Rummaging around their fields pays off for the Greene family

It says something of the isolation of rural living that I first heard about The Wild Irish at the Dingle Food Festival in north Kerry.

The Wild Irish is Sharon and Gordon Greene’s foraging and preserving business near Shinrone, on the Offaly-Tipperary border, and it won a silver medal at the Blás na hEireann Irish Food Awards in the Dingle Festival.

Yet, when I visited their farm, it was so close to my home, in north Tipperary, that I could cycle the seven miles. The Wild Irish make syrups, preserves, sauces and reductions, from the berries, flowers, herbs and crab apples they pick on the 50-acre family farm. The notion of making a living from foraging can seem incredible. All your crops are free (they are there anyway), but it can be time-consuming work, a scavenge around the fringes of real farming. Is it possible to make this enjoyable way to wander around your farm financially viable? I spoke to Sharon Greene.