YOU make a wonderful discovery when you talk to the farmers and the fortunates who take part in the expanding "box delivery system".
"Did you ever make a stuffing with Penny's onions?" asks Olive O'Flaherty's mum. "You just melt half a pound of butter in the pan don't brown it and then sweat a couple of Penny's onions until they are soft and add half a pan of bread crumbs and then sage parsley, thyme and season and cook it for half an hour in a pyrex dish and well, I tell you, they would kill one another for it The flavour is so pure."
And it's not just the onions. The O'Flahertys also rhapsodise about Penny Lange's carrots "They have them eaten raw as I'm trying to get them peeled" says Mrs O'Flaherty, before she goes dreamy about Olive's mighty carrot and orange soup, and, the pumpkins cooked in wintertime, and the leeks that are in season just now.
And I can do a bit of rhapsodising myself. The best spuds I have eaten recently were grown in north Co Down by John McCormick, one of the few organic growers in Northern Ireland and a man who also operates a box delivery system. Floury, punch drunk with flavour, they are everything a potato should, be, their embrace of tastes offering a kaleidoscope of pure, mineral rich deliciousness.
Why should these foods be so good? Two things, I would suggest, are the cause of the raptures one hears from folk who use the box delivery system.
The first is speed the food is being cooked the day it was picked from the ground. The other enjoyment is the proximity of the relationship between grower and consumer we know who grew it, where it was grown, and how it was grown. This is food we can trust.
But what is this system which can cause such joy? Basically. the box delivery system involves consumers becoming subscribers to a particular farm. Let us take the example of Carney's Organic farm at Portally, near Dunmore East, in Co Waterford.
John and Bridget Carney farm, acres according to organic methods, and last year began a pilot box delivery scheme. This year, says Bridget, "We are seeking new members in the area between here and south of Waterford city. The system works as follows we deliver a range of organic vegetables for the 1996 season June to February 1997 and members pay a subscription based on their box size as either a lump sum or a monthly standing order." Boxes cost between £6 and £10 depending on size.
It's a system which has been operating successfully in southern England and which has slowly begun to expand here. The benefits are not only obvious, but enormous. Customers get the true foods of the season, at their very best. As Bridget Carney points out "Selling in supermarkets is not ideal. Often you see the organic vegetables in a supermarket and they look sad, and it's probably simply because they have been held too long in a cold room rather than being rushed onto the shelf. With the box system, people get the vegetables as fresh as they can be."
Vitally, the organic and bio-dynamic farmers also get the money from the customers without delay and hassle, a fact which has deterred many organic growers from dealing with supermarkets whose payment times are often excessively lengthy.
The price for this benefit is a sense of commitment to the individual farm. "It does take commitment for the consumer, says Mrs Carney. "The box scheme means that people must commit themselves, but we find that even though people would love to grow some of their own vegetables themselves, they just don't have the time to do it. So this is the next best thing, as it gives people access to a farm. which they can visit, and we hope to have lots of visitors on our open days."
The actual mechanics of the delivery system work in different ways. With the beef from their Kerry cows, the Carneys have it slaughtered by a local butcher, band customers collect the meat from him, and bring it home to their deep freezes. With their plans to increase the delivery system, they hope that groups will band together to make central drops a reality, the system which Penny Lange of Wicklow uses.
OLIVE O'Flaherty teaches at St Mary's College in Naas, to which Penny Lange travels with her produce each Wednesday. In the school, they have a chart and each person writes each week whether they want a £5 bag, or two bags, or whatever they require. Mrs Lange also delivers to a group in Baltinglass who subscribe to her farm.
At the Philipstown Trust in Ravensdale, near Dundalk in Co Louth, Mark Deery operates a weekly delivery system and in and around Ashbourne in Co Meath, Pat Daly and Willie Brown deliver the produce of the Garretstown Trust to their subscribers each Friday.
On Thursdays, the fortunate subscribers to Sandra D'Alton's Leinster Organics get a delivery, of either a £5 or a £9 bag, to their doors, in the Kilkenny Waterford area. At this time of the year, as everyone waits for the salad leaves and the summer vegetables to come on stream, they can expect leeks, potatoes, red and white cabbage, cauliflowers, parsnips, carrots and onions in the box.
But other delights do lie down the line. Bridget Carney is very keen to increase their poultry production, in line with an American scheme pioneered by Joel Salatin in his book Pastured Poultry Products, where the birds spend their time outdoors and up to 30 per cent of their food is grass. "The chlorophyll keeps them healthy," says Bridget.
But if proximity to the food produced and a confidence building relationship with a farmer are two of the vital benefits of the box system. then it is surely how that relationship can develop in the future which is truly exciting.
Bridget Carney is keen to discover just what it is that consumers want, and to this end is organising a public information evening on Tuesday, April 23rd at 8 p.m. in the Friends Meeting House, Newtown, Waterford. If you want to know not only where your food is coming from, but to have a say in exactly what will be grown in the future, then it's a date not to be missed.