Eco-student Jordan is enjoying the good life

Eco-student Jordan is enjoying the good life

10 September 2014

FOURTEEN year-old Jordan Knox is living the good life.

With free range eggs, home-brewed ginger beer and a full market garden to tend, the Ballynahinch schoolboy is the youthful leader of a thriving cottage industry.

His entrepreneurial spirit first emerged a few years ago when he persuaded his parents to allow him to have a new pet.

Although they were not keen on taking on an animal, they agreed chickens were a possibility due to their productivity.

Jordan quickly realised there were a few pounds to be made with the sale of eggs to friends and neighbours.

A short time afterwards, he was intrigued when his uncle told him about the complicated wizard-like process of brewing ginger beer and the need for daily additions to a potion that would, following a week in the sunshine, become a potentially profitable treat.

This quickly led to the weekly production of 15 litres of Jo’s Traditional Ginger Beer, which has proven a commercial hit due to its natural ingredients.

As if this was not enough of a workload for the fourth year RBAI student, at the end of last year he undertook his largest enterprise yet when he persuaded school officials to allow him to take over a plot of land, which he has since turned into a thriving vegetable garden.

Turning up at his Belfast school for 7.30am, Jordan worked on the garden during every spare minute since Christmas, spending break and lunchtimes tending to his plants and staying behind after school for an hour-and-a-half most days.

Despite struggling with weeks of endless rain in January, he said he battled to fork through trailer deliveries of soil to make it hospitable for his crops.

Having almost completed his first harvest, of peas, beans, carrots, courgettes, onions, potatoes, sunflowers and radishes, which has sold well, Jordan is now convinced his future lies in the great outdoors.

Although he does not have a farming background, he said both his grandfathers instilled in him a love for gardening and he now hopes to become a landscape gardener.

In the meantime, the tireless teen is forging ahead sowing his winter crop, which he hopes will be properly profit-making.

“This first season was hard because it was a wet winter and it lashed and lashed for weeks after Christmas so when I got a delivery of soil it was very sodden and hard to fork through it,” he said.

“It was a lot of work but after a while I was joined by another boy in my year and that helped a lot.”

Jordan said he easily found a willing customer-base for his produce in the staffroom and believes he will easily sell a much bigger crop next year.

“My potato crop failed this year although the courgettes and radishes were a huge success and worked out much better than I had expected,” he said.

“I feel like I have learnt a lot and am ready to go bigger next year. The idea then will be to make a bit of a profit.

“I also have a few other business ideas, but I don’t want to say anything about that just yet.”