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STUDENTS from the Culinary Arts programme at the Institute of Technology, Tralee had an educational journey through organic, local and sustainable growing for chefs, seashore seaweed foraging and tasting at Gortbrack Organic Farm in Tralee, last Friday, February 12.
Continued below…
Students from IT Tralee attending an educational day at Gortbrack Organic Farm.
The educational day was introduced by Ian McGrigor, director of Kerry Earth Education Project at Gortbrack Organic Farm. He talked about the ethos of organic growing, seasonality, biodiversity, how to get started with setting up a kitchen garden and took them foraging around the farm and exploring different compost systems.
John Fitzgerald, owner of Atlantic Irish Seaweed, gave a lecture about Irish seaweeds and its uses for culinary and other purposes. They then did a seaweed foraging and identification session at Derrymore strand and a culinary demonstration of savoury and sweet dishes prepared with Irish seaweeds by Kerryann Fitzgerald.
Daniel Browne, Culinary Arts lecturer at the IT Tralee, spoke about the day: “the aim of this educational day is to give the students a very real experience of seeing things growing in the ground, the conditions for growing organically and the hard work that is put into it.”
“This will give them a wider spectrum of where the food is coming from, so they won’t be taking things for granted. It’s important for the students the emphasis on how the food is grown, the production chain and getting the herbicides and pesticides out of our food chain”, he said.
