Two salient facts about blueberry farming: one, it is not for wimps; two, it is not for get-rich-quick merchants. John Seager's daughter was nearly swallowed up by bogland as a small child. Just a few months ago, he himself would have been sucked under if there hadn't been someone in the vicinity strong enough to pull him free. Add to that the minor consideration that at certain times you may get eaten alive by midges.
Strolling past a rugged one-acre patch on his Derryvilla farm, set among old Bord na Mona bogland near Portarlington, John Seager comments that it has taken three winters, not to produce a crop there, but merely to make it "plantable".
Having drained and levelled the land and provided a shelter belt of some kind, a bush - already three years old when planted - will only be allowed to give fruit in its third season and that's providing it survives rabbits and hares, rain and frost, vine weevil and grower's despair.
"It takes five years to see the plants establish and seven to start covering their costs," he says without a trace of self-pity. Even to the most innumerate observer, blueberries are not a commercial proposition. Not yet, anyway. But John Seager will not be denied. He retired early after 34 years as a research officer with Teagasc to pursue a dream first envisaged nearly 50 years earlier by Dr J.G.D. Lamb, a senior researcher with An Foras Taluntais.
In his trips to the US, Dr Lamb had noted blueberries as a crop for impoverished communities. Today John Seager sees them as the great hope for underdeveloped bogland. "They need acid conditions - a pH as close as possible to 4.5 to 5.0 - and we have very little land other than bogland in that range". But bogland is a trial. "It's getting on to the land that's the problem," he says. "Machines sink in it for example."
With 15 growers in Ireland on a total of 39 acres, he is the most advanced, currently producing about 90 per cent of the national yield on 13 acres. But because experience and research of blueberry production are in their infancy in Irish conditions, trial and error is the only way to proceed.
Slowly, painfully, he has managed to build yields up to an average of two tonnes per acre, still minimal compared to the norm of four to five tonnes for most fruits and a telling reason wholesalers have to pay up to £4 a kilo for Irish blueberries and why so few people manage to get their hands on this beautiful, luscious fruit.
Derryvilla lost 40 per cent of its crop last year to rain. This year spring frosts whittled an expected yield of about 20 tonnes down to a probable 14 or 15, a third of which is for export. It's disappointing, but the dream is what matters. Even at this year's reduced yields, there is employment for some 30 pickers in Derryvilla's eight-week harvest. John Seager, who commutes from his Raheny home in Dublin and spends half the week in Portarlington now, at peak time, has nothing but admiration and gratitude for the work ethic of the "Offaly youngsters".
"They do a very fine job. I'm told that ours are the cleanest blueberries that come into the UK market. That means no tails, leaves or stalks." But that's not the only reason John Seager and his wife will hang in there with their beautiful, treacherous bogland and truculent blueberry bushes.
American nutrition research in the past year has confirmed something John Seager always suspected: blueberries are good for you. Ageing, cancer, diabetes, eye problems, joint disorders, urinary infections and vascular disorders are all believed to benefit from blueberries with their high levels of antioxidants. Dr Lamb may have been even more of a visionary than we thought.