A Poulet Au Pot - Regan Organics
Monday 01 March 2010
Poulet Au Pot
In the 16th Century, King Henry 1V of France, a very popular figure, espoused the desire that all of the people of France would be able to have a ‘poulet au pot’ on a Sunday for lunch. Indeed many of us have memories of the flavours and smells wafting from the kitchen, after Mass on Sunday, of the Irish “poulet au pot” - real succulent roast stuffed chicken and ham. King Henry, certainly didn’t have in mind the poor old battery chickens of today. I had the opportunity of carrying out a bit of my own homespun ‘market research’ albeit somewhat unintentionally. I succumbed to buying a couple of cheap chickens for my Siamese Cats. It is cheaper than the expensive little sachets of catfood! What a lesson. One cheap chuck they wouldn’t eat at all. The second chook made them violently sick! I decided rapidly that, If whatever was fed or pumped into those poor birds did that to my moggies, what would it do to me. So that was the end of the cheap cheap chooks.
Now we can’t all afford organic produce all the time, and the advent of the recession has seen a drop in the sales of organic produce. I am also sceptical of some of the “Organic” produce I see. However, I have to say that undoubtedly there was a difference, a real down home taste of roast chicken and crispy skin, from the poulet I bought from Regan Organic Produce, a Farm Shop at Dranagh, Caim, Enniscorthy, in the shadow of the Blackstairs Mountains. Mary Regan is an amazing woman devoted to her small Organic farm business come hail rain or snow. “It’s a niche market but something people like. They like traceability and food not pumped up with antibiotics”, she told me. “They are more expensive because the feed is very expensive and there so much red tape and regulation.” Basically it is just going back to nature and away from the mass commercialisation of food which we all basically abhor nowadays.
Mary is a B. Ag with a Masters in Food and she runs her small mixed farm which is certified with the Organic Trust since 2006. After Mary qualified in Agricultural Science she worked at one stage for an animal meal company. The company began to produce an organic meal, which sparked Mary’s interest in the whole process so she started running what had been her father’s old farm, of 46 acres, on an organic basis. Mary says that you “couldn’t really make a living out of 46 acres” so she is trying to keep her options open “not putting all her eggs in one basket”, if you will forgive the pun, by varying her activities. She does cows and calves but the main enterprise is the chickens, table birds, laying hens, laying ducks. Mary loves animals and her newest additions are some Tamworth pigs “as they were the other animal which have been farmed very intensively. Now they are rooting around down the field happily.” She further explained “when I was training I saw how pigs were reared, they would never see the light of day. Rooting around they get natural iron from the ground whereas in piggeries they had to be injected with iron.” She goes down to feed them on a Quad and “they are over like a shot to be fed – they are very intelligent animals – they are divils – you get attached to them.” Mary says that contrary to popular belief “they are very clean, where they sleep is immaculate”. I could see these happy chappies lolling around and thought how lucky they are. Even if they do end up eventually on the table they will have had a much better life than their counterparts in intensive farming. Mary, however, is a farmer and she has made one or two into her own sausages using organic rusk, and into pork roasts, and some rashers. “Who does the job”, I asked tentatively, almost afraid to hear the answer! “They are taken to an abbatoir in Camolin which had to be certified also by the Organic Trust.” The problem with me is they would be rooting around forever and never get to Camolin!
Mary also grows her own wheat, and feed cereal, and straw from the wheat is used for bedding. She also grows some vegetables so decided to opened a farm shop every Saturday and Sunday afternoon from 1pm – 5 pm. She felt it would be really nice for people to be able to come to real farm, be able to buy variety of produce, see the cattle and pigs, and further to educate people into trying to get back to buying good food produced locally. As well as her own produce she has a number of items from other local small producers, such as Pauline Somers, who makes lovely brown bread and jams in a small way, using fruit from her own fruit farm. Turnips and cabbages come from Ben Sharkey “who is only a quarter of a mile over road”. Mary has a couple of tunnels and grows tomatoes “ I love to be able to run over to tunnel on a Saturday morning and pick what I have for sale”. So, at Mary’s Farm Shop you can get organic chickens, ducks, turkeys, pork roasts, organic hen eggs and duck eggs, breads, scones, jams, farmer’s butter, buttermilk, honey, chutneys, cheeses, yoghurt, apples, juices, rashers and puddings. Mary Regan’s chickens are sold in Nolan’s Clontarf, A. Caviston Greystones, Doyle’s in Frascati Centre and the Organic Shop in Blackrock. Donnybrook Fair, Petit’s of Wexford and Enniscorthy.
She also does a Box Service locally – maybe she might extend that towards Dublin!!
Check out Regan Organics on www.reganorganics.com