The Good Food Ireland Awards celebrate all the businesses at the heart of Ireland’s foodie culture, everyone from producers to chefs, shops and restaurants. It is the best of Ireland, on a plate.
The 2024 gala awards ceremony finals take place this month at the K Club in Kildare. Among the cream of the crop will be those competing for the dairy food producers award, a category sponsored by the National Dairy Council.
This year’s eight shortlisted finalists feature a mouthwatering array of dairy industry producers. These include ice cream maker Glastry Farm, on the lush pastures of the Ards Peninsula; Aran Islands Goats Cheese, hand crafted on Inis Mór; and Linnalla’s creamy ice cream, whipped up on the flaggy shores of the Burren.
Blessed too are Ireland’s cheese makers, with Mileens in Cork and Boyne Valley Farmhouse in Meath both shortlisted, alongside O’Shea Farms in Kilkenny, nominated for its top-quality milk.
Yoghurt lovers will be familiar with the delicious single origin dairy yoghurts made by the Dunne family of Killowen Farm in Wexford, another finalist, whose products are sweetened with luscious fruits.
In all, the Good Food Ireland Awards is the perfect showcase for the premium quality dairy products of which Ireland – the biggest producer of milk per capita in Europe, and the second biggest in the world – is so rightly proud.
Perfectly placed for milk
If ever a country were designed for dairy, it is this one. Around 80 per cent of Ireland’s agricultural area is devoted to grasslands, the 40 shades of green that give us our emerald isle status.
That’s because our temperate climate and soft days produce a yearly grass growth rate more than one third greater than the European average.
It also means Irish dairy cows get to stay out and graze on lush pastures for up to 300 days a year, only coming in when the weather gets bad.
Studies show that, as a result of their grass-fed diet, Irish cows produce more nutritious milk than their international counterparts who are typically fed indoors.
Researchers from Teagasc and Food for Health Ireland show that dairy cows who operate on an Irish grass-fed system produce milk with a higher percentage of omega-3, a “healthy fat” that has to be taken in supplement form because the body can’t create it itself.
As a naturally fermented milk product and a source of protein, calcium and vitamins, the health benefits of yoghurt are something the National Dairy Council is promoting, with an EU-funded campaign entitled “Yogurt, it’s great inside”, currently running across Ireland, Belgium, Germany and Denmark.
Of course, the way we produce milk here is healthier for our cows too, allowing them to live their best lives and enjoy their natural grazing behaviours.
Happy cows, healthy products
That’s something James Flaherty, a farmer ambassador for the National Dairy Council, gets to see first-hand every day.
His family has been farming in Castleisland in Co Kerry since 1850, making him a seventh-generation dairy farmer. While the ways in which his cattle graze remains largely unchanged, the way in which they are milked would have been simply unimaginable to six of those generations. That’s because in 2020 he introduced an automated milking robot to the farm. It has made not just his own life easier but that of his 70 cows too, he explains.
“With the milking robot, the cows can come and go during the day,” he explains.
When a cow feels full, she goes into the robot, which is housed in a shed, to be milked, and is rewarded with an automated feed of cow nuts before wandering back outside to resume grazing.
It makes for a super chilled atmosphere, not least for James who has young children and is no longer tied to early morning and late evening milkings in the parlour. “My cows do their own thing and go at their own pace. It’s amazing the way it works. Everything is relaxed,” he says.
Good grass is at the heart of good dairy, which is why he has also introduced new grassland management techniques, including the use of multi-species swards.
That means that as well as grass, his fields contain legumes and forage herbs. Not alone does this improve soil health, and allow for the use of significantly less fertiliser, it has been shown to support greater insect diversity than traditional grass-clover swards.
He also uses smart apps for a grassland management solutions that optimises efficiencies and minimises fertiliser waste. “It’s a great tool for farmers to use to make the right decisions when it comes to what grass to feed cows, and how that grass is managed,” says James.
Proof is on the pudding – and in the ice cream
All of these techniques are familiar to the Kiersey brothers from Ballyhussa Farm, the home of premium ice cream brand Freezin’ Friesian, another shortlisted finalist in the NDC-sponsored dairy food producers award.
The business is named after the family’s breed of dairy cows, which live between the Comeragh Mountains and the Copper Coast, near Kilmacthomas in Co Waterford.
The mild climate of the sunny southeast enables their cows to graze on pasture year-round, and produce the rich, creamy milk so perfect for ice cream.
The brothers joined forces with their brother-in-law, Neil Magee, an equine expert, to set up the business in 2018, inspired by the idea of the farm-to-table food production that Good Food Ireland espouses.
Their idea was to create a luxurious ice cream range made using only the best quality ingredients, such as fresh cream, milk and free-range egg yolks.
As foodies raised on farm fresh food all their lives, if felt natural to them, explains Magee.
Using family recipes going back generations the Kierseys first showcased their rolled ice cream range at food markets, before going on to supply both direct to consumers and to some of the finest chefs in the country.
“Our ice cream is served at Dublin’s Merrion Hotel and the Cliff Group,” says Magee. Not alone do they make classic favourites such as vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream but they add various home-made treats, such as chocolate brownies, lemon curd, sea salt & caramel ribbons, honeycomb, cookie dough or freshly baked shortbread.
“We move through the seasons with strawberries, raspberries and then blackberries picked from our own hedgerows,” he adds. Ever creative, at Christmas Freezin’ Friesian partners with a local distillery for a whiskey and Christmas pudding ice cream.
“Our ice cream is all made with natural ingredients, in small batches, where processing is kept to a minimum,” he explains. “The rich, creamy flavour and smooth texture are the result of our high milk and cream content, as opposed to the artificial emulsifiers and stabilisers so often seen in other ice creams.”
Being shortlisted for a Good Food Ireland Award is something that makes all the family proud.
“We were very lucky to be nominated last year too. Having so many like-minded people in the one room, all of whom care so much about what goes on to a plate, is such an experience,” he says. “It’s just a huge honour.”
For more information on the Good Food Ireland Awards, visit ndc.ie