Live from The Ballymaloe Festival of Food Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond. I am back in New York City, but I was just in Ireland with Kerrygold to visit some of their partner farms and see how their iconic butter and cheese is made. One of the highlights was a visit to the Ballymaloe Festival of Food held down in County Cork on the grounds of the famous Ballymaloe House. I was very excited to be part of the festival. On Saturday afternoon, I hosted a live radio episode presented by Kerrygold called Breaking the Mold, a conversation with four modern farmers.
I had the privilege of interviewing Dara and Beatrix Killeen, a young couple with an award-winning dairy farm and a love of technology, Vanessa Kiely O'Connor, who some of you might know as the Dairy Fairy. Vanessa is a major supporter of women farmers in Ireland, and Darina Allen, a beloved figure on the Irish culinary scene, and a founder of the Ballymaloe Cookery School, which is on a 100-acre farm. I know lots of you want to attend Ballymaloe one day, and I am certainly on that list. Instead of retiring like some of her peers, Darina is overseeing a brand-new program, the Ballymaloe Organic Farm School, and she could not be more thrilled about her latest adventure. I had the best time in Ireland and am amazed at the culinary revolution underway in the country. Thanks to the farmers, fishermen, chefs, bakers, and makers. You're about to meet four of them in just a minute, so stay tuned. If you have the opportunity to visit Ireland or you're thinking about going, go. You will be blown away.
A little housekeeping, speaking of travel, team Cherry Bombe is back on the road this summer and we're hosting fun events in Austin, upstate New York, Nashville, and Willamette Valley in Oregon. You can find all the details and tickets for our Summer Tastemaker Tour at cherrybombe.com, so check it out. We would love to see you.
Now, let's hear from today's guests.
Darina Allen:
Hi, I'm Darina Allen, and welcome to the live Radio Cherry Bombe podcast here from The Grainstore in Ballymaloe in Ireland. Over to you, Kerry.
Kerry Diamond:
Thank you, Darina. Hi, everybody. How are you doing? Good to see you. I said when I read the weather report, I first did not believe it for a whole week. I was like, "There is absolutely no way. There's seven days of sunshine in Ireland." Then I thought Darina must have been negotiating with Mother Nature for a very long time to make sure there was no rain for the Ballymaloe Festival of Food. My name is Kerry Diamond. I'm the host of Radio Cherry Bombe and the founder of Cherry Bombe. I am American, as you can probably tell from my accent, and thrilled to be back here in Ireland for the Ballymaloe Festival of Food here on the Kerrygold Grainstore stage.
Today's panel is called Breaking the Mold, and it's a conversation with four very unique Irish farmers. We are recording this live for Radio Cherry Bombe. So I'm going to introduce my panel first so you know who all these amazing people are. So next to me is Beatrix Killeen. Beatrix Killeen and Dara Killeen, they are a married couple, have their own farm. I had the pleasure of getting to know them earlier. You two are very much the face of modern farming here in Ireland and we're very excited to hear your story and how you two are breaking the mold. Darina Allen, I don't think needs any introduction.
Darina Allen:
I'm sure I do.
Kerry Diamond:
I hope not here on the grounds of Ballymaloe, but Darina is the founder of the Ballymaloe Cookery School. I can say back in America, everyone I know has on their bucket list to go to Ballymaloe Cookery School. You've also just been a huge inspiration to me personally to so many women and people in the culinary movement in the United States, so I want to thank you for that.
Darina Allen:
Oh, my goodness, thank you. What a lovely compliment.
Kerry Diamond:
Next to Darina, we've got Vanessa Kiely O'Connor. Vanessa has been doing so much on behalf of Women in Farming and has been at it for quite some time, and we're excited to hear how you got into farming and how you're breaking the mold as well. Darina, I thought we would... You look surprised, Darina. I thought we would start with you. A lot of folks don't know you as a farmer. So tell me, what makes you a farmer?
Darina Allen:
What makes me a farmer? Well, I suppose you're quite right, people would initially associate me with cooking and the Ballymaloe Cookery school, but actually the school is in the middle of a 100-acre organic farm. You were amused earlier when I was telling you I was telling him he's a real farmer. You see, I was telling him that I was a dairy farmer, among other things, and that I have nine cows, so proper dairy farmers think I've forgotten a couple of notes and something. But we're very fortunate to live in the middle of a farm where we can produce so much of our own produce and everything. So definitely, I want to be called a farmer.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's welcome the panel first.
Darina Allen:
There you go.
Kerry Diamond:
So you all learned how Darina is a farmer and Ballymaloe Cookery School is on a 100-acre organic farm, which is really amazing, and I hope you've all had the opportunity to tour the farm. Beatrix and Dara, tell us about your farm. Where is it? How big is it?
Dara Killeen:
Hi, everyone. So we farm in County Galway, very near the middle of Ireland. I'm the fourth generation to farm on our family farm. It was traditionally a sheep and beef farm, so we were producing lamb and beef. In 2019, I would've changed over our enterprise to start milking cows. Today we're milking 150 cows and we're farming about 300 acres. So there's still three generations on the farm. I'm there with my father and my mother, and there's ourselves, and our children give a hand on the farm as well.
Kerry Diamond:
Beatrix, how about you? Did you grow up farming?
Beatrix Killeen:
Not really, not a traditional kind of farming. I was born in Hungary. I was born in Budapest and my dad was over there in medical school based in Nigeria. My mom was Hungarian. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents who actually traditionally came from a village about two hours outside of Budapest. They're the first generation to move into the city, but every weekend say go back home and they'd help out with their brothers and sisters on their plots of land and their poultry and pigs and things like that.tI suppose it was kind of the first experience I had with the whole farm to food movement and I suppose it really set the standard for me of what I expect from my food. It has to be a really high standard and again, the hard work that goes into it then as well.
Kerry Diamond:
Did you think you would be a farmer one day?
Beatrix Killeen:
I moved out of Hungary when I was about six or seven. I suppose through my teen years, no, that's why I went into more of the corporate style works, where I work in law. Then I met Dara, and he asked me, "Did you ever think you'd marry a farmer or be with a farmer?" I was like, "No." But we worked together. I suppose we were wondering for years, "Why do we work so well together and how could I just settle into the farming life so easily?" It was actually only recently that it dawned on me, well, that's where I came from, so it was probably always in me from the get-go.
Kerry Diamond:
Vanessa, how about you? Tell us about your farm.
Vanessa Kiely O'Connor:
I'm in West Cork. We're in East Cork today, so I'm in West Cork, the lovely rolling valleys and I'm milking 65 cows. I'm not originally from a farming background, but it was kind of a chosen career and I rolled with it. I started in secondary school taking on ag science as a subject. Then I decided would I go to agriculture college and see if I go a bit further with it. I applied for agriculture college and I applied for an apprenticeship and as an electrician. The agricultural one came in on a Tuesday and the electrician acceptance came in on the Thursday and I thought, "Oh, well, that one came in first, so I'll go with that." Yeah, my fate was sealed.
Yeah. I would go on and milk. My first cow at 18 years old and just immediately fell in love with that and it would lead me onto a career in a livelihood and to where I'm today. Yeah. So I have a small farm, but I suppose I've embraced that livelihood and cherished, I suppose, what the community and the dairy community has brought to me. Yeah. That was my bit of a background to getting into it.
Kerry Diamond:
Since the title of the panel is Breaking the Mold, I'm curious for Dara and Beatrix, how do you feel you're breaking the mold as farmers today?
Beatrix Killeen:
Well, I don't know if it's obvious. I'm a young black woman. I don't know how many young black women are dairy farmers in Ireland at the moment. I think that was step one. We really value the work-life balance. My friends who would've come from farms themselves would've had a very negative thought about how kind of farming is. It's very demanding and it'd be a slave to the land. We were very keen to just not be that way. We very much wanted to have that work-life balance and make memories with our kids on and off the farm. So we really just want our farming experience to be very positive.
Dara Killeen:
So we set up the dairy farm, the two of us. We would've done a business course before we were milking and it was kind of okay, we want to get on together and build a life together and build a house and do all these things, but we were sheep and beef farming. It probably just wasn't generating enough of an income. Beatrix is starting out in our professional career and we saw an ad for a business course. It was a strategic planning course is what it was titled. So we did that and we kind of came up with a master plan. I suppose at the top of this plan, you had to try out what you wanted and we wanted to have a family home. We wanted to have children and I suppose that was our driver of where we wanted to end up.
Dairy farming is what has led us there. It's given us a wonderful lifestyle where we're heavily involved in our children's lives. A typical morning, I will get up early, I'll go and milk the cows, I'll come home. The kids are still there. We'll all have breakfast together. Beatrix is very lucky that she works from home in her professional role, so we can share the ring of the children or bringing them to school. I'm in charge of my own work hours in essence, so we finish it relatively early in the evening. We have dinner together. So it's the true family farm, I suppose, is where we've ended up in a roundabout way and it's just a wonderful way of life.
Beatrix Killeen:
I suppose we spent a lot of time on planning and leveraging on technology and things like that to try and be as efficient as we can be, so the farm can run and be productive without us being stuck to a 24/7.
Kerry Diamond:
We'll be right back with today's guests. The new issue of Cherry Bombe's print magazine is out right now, and it's our first ever Power issue. We spotlight more than 100 women doing amazing things in the worlds of food, drink, and hospitality. You have four covers to choose from: Gloria Steinem, Mashama Bailey, Sophia Roe, and Rita Sodi and Jody Williams. You can order a single issue or subscribe at cherrybombe.com or pick up a copy at your favorite bookstore or magazine shop, including Omnivore Books on Food in San Francisco, Casa Magazines right here in Manhattan, and Brookline Booksmith in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Dara, it's so interesting. When I was researching you and Beatrix, I was amazed how many videos you are in. You two are very, like I said, modern farmers. So many of the videos had to do with technology on farms today and I'm probably as guilty as a lot of other Americans in romanticizing what's going on on Irish farms, and I was surprised to learn about all the technology. What would your, let's say, your grandparents think if they were back on the farm today seeing everything that you were utilizing?
Dara Killeen:
I'm very proud. If they were to look back to where we are, I'd be hugely proud because I knew one of my grandparents, one of my grandmothers on my mother's side, so I wasn't lucky enough to have a relationship with any of the rest of them. They had passed before my time. My parents are still with us and they get to farm with my children and I see the joy it gives my parents. I'm like, "I don't think you're ever as happy to see me as you see my child." So if my ancestors were to see that they'd be over the moon, that the Killeen name is still farming, it's thriving. I suppose maybe they'd be mind blown with how technology has come into farming. It's in the everyday we have... I think I could have eight apps that I use on a daily basis for the different farming stuff, like from the basic ones such as Gmail through our milk app.
Every time our milk is collected and it goes to the co-op, we have an app. I can log in. I can view how many liters I sent, the fat, the protein, all these figures for our milk. We have a database for all our cows in the country. So we have all this genetic information available for every cow in the herd. We use technology to measure our grass, so we're measuring all the grass on our paddocks, tells us how much cows we can feed pretty much. There's the weather apps. There's just so much of that everyday technology that we're using.
We have collars on our cows now. They're monitoring the cows rumination when they're on heat for breeding season. We have a lot of fishermen that pass our laneway, so we've to cross the cows over the road a lot of the days of the summer. A guy pulled up one evening and he was an English guy and he said, "What are these things on the cows necks?" The easiest way I could break it down to him was it's like wearing an Apple Watch for a cow. So it was giving us all this information that we can use on a daily basis just to help out with the work-life balance on the farm.
Kerry Diamond:
That's remarkable. Darina, I'm afraid to ask you in what way are you breaking the mold? Because I feel like we could talk about that for a few hours, right?
Darina Allen:
I suppose near a cooking school in the middle of a farm in Ireland was maybe broken the mold to a certain extent, but it was the cooking school to the great extent was born out of desperation to earn a living in a different way. When we were originally horticulture and the cheap food policy came in, the price of we were getting for our produce became less and less and the cost went up and up. So we really wanted to continue to live on the land that we love and earn a living on the land rather than going in and out of the city every day with four small kids.
So anyway, the cooking school on the farm was born out of desperation to a great extent. I always say there's a lot to be said for desperation. It has to work basically. Then, of course, it was wonderful for us to be able to... Even though it sounded like kind of an Irish joke in the beginning, it was fantastic for us to be able to... As I said, the school is the middle of a small farm, 100-acre farm. It's been farmed organically for nearly 30 years now with greenhouses and we can produce a lot of the food that we cook with and that the students cook with and so on. Turns out that was when the whole farm-to-fork thing. I mean, there wasn't even a word for it when we started nearly 40 years ago. But now the farm-to-fork thing, people are desperate to reconnect with how their food is produced and where it comes from. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Just to give you some credit, Ballymaloe has just been such a huge force in that movement, especially here in Ireland.
Darina Allen:
Well, yes. Well, of course, my mother-in-law, Myrtle Allen, was a great pioneer without ever realizing. She just did what came naturally to her and so on. Yeah. Then I followed down to a great extent in her footsteps. The word retirement was sort of mentioned when I was about 70-something. As I started to draw back a little bit more from the day-to-day running of a school because we've got a great team there, I thought, "Well, I need another project." So my start-up at 75 and now 76 is the Ballymaloe Organic Farm School to pass on the farming skills and all of the knowledge on the farm and in the greenhouse and so on. So I'm having the best fun ever. I just love it, absolutely love it. People are desperate to relearn. It's interesting. There's a real craving. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
I love that you're part of the Ireland start-up community now.
Darina Allen:
Yeah. Because on light, you're probably the only white-haired woman of the whole thing. But anyway, there we go.
Kerry Diamond:
Vanessa, how about you? How are you breaking the mold?
Vanessa Kiely O'Connor:
Well, I suppose I'd been breaking the mold for a while now. I would've been the only one in that agricultural science class at school, the only one in ag college, the only one that did the farm management course that was a female. So I suppose I've always been in rooms that are male-dominated, but that's a historic thing. I think we were really moving on now. It was for its time. I was young and I didn't mind. I attended meetings and put myself out there. There wouldn't have been a whole pile of women. I didn't have a role model, so I didn't have to, I suppose, image up to somebody else, so I could just be me, try to be as authentic as I could at meetings, so the men in the room would respect what I had to say. But I was there talking about my own business, asking questions about my own farming business. I felt I should be there.
When it came to cooperative meetings, I attended at those cooperative meetings, I asked questions because it was of interest to my business where women traditionally, where they dealt with the feeding and the caring of the children and they didn't step into that space. But when I suppose I started my career, you had all modern technology starting to come on board, so I didn't have to be built like a brick house. I could sit on a tractor. I could do everything. I suppose that probably came as a surprise to some people. When you see a woman doing those things and in that role, it kind of takes away the fact that they can't do it. So it cleared out a few cobwebs for some people.
I'm pushing on now my career and these are the golden couple, but just to see the amount of young women that are interested in pursuing a career now in agriculture and the opportunities that are there. There was only very few of us before and now the space is wide open and there's no reason why anybody... It's a very inclusive world we're living in and the agriculture industry is open to everybody now.
Darina Allen:
It's super cool to be on farmer nowadays. Make no mistake about it.
Vanessa Kiely O'Connor:
All talk about the apps, I mean, I wish I had some apps for my own body now and I'm hitting 51, and there's a few buzzers that going.
Darina Allen:
It doesn't start at after 60, darling.
Vanessa Kiely O'Connor:
I have more apps for my cows. So it's a wonderful space to be in and actually to have seen how things have evolved since I started, it's been fantastic. So there's many women out there that are breaking ground and it's wonderful to see, and with the support of the husbands are modern now, but society would've expected you now just not to be inside and not to be doing stuff with the children and not to be cooking. Whereas the modern farmer now are just young people, are just wonderful because society has allowed them to be that way. So I think agriculture is a great space to be in.
Kerry Diamond:
All this talk of apps that just popped in my head, is there a Tinder for cows?
Vanessa Kiely O'Connor:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
There's probably something similar to it.
Beatrix Killeen:
Yeah, there's a breeding booklet thing that you get. The bulls would have great names like Romeo. What are the ones they use? Casanova.
Vanessa Kiely O'Connor:
We get a catalog. We get a catalog of bulls, so the cows have a better selection than the humans now, I have to say. There's more known about genetics than cows than there is about humans.
Beatrix Killeen:
And they're photographed beautifully.
Kerry Diamond:
That's so funny. You mentioned bringing more women into the fold, and I know in the U.S., it's a big challenge to bring young farmers into the farming community, to bring women into farming. It's still dominated by mostly older individuals who are farming, mostly men. Is it different here in Ireland? Are you able to attract younger people, attract more women to farming and keep them in farming? Because Darina, we had talked about this because I know you know a lot of young farmers in the states and one of the problems they have is they initially are attracting the farmers. They're just having a hard time getting them to stay farming.
Vanessa Kiely O'Connor:
So I suppose really it has to be a career that has an income. The price of food will determine the price that the farmer gets. If you're trying to encourage anybody, male, female, young or old, you still have to have a viable livelihood. We're all so passionate about what we do. We deserve that livelihood and young people deserve to look forward to taking over that livelihood as well and they deserve those opportunities that come with it. There's a change now, and I think hopefully people will earn an income and that will attract young people in, but obviously you have succession. People need to aspire. They're inspired by their parents, the way we work and what we do and the passion that we bring to it. But passion isn't enough nowadays.
I'm at home. My size farm is I have 65 cows, but my spouse has to work outside the farm. I'm a specialist in the job I do, but I produce an Irish dairy, whereas the income of a household and a family house sometimes does need subsidies when you're not getting that. The previous generation, my husband's mother and father, were able to survive with a family of six on my farm. That just shows how much times have changed and the challenges that are out there to encourage young people and new people into what we do.
Kerry Diamond:
So it was almost putting the cart before the horse in a sense. It's like let's make sure this is a viable profession for young people before we encourage them to come into it.
Vanessa Kiely O'Connor:
Well, they're very educated. They can make that decision themselves. I mean, they're going to look at, "Well, can I make a living out of it?" That's a very simple way to put it, but really if you can make a living out of it and you have the passion, that will encourage them.
Dara Killeen:
I might just come in on that because I suppose where we came from our farm was viable, but it wasn't enough to generate two incomes. For us to come home and decide we wanted to be there, we decided to make it work. I just think it's a good example that there's so much information and guidance out there now, that if you fully commit yourself to farming, you can have a great life out of it. I mean, we get to spend more time with our children than a lot of people I know that would work in corporate environments are somewhere that a fixed hours job, a nine-to-five where they have to travel or commute to work. I suppose if your motivations are a family lifestyle, spending more time with your children, being involved, it's a brilliant way of life. There's nothing in the world I would rather be than a farmer.
Beatrix Killeen:
I find it hugely rewarding. I see my daughter there in the audience and I think everything we do is for our kids. We want to make this career very appealing and attractive for them. We don't want them to grow up with the mindset that, "Oh, dad was gone all the time. Mom was stressed off her head in the house." I suppose we want them to think very positively about farming and hopefully they'll take the torch from us some time.
Kerry Diamond:
Talk to us about the resources that are available to all of you. I mean, I know we were talking at lunch. What was the movie you told us about? Yes Man. You decided that this was going to be your year of yes.
Dara Killeen:
Well, I suppose I was saying that if you're learning to drive a car, some people would say that you should get some driving lessons first, so not pick up any bad habits at the start. So for me, it was a little bit like that with dairy farming. I wasn't from a dairy farm. None of my relations had dairy farms, so I actually knew very little about it, but it was a great thing because I had to build a skill set and build my knowledge from scratch. I was very lucky that the co-op that I supply my milk to, Aurivo, they gave me a place on a monitor farm program. So basically, I had three years of a technical expert coming out to my farm every month and he gave me a blueprint for a successful model on how to farm and I've just followed that since. None of it is rocket science, but it's about doing the right thing 90% of the times. It's just a great example that anyone can do it if they put their mind to it. The resources are there.
I suppose one of the things you might hear at times from people in farming is that it's hard to get help, but a lot of the time that comes back to the farmer's attitude also. I didn't know how to milk a cow and now I can milk a cow very well. So it's something you can learn and I'll give anyone a chance if their attitude is right. We don't have permanent full-time help on our farm, but there's three or four part-timers that come in and I love having them in. I don't like working by myself. I like a bit of company or just a chat and I was laughing on the way down because if we have a big job on, I'll get two or three people in to give me a hand and I go down and I'm motivated. I was like, "We're going to get all this work done and five o'clock we're gone out the door." Whereas my dad, he's 82, his foot is off the gas. He comes down and he's like, "I want to get as much gossip out of these people as I can."
Kerry Diamond:
Vanessa, in terms of resources, how do you feel about that? Is there a lot available to you today?
Vanessa Kiely O'Connor:
Well, there is. I'm delighted to say that there's even more resources starting to come on stream for female farmers. There's a huge drive to create more inclusivity because agriculture is coming from that historic male side of thing. So there's a lot of work being done in the space. There's a lot of research now after being done on who are the women that are out there. A lot of women come from a smaller scale-sized farms before they would fall outside resources in terms of grants that are available from the government to help develop your business. So they increased the age and they gave them a higher percentage of a grant to come in and to help resource them set up their farms and I suppose to make it a more, I suppose, viable business because women in general inherit later in life. So by giving someone like Dara would've had the young farmers grant, but that was for people under 35.
So now they've opened that up only through people making noise and people putting themselves out there and voicing like, "This needs to be addressed." We're so lucky to be, I suppose, aligned with Europe. So European policies coming down saying, "We all need to look at how our gender is balanced within all businesses, no matter what business you're in." They put it out there for every member state needs to look internally. In fairness to the Department of Agriculture, anytime they're putting nominations in for any boards that they're setting up, they require that there be a male name and a female name. So we're a bit away from it and women have to come out and put themselves forward for the jobs.
But the fact that that initiative is there and the will is there to include people and to have these resources available and women to realize, "I have a space here. I thought I had a small farm and I thought it was too old to set up, but actually now I can go for it. I can do this. This can be my new career." You have women who have jumped careers, especially I suppose COVID. People who came back and maybe back to the countryside and realized, "I actually want to change my way of life." For me as a full-time farmer, I would call these lifestyle farmers. They're getting notions to come back. But do you know what, actually, it's a good thing. It doesn't matter the size of your farm or what enterprise you develop into, but to know that the supports are there and the resources are available and that your country and your state want to support you in that. So all we have to do is go and track down some more women and get them out there to put themselves forward and get on with it.
Beatrix Killeen:
I have found a very welcoming and inclusive industry. I'm actually on the board of an organization called Dairy Women Ireland. It's basically, I suppose, a support network for women that are in any way involved in dairy. So you don't have to be the full-time farmer. You could be a farmer's wife maybe, or part-time farming. It doesn't matter if you come from a big farm or a small farm. Everyone is welcome. But I have found that great personally just for even getting technical knowledge, how to troubleshoot your parlor to tips for calving to then also, I made a great group of friends through the network as well. They've support us through some pretty scary times recently. Yeah. No, the resources are definitely there. We're definitely moving in the right direction.
Kerry Diamond:
Good, I'm happy to hear that. Darina, let's talk about your passion, your organic farming school. Who are your students? Who's coming here to study farming with you?
Darina Allen:
Like everybody here, I also love living in the country and I think it's our one and only life to actually be fortunate enough to be doing something that you just feel like leaping out of bed every day to do. Doesn't tick everybody's box, but basically, the organic farm school just started in September '83 as it was another project, but basically, I'd kind of hoped it would be a success, but I had no idea of the overwhelming response we would have to it. Really, there's a craving out there to relearn skills. I don't know whether everybody knows about this homesteading movement. It's sort of really an American term and it sounds a little bit folksy to us, but actually this is a worldwide phenomenon now where hundreds of thousands of people are just saying this waking up.
It goes something like this. When you say, "Why have you decided to change and do a new chapter?" They say, "Well, I was sitting in the car one day. I was in a good traffic jam on the way into the city to my thing yet another day stuck in traffic jam. Suddenly, I had a moment I thought, "Oh, my God, is this what my life is going to be for the rest of my life, my one and only life? So they come home and have a chat and stand aside very often to move out into the country, buy a little land and take back some control over their lives to be a bit more self-sufficient, but even to take back more control over their food, et cetera, et cetera.
So there are hundreds of thousands of people leaving the cities. I mean, this may sound extraordinary and just saying, "That's it." So these to a great extent to long answer to the question, these are people from all over the world. I mean, we just finished a home-selling course yesterday. That's just one of many, many different courses we do. But basically, there were seven nationalities on it. I mean, for a week-long course, I mean what's going on? It's incredible. People from all walks of life, it could be anything from tech to bankers to professional people, often people in finance world as well, all sorts a bit of romanticism about it as well because as we all know, farming and self-sufficiency definitely takes a lot of work, so the great thing is to start not too ambitious.
So we started this talking about the soil, then growing their own vegetables, keeping hens perhaps. People are desperate to make a loaf of bread to preserve and save seeds, keep bees, keep a few chickens. I mean, even on this last week there was, "Why should you keep a house cow?" I mean, hello, the light in people's eyes and looking forward to the next day and so on. I just love passing on the farm gardens. There's so much. When I say I basically, and we. I know a little bit about the growing and all of that, but we bring in many wonderful speakers and how to keep bees, all of that kind of thing. So it's amazing, the interest. We've tapped in almost accidentally into a real craving to relearn and go back to in some cases this kind of way of life, and very often that one of the partners will be working from home or both of them. So you can combine the two things and start off slowly.
Beatrix Killeen:
It's amazing how my grandparents would've very much been homesteaders. They would've grown everything themselves and there were ingredients, household where everything was made from scratch, from the bread to pasta, everything.
Darina Allen:
That's exactly it. Yeah.
Beatrix Killeen:
That's what I experienced growing up. I know I often joke with Dara that he's never had to pluck a chicken and it shows.
Darina Allen:
But look, I actually talk about that. I showed them how to pluck a chicken and eviscerate chicken yesterday before they went-
Beatrix Killeen:
There's a trick to it.
Darina Allen:
... and how to grow... Also, we talk about of monetizing it. So this is not just necessarily a folksy kind of thing. It's just, "Well, okay, if I choose this way of life..." Back to what you said, it has to make sense. You have to make a living. There's so many ways to add value to your produce and all of that. But the very last thing was growing flowers, because so many more people now want to actually have organic flowers and so on to suit and grow some flowers. You can make bunches. You can sell them. I mean, think of it, what lights up a room? A bunch of flowers on the table, a fire in a fireplace and some candles. Flowers, candles and things make such a difference too. So that was the last little thing. But we love to hear from when they leave them, what is the thing that made a difference? What are you doing when you go home again? Then to pass on the skills to other people, not just for yourself, but to share it.
Dara Killeen:
It might send me home tomorrow knowing how to pluck a chicken.
Darina Allen:
I certainly will.
Beatrix Killeen:
It'll be a great skill.
Darina Allen:
I definitely will.
Beatrix Killeen:
It'll be a great skill.
Darina Allen:
I show them how to do it by hand actually originally, but we actually have an electric plucker as well.
Beatrix Killeen:
Stop.
Darina Allen:
But that goes back... Honestly, I must not tell stories, but when I was a child, my mother... I come from a big family. But anyway, my mother had boy after boy after boy after boy. So I spent a lot of my time playing with girls across the road in little village where I came from. My mother was trying to keep me off sweets and all that kind of thing. I'd do anything, I'd sell my soul for a Blackjack or a Sailor's Shoe. I'm sure none of you even remember what that was, penny bars. So their mother wasn't very keen on plucking or eviscerating a chicken, but sure, I was going to get the money for the penny bar. So that's how I learned how to pluck a chicken and eviscerate. How many of you have ever cleaned out a chicken? Oh, my god. One person. Well done.
Kerry Diamond:
That can be next year's demo, and I'm sure you'll all show up for that.
Darina Allen:
Exactly. But if you get a resident of a pheasant or a partridge or something, you can't say, "Well, what am I going to do now?" and give it back to them. Anyway, I digress.
Vanessa Kiely O'Connor:
I don't fancy reconnecting to food in that way just yet, don't do for your students..
Darina Allen:
It's great fun.
Vanessa Kiely O'Connor:
But isn't great to see all the people that want to reconnect with food? I mean, for us as farmers and we're creating the raw produce like-
Darina Allen:
They know now where your food comes from. Oh, my God.
Vanessa Kiely O'Connor:
Yeah.
Beatrix Killeen:
Show value on that.
Vanessa Kiely O'Connor:
I mean, the disconnect. So over a short space of time, people are not connected with their farms anymore. Before we were all have a relative who you were related to that had a farm. The kids used to go to the granny's farm no matter what country you live in, whereas that disconnect just seems to have happened out of nowhere, but isn't it wonderful?
Darina Allen:
Winning back again.
Vanessa Kiely O'Connor:
It's absolutely wonderful to see that happen.
Kerry Diamond:
Darina, it's interesting when you say that of going back because when we were talking earlier at lunch, obviously if you're talking to farmers, you have to talk about sustainability, climate change. We were talking about biodiversity. I'm fortunate to be here with the Kerrygold team and we got to see the Kennedy's Farm and the Kennedy's are here with us today. Thank you for letting us take lots of pictures with your cows and come and eat your scones and everything. We had a great time. But we were talking about biodiversity and how you're trying to increase the biodiversity on the farm, and you all had similar instances of trying to do that. But it was so interesting because it sounded like there's so much going back to how it used to be and for all the technological change, it's maybe what existed for so long is the right way to go.
Darina Allen:
I mean, there's room for everybody, all sized farms, all the rest of... But I'm a great believer in mixed farms, and this was used to be the small family farms, which are 80% of the farms in Ireland to a great extent. But there's somehow or other seems to be old fashioned. But I mean, to have different crops at different times of the year, different money coming in, different types of times of the year, and to have few hens and chickens and a vegetable garden and so on, I think it's wonderful. In an ideal world, what I really believe to a great extent that local food is the future in many ways. I mean, we've seen extraordinary things happen in the last couple of years, all kinds of crisis we'd never have thought of.
I remember a couple of years ago we had a very bad snowstorm. We don't get snow very much down at this end of the country, but the schools and everything were closed for over a week. We had 66 students in the cooking school and basically every school in the country was closed because you couldn't get to them. Because we are in the middle of a mixed farm, we grew a wide variety of vegetables and we have hens and cows and... Oh, I know it's only nine cows, but nonetheless, the bread shed and everything, we were able to keep 66 students plus a whole lot of staff fed for a week when the rest of the country was shut down. People were in supermarkets pulling sliced pans off each other because some of the shelves are empty. Look at that now.
Kerry Diamond:
No, I know.
Darina Allen:
Actually, that could happen very easily. Because we've allowed ourselves to become so deskilled, and when you're deskilled, you're totally dependent on other people. There are people pulling sliced pans, they shouldn't be tugging pans off each other.
Kerry Diamond:
I thought that only happened in New York during the-
Darina Allen:
There was flour and buttermilk two shelves away and most people had no idea how to make a little loaf of soda bread, the bread of our country. So in many ways, that's one of the reasons why I spend a lot of my time teaching people how to make bread, to make soda bread and say, "It only takes a few minutes. You wouldn't be back in the shop with your car keys by the time it's out of the oven." But this is dangerous. We've seen all sorts of funny things happening. Our children will definitely see food security issues. There's no question about it. So that's why I feel so strongly about upskilling people in all different areas of life. With local, I love... I'm terrible for not finishing my sentences, but anyway, I started by saying about local food to me could be the solution to so many things.
Imagine a village like Shanagarry, maybe I'm a romantic, a village like Shanagarry, where maybe you all meet in the village hall, in the community hall, you decide, "Right. I have the cows and I'll be producing the milk and everything for the area and somebody else's chicken, somebody else's butcher, another baker," all the other things you might need to feed the community. First and foremost, the emphasis is on feeding your family and your community, a farmer's market and all of that in the middle of it, and then the rest of it is sold out to the greater country or indeed for that matter, exported. But as a model to survive, if we have more or as they talk about having one shock on top of another, coming down wouldn't be a bad idea.
Maybe I'm too much of a romantic, but that used to be the way that every small community and village and town had the blacksmith. They had the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. Maybe it's just because I'm quite arrogant and romantic, but I don't know. I'd rather have some of those things open to me than be looking at empty shelves, the supermarket, which I don't think we really believe we're going to see, but boy, we will.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. No, I think more and more people think about that. Absolutely.
Darina Allen:
It's something to think about.
Vanessa Kiely O'Connor:
I suppose you were asking about the sustainability side of things. You can't look at anything now and has the sustainability this and the sustainability that, but what does that mean to me as a dairy farmer? I class myself as a specialized... I specialize in producing dairy. I'm obsessed about grass and I'm obsessed about producing the best quality meat that I can from that grass. That in itself is sustainable. I have to understand the soil. I have to understand how that grass goes. I have to understand the needs of my cow and how sustainable it is for her if I have too many cows to feed off that grass that isn't sustainable.
You look at biodiversity, then I suppose farmers are asked nearly now to explain everything that they're doing and it's something we weren't used to doing. It's great to be able to come here today. You're asking a farmer what are they doing in that space? There was stuff I was doing I wasn't even recognizing that actually is sustainable farming. You know what I mean? I had new appreciation for the hedgerows. I traveled over to Europe. Parts of Europe is very hot and you have to understand why their systems, they have to keep animals indoors. But when I came back and looked how our own animals, our own cows graze, a completely different system, a completely different level of sustainability.
In fairness, we went to visit a lovely farm in Germany and the shed was right next to the road and I thought, "Oh, the cars whizzing by." I said, "If the cows got out of that shed, where would they end up? France." There was no hedgerows like there is in Ireland, no fences, kind of very large scale stuff, but Ireland, I suppose the country itself is an agricultural nation. That's our indigenous industry. It's what we're all rooted. It's our core. It's our drive. It's our passion. I think I'm taking part in this mats survey. It's a national thing. They didn't know how many mats were in the country and they've decided to look into the biodiversity of all creatures. So this is one of things. Of course, me being me, if you're asked to do something, I usually say yes. My husband said, "If somebody asks us do more stuff, don't say yes."
But anyway, back to the moths, there's apparently 1,500 species of in Ireland. What I'm after learning about on my own farm now is that the types of moths and what they're actually feeding on. So at the moment, you see all the hedgerows as you're coming driving around. There's certain moths that are only here for a certain amount of time and that's what they feed on. It's a revelation to me. I've been living and working on the farm and there's a whole element of biodiversity that I knew nothing about and that I have a whole new appreciation for.
I think we're very lucky to have a very inclusive kind of an agricultural state body who reaches out to farmers and then I suppose educates. That's what's probably most important, that everybody is educated at the same time because we're all asked to do all these extra sustainability measures and that's fair enough because we're producing food and we need to be responsible for the environment we're in. So I'm learning more every day, planting more trees on my farm, all the things that I wouldn't have thought of that I should be doing because I was just busy doing what I was doing. So a whole new appreciation and really proud of the country we live in, our grass-fed system really.
Dara Killeen:
The model we operate in Ireland is grass-based dairy farming. I mean, if you've come from a different country and you come into Ireland... I spent a summer in Chicago in the city, and I've lived in Ireland all my life. I came home and I couldn't believe how green it was. I had forgotten in the three months I was away. Sustainability is a little bit of a buzzword at times. Our cooperative have introduced a sustainability payment. So it's a top-up on our milk price if we're implementing all these measures that are under the sustainability title, but when I read through them, we were doing everything anyway.
So we were farming in this sustainable manner unknowns to ourselves, like the grass-based area and we have our cows at grass. The target is 300 days in the year. The other 65 days is in the middle of winter. The land is saturated, so we're putting them in. I think the family farming model is sustainable as well because hopefully my children will take it on from me like I've taken on from my parents as they've taken on from their parents. So I think that in itself is what sustainability is about for me.
Darina Allen:
I'd love to just say before we finish, sometimes farmers have a bad image, and this is a tragic thing that's happened because as far as I'm concerned, farmers and food producers that the heroes who are growing the food, producer of the food for everything. But there was a study done a number of years ago by the FAO in 2006. It was called Livestock's Long Shadow. This study, which is now has been accepted that it was deeply flawed as study seemed to say that cattle were the main problem. Very high percentage of the emissions were actually coming from cattle. But there was a flawed study, flawed report, which they have now actually admitted was flawed because it didn't use the same assessment for both fossil fuel things and so on.
Unfortunately, at that stage, the genie was out of the bottle. Everybody heard it. Cows, cattle farmers are causing all the problem. This is not the case. Cattle and livestock can be carbon sequesters, of course, but at this stage it's very hard when people have heard that to change people's things. So I feel very annoyed when I hear farmers being criticized and so on.
Kerry Diamond:
Rightly so.
Darina Allen:
What would we do without them? There you are.
Kerry Diamond:
Exactly. Beatrix, for our audience today and everybody watching the live stream and who'll hear the podcast, what would you like people to know about Irish family farms that maybe they don't know?
Beatrix Killeen:
That's a very good question. It's a great lifestyle and we really are doing our best. It's not just for the consumers out there, but also for ourselves. We are putting out a product of the highest standards, something that we would feed to our own children. Actually, just going back to know Darina's point on local produce and homesteading, I read a study by Chagas there recently about the high nutritional value of Irish milk that comes from grass-fed cows and it blew my mind, an increased amount when they get three and increased unsaturated fats and things like that. You'd be so proud to be a part of that.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, I think something that was so heartening was meeting your young daughter, Isabella, and asking Isabella what she thought about farming and how to spread the word to younger folks. Her answer was to introduce them to the animals on the farm and I thought that was-
Beatrix Killeen:
Because they're cute.
Kerry Diamond:
Because they're so cute. I just thought that was such a sweet positive answer and I look forward to hearing more from Isabella and seeing her get more and more involved in your farm.
Darina Allen:
Yeah. Actually, that's what Isabella's lovely comments that time, but it just struck me that in a way, to a greatest extend, farmers, until they suddenly there was this long shadow report, they were suddenly found themselves being criticized and so on. But in a way, if there's so many farmers there doing such wonderful work, they could open their farms to the public more and more to invite in children and local schools and local people to wander around the farm and just see what's happening and see the incredible amount of work that goes into producing good food and so on, I think it would help with the image and also for people to know that farming is so cool.
Beatrix Killeen:
Yay. How about that?
Kerry Diamond:
That is a perfect place to end.
Darina Allen:
We have a great lifestyle-
Kerry Diamond:
So the message is-
Darina Allen:
... and so many opportunities.
Kerry Diamond:
... go hug your local farmer, support your local farmer, and if you can go visit the farms even better. Everyone, thank you so much for joining us today. I've loved getting to know you and everyone thank you for joining us.
Beatrix Killeen:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Kerrygold, the makers of beautiful butter and cheese, for supporting Radio Cherry Bombe and bringing me back to Ireland, my happy place. You can check out some of the pictures from my trip on my Instagram highlights @kerrybombe. If you enjoyed today's show, be sure to check out past episodes of Radio Cherry Bombe with Darina Allen and other Irish superstars like Chef Gráinne O'Keefe and author Ali Dunworth. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Special thanks to Joseph Hazan, studio engineer at Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in New York City. Our producers are Tarkor Zehn, Catherine Baker, and Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial coordinator is Sophie Kies. Thanks for listening, everybody. You are the Bombe.