Gareth Kennedy came to harvest a pear leaf for genetic finger printing
Channel: Zwartbles Ireland Suzanna Crampton
Date: 27/07/2022

Gareth Kennedy an Artist and Lecturer of sculpture NCAD & project NCAD FIELD at National College of Art and Design came Sunday to pick a pear tree leaf. This is what we have been raised to understand as a cooking pear called Cadillac. These results could be very interesting .
He will send this pear leaf to Seed savers of Ireland, who will send it on to UK lab for genetic finger printing.
We had a great chat about farming food and the environment. I hope we can collaborate on future environmental projects with his students.





Zwartbles Ireland is a small company run from a farm in County Kilkenny in Ireland. We are a regenerative farm which means restoring soils health and regenerating its natural carbon and nutrient cycle with biodiversity of pasture sward with grasses, legumes, forbs and herbs. This also means we farm with nature. Healthy soils are important for healthy environment. So we encourage all life from the microbial to dung beetles, ants, pollinators to flora biodiversity, birds, hare, hedgehogs, rabbits, fox, badger as well as our livestock. This mean we farm in a style of mob grazing and giving fields long rest times between grazings. We have seen a huge increase and return of wildlife including woodcock and snipe in winter months foraging for dung beetle larvae, red squirrel, wood peckers and pine martens. We also have the rare natter bat and previously thought extinct Tawny Mining bees.
We sell, Zwartbles sheep, Zwartbles blankets and yarn made from the sheep, and calendars featuring Inca the World's Smallest Sheepdog and her coworkers. We also sell alpaca yarn spun for our own alpaca. Our yarns are 100 percent natural, grown by our sheep which grazing our small green Irish fields. This wool is naturally sequestered carbon which you can then knit into warm environmental friendly clothing.