In Pictures: Darina Allen full of praise for wonderful Rossnowlagh Farmers Market

Rossnowlagh Farmers Market was thrilled to welcome chef Darina Allen, a true pioneer of the farmers market movement in Ireland. Click on the arrows to see Philip Mulligan's gallery of photos

Famed for her cookery programme Simply Delicious and her role in the renowned Ballymaloe Cookery School, Ms Allen arrived to a warm welcome at Friary Hall, the winter home of Rossnowlagh Farmers Market.

She was full of praise for the market organisers and stallholders.

“It is absolutely fantastic,” she said. “There is a great vibe and energy, and such a wonderful range of produce.”

The charismatic chef and homegrown food enthusiast infused those present with her passion and commitment to supporting local growers in a meaningful way, thus contributing to the greater good of society.

Ms Allen recalled how a trip to visit a friend in San Francisco more than 30 years ago triggered the light bulb moment that led her to set up Ireland’s first farmers market.

“At that stage lots of supermarkets were going over to a central distribution system and they would penalise the local shops if they bought more than 2% local food,” she said. 

“Most of us didn’t know that. But it meant that local producers who might have been growing a few potatoes or cabbages who sold to the local supermarkets, when they went to that local shop they were being told, ‘no, we can’t buy them because we are not allowed to buy local.’

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“Myrtle, my mother-in-law and I were really concerned about this. Local people couldn’t find local food.

“I went to visit a friend in San Francisco and I had been flying about 20 hours, and she said to me, ‘we’ll get up early tomorrow morning because I want to take you to a farmers market at a parking lot on the other side of town.’”

Loath to face an early start after all her travelling, Ms Allen was nonetheless grateful that she let herself be convinced.

“I couldn’t believe what I saw there,” she said. “In Ireland at that time you’d want to be down on your knees to sell off a stall in a market. And I had seen lots of markets on the continent. But this was a totally different farmers market. There were doctors and dentists and people who had moved from the east coast to the west coast and were starting to grow some of their own produce and they wanted to sell it. It was amazing. I remember one particular stall covered in sweet peas, another with wonderful bread.

“It was a light bulb moment for me because I suddenly thought, ‘oh my God if we could restart the markets in Ireland, local people could get local food, and local producers could sell to local people.’

Upon her return, and with her mother-in-law by her side, Ms Allen set up the first farmers market at the Coal Quay in Cork where there had been a market for 400 years. 

“We set up a little market in the Coal Quay, about six or eight of us stall holders, much to the amusement of all the proper stallies in the Coal Quay, because I was on television at the time,” she said. “ And they thought, ‘what’s she doing down here?’ 

“But I was passionate about the importance of the farmers market and I knew if I stood behind a stall, lots of other people would join in, and they did. 

“I did that for a number of years with Myrtle beside me. We’d load up a rusty old Renault van we had at 6.30 in the morning and drive into Cork. 

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“At that stage there were a couple of posh places in Cork where people lived. The ladies from Montenotte and Rochestown Road wouldn’t normally be caught dead down in the Coal Quay, but suddenly they had a dilemma because all the best food, the best of everything was at the Coal Quay. So they started to come down the Coal Quay, and the newspapers and television came quite quickly. It was considered a phenomenon at that time.”

It was the beginning of a movement that continues to spread to communities across the country. And Ms Allen believes it is even more important in today’s fast-paced, ultra busy, instant gratification society. 

“Here in Ireland at the moment, on average 45.9% of all the food we buy every week is ultra processed food,” she said. 

“We are somehow drifting without realising, into a momentous health crisis. So at farmers markets you can get local food, and fresh food, and it is supporting your local community and local farmers, and also it means that you can get something fresh and delicious for your family. 

“It has become so hard to get real food, to get food that is nourishing rather than ultra processed. 

“The country is living out of the same place as where they buy petrol. And if you go in there to try and buy anything real - and I hope I am not offending anybody, they are doing what they do and it’s up to us what we buy - but I was going in the other day to try and get something and the only thing I thought was real in the whole thing was a banana. 

“We have to be super careful. The health of our children and our grandchildren depends on being able to get nourishing food.

“I feel so strongly about this. I have spent a lot of my time and have made no progress for 20 years or more, trying to urge the government and department of education to actually embed practical cooking in the schools. We are failing our young people by letting them out of our schools and our houses without giving them the basic skills to feed themselves.”

Ms Allen believes that not only would this benefit consumers as individuals, it would also improve the economic situation of the country, and in particular, the health service.

“We need to write to our government, to our department of education, to say, ‘look, can you see what is happening,?’” she stressed. “Just looking at Ireland as an economic unit, how long are we going to be able to fund the health service with so many of the food-related diseases going through the roof? That is connected to the ultra processed food.”

In regard to the higher prices of food at farmers markets compared to the supermarket shelves, Ms Allen said: “What you pay here is the real cost of food, the real price of real food.

“We would be much, much better off to be paying the farmers for nourishing food, not buying supplements from the chemist. I was brought up to believe our food should be our medicine.”

Ms Allen took time to chat to many of those present, including some who had brought along copies of cherished cookbooks to have signed. She also spent time with each of the food and craft and producers, and left with her bag packed with a number of purchases from the stallholders, including a beautiful tweed cushion from handweaver Siobhán Ní Ghallchóir. 

Her ethos certainly echoes that of Rossnowlagh Farmers Market - to support local producers by providing an outlet that makes their products accessible to local customers, and to foster a sense of community and pride of place. 

This was evident in abundance during Ms Allen’s visit, leading her to remark: “It is so important to have a farmers market like this. It brings the community together, customers get to meet the person who has been growing their food, and they know exactly where it comes from.

“It is very positive, and it is great to see so many people bringing their children along.”

Ms Allen and her husband Timmy had spent the previous evening in the Horn Head area, and she was greatly impressed by her visit to Donegal.

“The countryside is so beautiful, and then to arrive here and meet everyone has been so wonderful.”