Cider and crisps made in Cahir: the juice is worth the squeeze at Con's apple farm

Agriland

2 days ago

It is apple harvest season in Co. Tipperary and the humble fruit is being celebrated for its contribution to the culture and economy of the county.
Nestled between Cahir and Clonmel on the main Limerick-Waterford road, Con Traas and his team tend to around 40,000 fruit trees on The Apple Farm.
"We've got about 40ac of apples, a few acres of plums, a few acres of strawberries, some cherries and some raspberries," Traas told Agriland on a recent visit to Co. Tipperary's apple farm.
Some of the millions of apples the farm produces go into a range of products made onsite, such as juices, cider, vinegar, and crisps.
That is how far the farm has come in 2025; but it all started in the late 1960s with Traas' parents, who moved from The Netherlands, buying a 60ac farm that was available at the site at Moorstown in Cahir.
There was an old orchard on the farm, and they judged by the good crop they saw on these trees that apples could be grown in this area.
"It was hard enough to get into farming because The Netherlands was so populated," Traas explained.
"They bought the farm from an electrician who was emigrating to Canada, and at the time it was a farm like the other ones around here - but they had a horticultural background.
"They started into growing fruit, vegetables in the early years as well, even the likes of tulips, and eventually over the years became more specialised in fruit."
Traas has around 25 people working on the farm altogether, split across the different elements that make up the business - fruit picking and harvesting (currently apples and strawberries in mid-August), processing, and the farm shop, along with general farm work year-round.
Once the apples are harvested – which can continue into November - the trees are then pruned each winter, and come cross-pollination of the flowers on the trees in the springtime, apples will likely start to appear from May onwards and they take the summer to grow.
The apples of all different varieties, such as Discovery and Red Prince, are picked as they ripen across the harvest season.
After November/December, the apples on the shop shelves are those kept in cold store and taken out as orders come in, Traas explained.
According to Traas, there are a few advantages to growing apples in Ireland, because it does not get overly hot here and 'apple trees don't like it especially hot".
"They do like a temperate climate, but sometimes our temperate is a bit too cold for them as well. Ideal for an apple would be somewhere in the middle of France where it's a bit warmer than here but not as hot as Spain,' he explained.
'We're on the cooler side and the wetter side in a typical year, and the issue with the wetness is that we can get some diseases of the plant that might not occur in a more arid environment.
'Being an island, there are various pests that aren't here that continental growers have to cope with.'
If Ireland did have a hotter climate, yields would be a bit higher. The apple trees typically give about 20t/ac, according to Traas, which is a bit less than what you might get in a hotter climate.
Traas has a small plot of land dedicated to trialling a new growing method seen in other countries.
'In the last decade in northern Italy and a few other parts of continental Europe, they have been doing things with much narrower trees and the idea is that if anybody ever invents a robotic harvester, it'll be easier for the harvester to approach those narrow trees and to pick them,' he said.
'They also discovered that you would get a higher percentage of class 1 apples on the trees if you grow them that way than if you grow them in the traditional way and, obviously, the more class 1 apples you get, the higher the average value of your crop.
'We're replicating that here, just a small area of 5,000m2 of trees planted in that way with new rootstocks and various training systems to see how they do.
'As well as learning, it's an interesting thing to do, not to be doing the very same thing you'd have done before for the previous five years.'
While Traas does supply retailers, his produce is available to buy on the onsite farm shop all year round.
'For us, having the farm shop meant that we weren't relying on taking the price that was prevailing in the marketplace,' he said.
'That was quite a comfort factor because even if you get an extra 15%, 20%, by selling direct to consumers, that's a big assistance to overall profitability.
'We also have the processing here, which means we don't have to sell off the second quality apples very cheap because we can use them in our own processing for the juice or for the vinegar or for the sliced apples.'
The cohort of growers has gotten smaller in Ireland over the years, but the output is staying similar because people are increasing acreage, Traas said.
Succession is one challenge for the horticulture sector that is contributing to the smaller number of growers, "which is an awful pity, because you need to have successors for it to be sustainable in the longer run'.
He hopes consumers will continue to support Irish produce, explaining: 'In Ireland, most people will buy Irish beef by default, because that's what is there.
'When you go to the supermarket and buy apples, most of them won't be Irish and that's because there are not so many growers and there's not so many Irish apples.
'Every time you buy an apple from abroad, it will be replaced on the shelf with an apple from abroad.
'Every time you buy an Irish one, it will be replaced with an Irish one.'
Meanwhile, Clonmel is gearing up for its Applefest this September, a festival celebrating the food, heritage, and nature of the area.