It is one of the most idyllic scenes of summer – a trailer pulled over at the roadside. Inside, a teenager either catching up on vacation reading or napping in the shade. Out front, a trestle table stacked with plastic punnets of the sweetest juiciest strawberries around.
The appearance of Wexford strawberries is one of the heralds of Irish summer. Even though fruit that looks like strawberries is available in groceries all year round, these are often as durable and flavour-free as styrofoam. It‘s only the arrival of sweet, delicate, locally grown summer berries that stirs the heart.
But as carefree as the sellers might seem, behind the scenes there is a whirlwind of activity. The final sale might seem a throwback to gentler days, but make no mistake, roadside strawberries are a very modern and complex Irish business.
In fact, says Eamonn Crean, of Wexford’s Greenhill Fruit Farm, while once local strawberry growers numbered in the hundreds and more, today most of these roadside stands come from only six big farms, of which his is one of the largest.
Greenhill, located in the rolling hills just outside Enniscorthy, sells berries through 30 roadside stands ranging from Wexford to Aghadegnan in Co Longford (they can park in designated spots due to a grower’s exemption). They also sell at retail to independent groceries and SuperValu, and contribute to the Wexford Special strawberry selection at Aldi, as well as supplying fine hotels, and jam and ice cream makers.
As you might expect, growing that number of berries is quite an operation. But it‘s hard to picture just how big Greenhill is until you’re driving around the farm with Crean.
There you see acre after acre of vinyl grow tunnels – roughly 150 of them, each 100m long. Inside are long rows of chest-high shelves, each tunnel supporting 3,600 strawberry plants. All told, that‘s more than a half-million plants, covering roughly 40 acres.
All of the strawberries at Greenhill are grown hydroponically, planted in cocoa peat pots and fed with a carefully calibrated mixture of nutrients – sample leaves are sent off to a laboratory for analysis every two weeks to adjust the mix for anything the plant might be missing.
The operation is virtually waste free and is a Bord Bia Origin Green “Gold Standard” member for its dedication to sustainability. In 2023 Greenhill was honoured for its ecological growing at a garden party at Áras an Uachtaráin by President Michael D Higgins.
At times Crean sounds more like a corporate chief executive than a farmer, but that‘s to be expected given the nature of his job today. During peak season Greenhill employs around 150 people.
“We have three languages minimum,” Crean says. “So it takes a huge amount of communication and training to keep people growing in a non-stress environment. So there are layers and layers of training and layers and layers of management.
“Everybody has an important part of it, from the guy who picks the fruit, the guy who brings it in, the guy who packs it. If any part fails, that will hurt the product.
“To see the development of people working together and taking ownership of their part of the operation, that‘s nearly as rewarding as the fruit development.
“Everyone is striving for perfection not because they’re told to but because they have a piece of Greenhill. They understand what their piece is and they can see the results daily. Yes it‘s a family farm, but it‘s a family farm with a lot of families supporting it.”
All of this is a far cry from the early days of the Wexford strawberry business. Crean says the first commercial berry grower he knows about was a distant relative named Paddy Moore, from nearby Adamstown, who in the 1930s wrapped his delicate berries in newspaper for protection before bicycling to New Ross for delivery.
Irish strawberry growing really kicked off during the second World War, when imported English berries disappeared from the markets. At its peak, Crean says, there were more than 1,000 berry growers in Wexford county, selling at roadside stands and local markets and delivering to Chivers for jam-making.
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The trade was highly lucrative. “My uncle said the other day that in the 50s, if you had an acre of strawberries you could have bought a car,” Crean says. “If you had two acres, you could have bought a new tractor; everyone else was still using horses. If you were lucky enough to have three acres, you could have bought a combine harvester and that combine would have paid for the farm in two years.
“That was the 50s. It was very strong even into the 60s and 70s, but then Ireland started taking Chinese imports and the business slowly melted away from there.”
Crean is part of the third generation of his family to grow strawberries at Greenhill (before that, it was a dairy farm). He got his start the way teenagers still do today – selling at the roadside.
“It‘s a great job for a student,” he says. “It gives them a set of life skills they can carry on – how to be sociable, how to deal with customers, how to account for finances.”
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Hand-selling also guarantees immediate feedback – especially since Crean’s mobile phone number is printed on every punnet. You’re only as good as your last sale.
“There’s no hiding if we make a mistake,” he says. “Customers have an expectation of how the product should taste and if we make any mistake we know about it that same morning.
“The roadside stands are the freshest strawberries you can get. They’re picked, they travel overnight and they’re there for sale the next morning. It‘s just pure freshness.”
