‘Cherries were ¤10 a kilo – nearly as good as beef ’
PRODUCING five million apples a year is no easy task but it is the norm at Con Traas’s 60ac farm at Moorestown near Cahir in south Tipperary
The production statistics at The Apple Farm are fascinating, with each of its 40,000 trees producing between 100 and 125 apples each season.
Fifteen apple varieties, from Cox’s Pippins to cooking varieties like Bramley, are grown at the enterprise and sold to established bakeries in Tipperary and Limerick, with about a third of the apples going to “regular customers and callers to the farm shop”.
More recently, the enterprise has linked up with the Dunne Stores, where the apples are marketed under the Grá fruit range.
Equally fascinating are the statistics behind the other fruits produced on the farm: two acres of strawberries growing six tonnes per acre; raspberries on three-quarters of an acre producing four tonnes; a half-acre of cherries yielding one tonne; and the three-acre plum plot producing a harvest of 15 tonnes.
Asked which of farm’s fruits are the most profitable, Con points to the cherries which he says were getting “¤10 a kilo this year — nearly as good as producing beef ”.
He adds that there is future horticultural work to be done on the cherry plot.
Overall, it has been a good year for the fruit at The Apple Farm, with all the fruits thriving apart from the plums, which suffered during the Arctic spell earlier this year and fell victim to every hungry bird around Cahir just before the crop could take off.
The farm was bought by Con’s parents William and Ali Traas when they moved here from Holland some 50 years ago. They purchased the land from a local electrician, Tommy Sampson, who was emigrating to Canada. “Both families have done well ever since,” says Con.
Back then, the Traas family developed a tillage enterprise along with dried peas, tulips and seed crops, but gradually, over the years, the holding was transformed into a fruit enterprise. Con (50) took over the management of the farm in the 1990s when he completed his university studies in biology and horticulture at the UCD.
The farm employs 20 people, including a full-time horticulturist. Many are from Poland and the Czech Republic and have settled down in the area and are raising their families here.
“Every one of them is needed, especially at harvest time,” says Con.
He is married to Trina, an assistant principal at a primary school in Clonmel, and they have three children — Daniel (19), a food science student at UCD, and Ella (17) and David (14), who are at school locally.
“The children take an inter-
BETWEEN THE FARM AND THE UNIVERSITY I HAVE LITTLE TIME FOR ANYTHING ELSE
est in the farm, but it is too early to say which of them is most interested in running the enterprise,” says Con.
Con also works off farm as a part-time lecturer in plant physiology, horticulture and THE possibility of Continental milk processors raiding Ireland for supplies was considered a live threat this month 30 years ago.
Irish processors were already in a squabble for supplies, but a dair y industry leader warned that the real battle would be to keep our milk in Ireland, repor ted the
Speaking at the National Dairy conference, Dr Liam Donnelly said new methods of milk evaporation to reduce volume could bring the Continental milk tankers rolling onto Irish roads.
The gear was that the Continental processors, with buoyant markets and scarce supplies, would be able to pay the extra 8p or 9p a gallon to source milk here for the giant creameries in France and Holland.
Anxiety was also rising in the tillage sector, where the Brussels set-a-side scheme for land was reported to have run into trouble only days after it was announced by the then Minister for Agriculture Michael O’Kennedy.
The scheme would pay tillage farmers up to £75 per acre for taking land out of production once they had agreed to set aside at least 20pc of their holding for five years.
The IFA maintained that the scheme would do little to tackle low margins in the sector.