Duo celebrate their apple growing success

Catherine, who runs Long Meadow Cider with husband Pat and son Peter in Loughall, Co Armagh, has been picking apples from the family’s orchards for what looks like being a bumper crop for the family farm’s award winning ciders, juices and apple cider vinegar, the latter a gold winner in this week’s UK Great Taste Awards.

“The harvest is going really well this year because the weather has been so good,” says Catherine. “We are also benefiting from the good weather earlier in the year and should have an abundant supply of top quality apples for our processing business. Of course it’s a very busy time for all the family. But it’s our life and business and we all enjoy it immensely.”

The farming family diversified into processing cider from its own apples in 2013. Long Meadow Cider has a proud heritage in apple growing that stretches back three generations in Armagh’s historic Orchard County and has achieved significant sales to delis, independent retailers, restaurants and bars in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland. It also recently secured new business with Sainsbury’s supermarkets for its unique apple cider vinegar.

The business with Sainsbury’s is a major boost for the small business. “It is a marvellous endorsement of the quality of our vinegar and will shortly be available in an initial nine supermarkets across Northern Ireland. We’ll be seeking to build on this tremendous opportunity for this natural product,” she adds.

It already supplies ciders to the retailer. A further boost for the business came on Monday when it won Great Taste gold awards for its Blossom Burst cider, sparkling apple juice along with the apple cider vinegar.

The enterprising family grows, harvests and processes apples from upwards of 120 acres of orchards, 30 acres of which are on the home farm. Native Bramley apples, which have EU protected name status, and other locally grown apples from a network of trusted growers are used. It’s a successful, adaptable and versatile small business that’s focused on natural products with heritage, provenance and transparency.

“All our ciders and juices are processed exclusively using pure pressed apple juice from our own orchards and neighbouring farms,” continues Catherine. “The ciders and juices are processed without concentrates, chemicals or added water. We produce small batches using a unique slow fermentation process for greater flavour.”

It’s also a business that’s an integral part of the Food Heartlands of Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon. As part of its ongoing engagement with the community, the family took time last week to host a special event during the harvest for the annual Armagh Food and Cider Weekend, an event the company has supported enthusiastically since the event’s inception in 2015.

An orchard was turned over on Thursday evening to a unique Flash Fiction as part of the weekend festival.

“We’ve always been keen to encourage local people and those from further afield to see what we do and what goes into growing apples for our ciders and juices which are all processed on site,” Catherine explains. “We regularly host orchard tours and will be doing so again during the celebrations this weekend.

“It’s important to us to show existing and potential customers our focus on nature and natural production processes. We love showing visitors what we do. They are able to taste our ciders and juices… and enjoy a slice of my apple tart,” adds Catherine.

Long Meadow is a keen supporter of Open Farm Weekend. Flash Fiction gave established and new writers and poets an opportunity to read their work to a socially distanced audience in the orchard. The readers were selected before the event to enable them to prepare for an evening of craic during and after the event which was organised in association with established writers who chose the works to be read.

The event was the most recent in a series of colourful occasions hosted by the McKeevers. In February 2017, they organised ‘Treeluminations’, a spectacular and colourful sound and light show in the orchards for Valentine’s Night.

“The show spotlighted the natural beauty of the orchards,” Catherine adds. It’s hardly surprising that the small company has been recognised as among the most innovative in the local cider industry.

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