiet running dynamo of a woman had no intention of resting on her laurels.
The state of Planet Earth was already a major talking point by then in the mid-nineties.
With their extensive land bank on the doorstep, she and her colleagues chose not to shy away from the issue.
They were convinced that the resources of the planet were being exploited and damaged, not only by industry, but also by agriculture.
They were convinced that the repeated use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides on a vast scale is not a sustainable way of feeding the world’s expanding population.
The question they asked themselves was ‘Is there something we can do?’ And the answer was yes: ‘We decided that we would do something.’
The nuns found themselves considering how best to bear witness to their conviction that there must be a better way of feeding everyone than incessantly pouring chemicals on to the soil.
Sister Julie took was granted early retirement in 1999 with it in mind that she would take up the topic.
The order of which she was a member had sold much of its long held property in Dublin but still had the land on the doorstep of the school in Wicklow.
Surely there was no better place than here to turn intellectual curiosity and passion into practical conviction.