Greenhill Fruit Farm is a family-run fruit growing enterprise based near Enniscorthy in County Wexford. Founder / proprietor Eamon Crean prides himself on providing customers with superior-tasting fruit that is of a consistently-high quality. This is why Greenhill is widely recognised as one of Ireland’s premier fruit farms. We met up with Eamon to find out more.
Chances are you know Greenhill Fruit Farm; chances are you’ve tasted their delicious fruit somewhere on your travels. If you did, you’ll probably remember … it’d be impossible not to be impressed!
Greenhill Fruit Farm’s aim is to provide the best fruit farm produce available in Ireland and make it available to the public – at affordable prices. This fruit – strawberries, raspberries and blackberries are farmed using traditional methods, i.e. in the soil of the south-east coast, resulting in a splendid sweet taste.
The fruit is fully protected from the elements, which guarantees a consistently high quality, while all fruit is picked on a daily basis which allows founder Eamon Crean and his team to offer the freshest, highest quality produce on the market.
All Greenhill’s fruit is grown in accordance with the Bord Bia quality assured system and is also HACCP-approved. They are one of the only Bord Bia-approved fruit farms in the south east growing fruit the traditional way. Although it costs more to produce fruit in this method, the range is offered at no extra cost.
Eamon has almost 30 years’ experience in the fruit industry. Reflecting on how he initially became involved, he recalls: “I started selling fruit 26 years ago, when I was 17, having grown up on a dairy farm with 120 cows. My mother was an English of Adamstown and her father, Tom English, who started in the early 1950s, would have been one of the first men in Wexford to grow strawberries. My mother would have spoken a lot about her years picking fruit and that’s where I got my interest from. Tom’s son, Paddy, started a nursery and another son, Tom Jnr., has taken that over”.
“How I started out when I was 17 was that I was living on £30 a week, which was a typical farmer’s wage, and I wanted more money to socialise. So I started to buy and sell fruit at the side of the road at weekends. I realised that supermarkets were unable to access good quality fruit so I went into partnership with my brother John, growing fruit ourselves, which we then sold on the roadside. In ’07, I went out on my own and founded Greenhill Fruit Farm”.
“It’s very much a family business. My wife Deirdre, who also does part-time nursing, is involved in the running of the business, as are my five daughters, who range in age from six to sixteen. It takes a huge team effort and we all work together to make the business work.”
It’s also a multinational effort, as Eamon – an equal opportunities employer – reveals: “Our manager is Romanian and our chief grower is Bulgarian. Or junior grower and our head foreman (who’s also my first cousin) are Irish, as are the maintenance crew and some of the pack-house people. The rest of them, and all the pickers, are European.
“Nearly half of our staff would be involved in marketing as two-thirds of our fruit is sold directly to businesses – to local shops and hotels in surrounding counties and to multinationals in Dublin.
“We also employ a lot of Irish students, who sell on our roadside stalls. We sell fruit on the roadside in many counties and that’s still our main outlet. But we know we are only as good as our last punnet and we are under no illusions whatsoever about the importance of quality. That’s why I put my mobile number on every punnet sold and listen to feedback from every customer.”
The soft fruit industry is a massive employer and Eamon estimates that labour accounts for 50% of turnover. During the peak summer months, he employs up to 140 people – all this generated from a 20-acre fruit farm in Enniscorthy.
He points out how he came at the whole bringing-a-product-to-market challenge from a different perspective than most other fruit growers: “I already had the market,” he notes. “I came at it from a retailer’s point of view. I got into this as a retailer first and then went looking to source a product that I could sell. I found my market first, then set about developing the product. I knew the market was there. I remember setting off to Longford and Roscommon at 5am with a car loaded with strawberries. I knew I could sell them.”
With fruit, nothing is more important than flavour. “When I pick a variety, it will always have a great flavour,” the Wexford man confirms. “From the very beginning, I have enjoyed a close connection with my customers. I’ve never lost that and this is why my number is on the punnets. I get texts from people all the time and it ensures that you have an emotional connection with the product and with the customers. I genuinely want to know what people think of my fruit. I have also created a very good team about me and they have been instrumental in the success of the business to date.”
Greenhill’s fruit is available at both People’s Park and Marley Park farmers markets, while restaurants and hotels in Dublin are also supplied through various catering companies. Eamon has been greatly helped in the development of his business by Bord Bia, Teagasc as well Wexford Local Development. He has travelled extensively across Europe and educated himself on all aspects of fruit farming and Irish celebrity chef Donal Skehan provided a shining endorsement of the produce when he visited Greenhill Fruit Farm as part of his Kitchen Hero series, which was broadcast on RTE One on Thursday, December 4th last year.
The roadside fruit selling window is a short one, running from mid-May until the end of August. “It’s a niche market and we sell under an exemption which was granted by the Government. The roadside tradition is a valuable second market for growers” the Wexford man notes.
“There is a huge tradition of roadside selling in Wexford and there is also a strong tradition of people who continue to buy the product.”
Each punnet sold is as fresh as it possibly can be: “What’s picked today, you will get it tomorrow. We pick it, chill it, put it on a lorry and travel overnight before loading it on vans for sale the next morning. The vans then bring the fruit to the various roadside locations,” says Eamon, who is also an agent for Wexford Potatoes.
Greenhill’s fruit is renowned nationwide for its great taste. “We produce 60% of the strawberries in the soil in Wexford, which gives a unique flavour to the fruit. 90% of fruit in Ireland is now produced using hydroponics, whereas we create the perfect atmosphere to produce a product that is exceptional every day, in tunnels that are four metres high, eight metres wide and 100 metres long.”
Eamon produces five varieties of strawberry, three varieties of raspberry and two varieties of blackberry. “Strawberries are like people – they don’t like to be worked,” he quips. “They love 20 degrees, but don’t like it too hot. Wexford has very high light levels and is an excellent place to grow fruit.
“But fruit farming is not for everyone. It requires a big commitment because it’s seasonal and you have to make a lot of sacrifices. It takes a big commitment from a lot of people to create a consistent product. Consistency is vital, as is flavour.
“You have to impress your customers. Your clients have to trust you. There aren’t a huge amount of fruit farms left in Ireland and we are only here because of the support of the Irish people – no market, no fruit farm.”
Greenhill Fruit Farm,
Ballinavary,
Davidstown,
Enniscorthy,
County Wexford.
Tel: 053 9247556
Fax: 053 9247556
Mobile: 086 8257389
Email: [email protected]
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 3 No 8, September 2015
