Irishmen hit paydirt selling soil to the New World By Kevin Smith
Fri Oct 27, 8:49 AM ET
Two down-to-earth Irishmen have set up a business selling soil to nostalgic Irish Americans who want a handful of "the mother country" on their graves.
Pat Burke, 27, and Alan Jenkins, 65, have just shipped their first $1 million (about 528,000 pounds) load of "official" Irish soil to New York -- at $15 per 0.75 lb bag -- and confidently expect it will be followed by many more.
"The demand has been absolutely phenomenal," Burke, an agricultural scientist from County Tipperary, said on Friday.
"We knew it would take off but not in our wildest dreams did we expect the reaction we've had so far."
Burke, who has patented a way of processing the soil so it passes strict U.S. import regulations, said the pair were in talks with "one of the world's largest retailers" and with a U.S. shopping channel.
"We're looking at going worldwide," he added.
For more than a century Irish people were forced by famine, poverty and unemployment to abandon their home country, the majority of them settling in North America with the result that today some 40 million Americans claim Irish ancestry.
Globally, the Irish diaspora is estimated at more than 70 million people.
Burke said the idea for the business -- whose website www.officialirishdirt.com will go live shortly -- came about after Jenkins attended an Irish association meeting in Florida.
"He found that all that these second, third and fourth generation Irish wanted was a drop of the old sod -- a true piece of old Ireland -- to place on their caskets," he said.
Burke and Jenkins, who is from County Antrim in British-ruled Northern Ireland, formed their partnership after a chance conversation at a dinner party earlier this year and set up a processing plant last month in southern Ireland.
To enter the United States the soil must be free both of diseases such as foot-and-mouth and non-indigenous insects.
The firm has already received an order from an elderly New York businessman, originally from the west of Ireland, for $100,000 worth of dirt.
"He was in two minds about his final resting place, but now he's decided to be totally immersed in a full grave of Irish soil -- in Manhattan," Burke said.
Official Irish Dirt has pledged to donate 80 percent of its profits to charities in Ireland and the United States
