“St. Patrick’s Day cabbage movement is not just the next big thing, it’s the biggest cabbage thing of the year,” Calvert Cullen, president of Northampton Growers, headquartered in Cheriton, VA, told The Produce News on Feb. 5. “Our fields are overflowing with an outstanding — supply in both quality and volume — of round head green cabbage. We’re prepped and ready to start shipping on Feb. 23.”A box of high-quality cabbage from Northampton Growers packed and ready to ship for St. Patrick’s Day.

Northampton Growers also grows other cabbage varieties, but the fresh-market green cabbage is most highly demanded for the Irish-themed holiday, which falls on Tuesday, March 17, this year.

Cullen noted that the company was already setting up meetings with current and prospective clients to market and promote the crop during the Southeast Produce Council Southern Exposure Conference & Expo in Orlando, FL, Feb. 26-28.

“We will be moving cabbage from our south Florida farms with an unbroken and strong momentum through March 15,” he noted. “On a weekly basis, our cabbage shipments during the St. Patrick’s Day demand increases by about 70 percent compared to the rest of the year.”

Today the wearing of the green for St. Patrick’s Day also means green beer, bagels and even milkshakes across North America. But like these items, serving corned beef and cabbage isn’t authentically Irish, according to the History Channel’s history.com. Like many other aspects of St. Patrick’s Day, the dish came about when Irish-Americans transformed and reinterpreted a tradition imported with their forefathers from Ireland.

Irish immigrants brought their own food traditions with them to the New World, including soda bread and Irish stew. Pork was the preferred meat in Ireland because it was cheap and ubiquitous on the dinner table. But in the United States pork was prohibitively expensive for most newly arrived Irish families.

Most Irish immigrants lived alongside other European ethnic groups. Members of the Irish working class in New York City frequented stores of other ethnicities, such as Jewish delis and lunch carts. It was at these places where they first tasted corned beef, which was cured and cooked much like Irish bacon. It was tasty and a cheap alternative to pork.

And while potatoes were certainly available in the U.S., cabbage offered a more cost-effective alternative to Irish families. Cooked in the same pot, the spiced, salty beef flavored the plain cabbage and created a simple, hearty dish that was easy to prepare.

The first St. Patrick’s Day parade did not occur in Ireland, but rather in New York City in 1762. Today, the holiday, and corned beef and cabbage, are still revered by people of Irish heritage, but also by the rest of the nation’s population.

Cullen said his family, of Irish and Scottish backgrounds, enjoy cabbage frequently, and year-round. Based on the condition of Northampton’s cabbage crop this season, he and his family will have some great cabbage to enjoy.

“We could not be more pleased with the quality of the crop this year,” he said. “It’s just beautiful. The majority of our cabbage goes to retailers, but we also ship to wholesalers and distributors, and so it’s likely that a lot ends up at foodservice operations. Most retailers want the 16- to 18-count boxes of what we refer to as medium-size cabbage heads.”

In some years, retailers are cleaned out of cabbage by St. Patrick’s Day, but movement continues year-round.

“It’s typically strong after the holiday because produce departments need to restock, but movement doesn’t stop after that,” Cullen pointed out. “It’s a year-round product today, and we follow the seasons with supplies coming out of Florida and then we move northward up the coast and back again to the South.”