Crowe’s Farm in County Tipperary produces a sumptuous range of delicious, premium bacon, beef and turkey products, with the emphasis very much on organic production methods. We travelled to their Dundrum baseand met up with John Paul Crowe to discuss the successful move towards organic production and the current well-being of this proud family enterprise.
Crowe’s Farm has embraced organic farming techniques to produce some of the tastiest and healthiest organic beef and turkeys produced on the island of Ireland. Furthermore, to produce their wide range of handmade artisan bacon products, all pigs on the farm are hand-reared – outdoors – by John Paul Crowe, before being processed in the state-of-the-art family butchery and then delivered to customers nationwide.
Farming responsibly for generations, Crowe’s Farm are passionate about creating only the finest delicious, natural products that money can buy. They use the finest bacon, free from artificial colours, flavours and additives, to create all their delicious bacon and pork products – chops, ham, fillets, puddings, rashers, roasts and sausages. Crowe’s are committed to bacon, beef and turkey product integrity and to using the most wholesome, natural ingredients alongside business practices that respect the earth and the environment.
Referring to the growing importance of organics in day-to-day, on-farm activities and the seamless switch, John Paul notes: “We converted to organics about eight years ago and the organic end is a very big part of our ethos. We were never an intensive farm anyway, so organic was always going to be a good fit.
“We produce beef cattle and turkeys for the Christmas market organically. I run the farm end of the business and my brothers Eamonn, TJ and Patrick run the abattoir, where they produce pork and bacon as well as hams for Christmas. We used to get a lot of customers coming in for hams and they were also looking for turkeys, so it was an obvious enough move and we’ve been producing organic turkeys for six or seven years now.”
The fresh and delicious bacon, beef and turkey products can be either bought online or in person at Crowe’s Farm’s onsite farm shop.
The genesis of the proud family tradition dates back to John Paul’s great grandfather Edward and grandfather Tom, who ran a mixed enterprise – beef, dairy and sheep. His father John took over the business and in 1981 developed the specialist pork and bacon operation with which the Crowes have become synonymous over the last three-and-a-half decades.
Thus, John Paul, Eamonn, TJ and Patrick are the fourth generation to oversee this progressive family enterprise and they continue to move the business forward at pace. Today, they farm a total of 135 acres, 82 of which is owned while the remainder is leased.
The move into organic production has proven particularly successful. “In the turkey end of things, we started with 150 the first year and we are doing 2,000 bronze turkeys this year. It has grown year on year. We buy them as day old chicks and they are kept outdoors from when they are six weeks old up until December.
“The turkeys are sold online to customers nationwide. We have covered every county in Ireland, offering a next-day courier delivery service. We also do some of our own deliveries, with a van on the road and a freezer box covering Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Ennis.”
Certified organic turkeys are raised outdoors and allowed to grow at their own pace, maturing slowly, resulting in meat that is well marbled and with a fine texture and more deposits of fat under the skin. As fats heat quicker than protein, the birds cook faster, producing a more succulent tender meat.
The other aspect to these unique birds is that the turkeys are fed 100% chemical free certified organic mix that is grown locally and mixed on-farm
In terms of organic beef, Crowe’s Farm have 45 sucklers and also buy in some organic calves to double- and treble-suckle. All the beef produce goes to Good Herdsmen Ltd. in Cahir – the premium end of the organic meat market. “Our farm has always been low-input anyway so the transition to organic beef was a straightforward one,” says John Paul
“Our pigs are low-intensive, outdoor-reared, in keeping with our sustainability ethos and we utilise all the fertiliser that’s produced by our cattle, turkeys and pigs on our farm as well. As cereals are expensive to produce or purchase, everything on the farm is grass-based.”
Of course, as laudable as it is to farm organically, it would be of little use to the primary producer if a profit was not being made. How difficult is it to strike the right balance between producing organic produce and running a viable commercial enterprise?
“We looked at the amount of land we are faming and the type of land we are farming to see what was the best way to go that would suit our farm. We concluded that organic beef was the way to go. Before we went into organic, we had a purebred beef enterprise already and the principle of organic farming attracted me as well as the economic benefits of the subsidies that are available.”
Crowe’s Farm currently provides gainful employment to ten people and John Paul is confident that this number could increase going forward. “The turkey side of the business is increasing every year and the sucklers have increased from 30 to 45, so we’re moving in the right direction,” he concludes.
“We would like to grow every aspect of the business, including the pigs. We’re also going to look at introducing our own on-farm slaughtering facility for the turkeys as well, which hopefully will be in place by next Christmas, That would generate another bit of local employment and every little bit helps.”
Crowe’s Farm,
Gurtussa,
Dundrum,
CountyTipperary.
Tel: 062 71137
Fax: 062 71089
email: [email protected]
www.crowefarm.ie
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 3 No 8, September 2015
