When comedian Kevin McAleer used to give his three children pep talks about finding their own path in life, there was always just one proviso. As you might expect from the droll, recently retired stand-up comic, there was more focus on creativity and fulfilling dreams than on pensions or job security.
“He was like ‘Do whatever you want, take creatives paths – but don’t be farmers’,” recalls 32-year-old Josiah (Jo) as his twin brother Louis nods, chuckling at the memory. We are standing outside a large polytunnel, heavily scented with an array of herbs including dill, borage and coriander, on the two-acre farm the McAleer offspring have been running since March. “Do whatever ye want – just don’t do farming,” echoes the twins’ sister, Florence (33), later when talking about the career advice their father regularly imparted.
The trio now run Fréamh (Irish for root) Farm in the townland of Currandrum near Claregalway, Co Galway, but they do credit Kevin and their mother Valerie Whitworth, a choir leader and vocal instructor, with their passion for growing in the most environmentally friendly conditions possible. And they understand their father’s one-time aversion to farming, given that his memories of childhood in the 1960s are more about picking stones off the land than the farm-to-fork lifestyle they revel in.
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This, after all, is a man whose rural Co Tyrone background informed much of his stand-up material. “I was born in 1956 in Co Tyrone,” he would tell his audiences, “for something I didn’t do”.
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But while Louis explains that for their father, whose role as Uncle Colm on Lisa McGee’s Derry Girls won him another generation of fans, there was “not much joy” in life on a farm in Co Tyrone, his children saw things differently.
“I had this idealistic thing of disappearing into the wilderness and living off grid, living off the land,” Louis says. “I just could not imagine a job that I would find fulfilling. Living off the land and learning to be self-sufficient sounded really appealing.”
The twins were keen rugby players and Louis studied sports coaching in university but after completing his degree decided “it wasn’t for me”. Like his father, Josiah did journalism in college but he too got sidetracked, in his case by travel and an interest in farming which he believes was sparked by food. “We were brought up vegetarian. So vegetables were a big part of our diet obviously.”
“Of our lives,” interjects Florence (Flo).
“And our mum is a brilliant veggie cook,” continues Jo. And no, they never felt deprived at the lack of Sunday roast dinners or trips to McDonald’s as kids, although Louis does recall after they moved from London back to Tyrone – to the farmhouse where their father was reared – at the age of five and six, not loving friends’ barbecues. “There would be a bap with ketchup in it, a ketchup sandwich. That was the worst part.”
The sun is shining on the day The Irish Times calls to the farm and a cat called Princess, one of three they “inherited” with the farm, is lolling around.
There is a hammock in one of the polytunnels in Fréamh, a hint that for the siblings, drudgery is not synonymous with farming.
A huge variety of vegetables and herbs are shooting up in both the polytunnels and on the outside beds, and they credit farm owner Aitor Cullinan’s dedication to soil management as the key to their already bountiful harvest.
Having leased the farm for at least a year, they have just secured stalls at two local markets, Moycullen on Fridays and Tiny Traders in Galway city on Saturdays, which will initially be stocked with salad leaves, herbs, cucumbers, peppers, aubergines, tomatoes, early carrots and climbing French beans. They are hoping customers will also call to the farm to see first-hand where the produce comes from.
“We have a lovely big grape vine,” says Flo. “And we are going to have melons as well.”
They proudly point to the outside beds, and to the spot where pumpkins will be planted in due course.
When they catch themselves waxing lyrical about the sweetness of their vegetables – Flo swears that a “salad turnip” tasted like a melon while one of her brothers says their early carrots taste like bananas – they have a laugh about it. Inevitably there are comparisons with another set of contented twins, immersed in the good food world, under the brand the Happy Pear.
“They are the other twins on the veg scene,” jokes Josiah. “We could be the antithesis of them – the grumpy twins. I know they are insanely happy but they are spreading good food as a message.”
We eat lunch. The food is almost all from the polytunnels, with colourful salads complementing falafels made by Flo – but the twins stress that it happened to be their sister’s turn that day and they too do their share in the kitchen.
Their father also confirms by phone that they are all “brilliant cooks” and that he is the weak link in the family when it comes to culinary skills, “but I do a very good washing up”.
For some, the most remarkable thing about three young people who have had a variety of life experiences, including training to be a yoga instructor on a beach in India (Flo), stints living in Edinburgh and Australia (Jo) and prolonged periods in Squamish and Whistler in Canada (Louis), might be that they are siblings happily working and living together.
In fact, Flo and Jo joke that they have spent years “following Louis around”, first to Canada and then, in 2020, to Robinson’s family-run chemical-free commercial vegetable farm near Bandon, in Co Cork, initially as “wwoofers” (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms is a worldwide movement linking volunteers with organic farmers and growers) and later as fully fledged farmers.
As lockdown was disrupting lives around the world, the three ended up in Robinsons. “Louis got a job and then Flo and I followed,” says Jo.
Flo, who did an arts degree before being drawn to food and catering, working in various restaurants in London, came back to Ireland when Covid struck in 2020 and stayed in Co Tyrone for a few months.
She laughs that she “cycled to Cork on my bike” and indeed she did, intending to visit Louis for a few weeks. “And then I just never left. I was there for three years.” After a few months on the farm, she moved to Cork city, where she worked in cafes, but within six months was back at the farm.
“I just wanted to be outside and work with crops. I just love the work,” she adds.
Born in London, the three took their mother’s surname Whitworth but Flo recently changed to McAleer and they are amused by the confusion this has generated.
“Having your mum’s maiden name, people assume your parents are not together – but no it was just a choice,” says Jo.
“I love that we all had her name for 30-odd years,” says Flo, who adds the change was partly because she was connecting to her Irish roots and also because she always thought that if she ever gets married she doesn’t want to change her name. “I didn’t really love Whitworth so if I stayed with Whitworth I might be inclined to change it, so I was like I can change it of my own accord.”
They weren’t particularly traumatised by the move as small children from London to the countryside in rural Tyrone when the family returned to the farm where Kevin was reared.
“We got told to go back to where we came from, which was maybe not surprising, but it was surprising as a kid. I was like ‘why?’,” says Jo who also recalls thinking all the kids were cheating “by picking up the football”.
Kevin remembers more of the detail. “They came here with English accents. We sent them to a summer play camp and on the first day an eight-year-old girl told Louis to ‘f**k off back to England’. But that wasn’t typical,” he says.
Although their focus is on organic farming and they have inherited both parents’ concern for the environment, the siblings also feel sympathy for those farmers who feel they are scapegoated in the bid to cut emissions.
“It feels like the fingers are being pointed at the farmers,” says Louis, adding it is easy to understand why farmers feel wronged “when a lot of the time they were led into this industrial way of farming and subsidised for these ways”.
Flo agrees it is “really unfair” that certain farming practices were “totally incentivised” and now after many farmers have done what they were encouraged to do, they are being told how bad it is for the planet.
“But at the same time, things need to change in the way we farm.”
Meanwhile, as the first tiny green cherry tomato was spotted in the polytunnel, a photograph was quickly dispatched to Co Tyrone where Kevin immediately pronounced himself to be “a very proud grandad”.
A tomato grower himself, he says it is hard to beat the pleasure of “a tomato just plucked straight off the vine, still warm from the sun”.
He says his own late father must be “grinning up there somewhere” given how the next generation have embraced life on the land, while Kevin, the only boy in a family of four, fled the farm as soon as he could.
But he has already done a few weeding shifts in Fréamh and now that he has retired from live performances after 40 years, he has more time, and he is contemplating future projects.
“Writing is in the back of my mind but at the moment I am just leaving a blank space and just see what comes into it.”
Given that he and Valerie have always worked in the creative world where freelance roles are more typical than job security, he sometimes worries when he sees his children’s friends with very successful high-powered businesses, or having bought their own homes. “Sometimes you have a little doubt and think, ‘Oh God, what sort of values have we given them?’ But then they are just doing what they want to do.
“It’s half the battle isn’t it?”
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