It’s a regular Wednesday afternoon in Bríd and Roger Fahys’ farmhouse in New Quay.

Brid is dishing up a hearty dinner for their three teenagers, Máire, Tomás and Pádraic, who are just in from doing their farmyard tasks, while Roger is keeping an eye on a cow that’s calving down the field, close to the famous Flaggy Shore.

It’s normal farm life, then. Except that their youngest son, 14-year-old Tomás has just come in from a tiny shop at the front of their farm yard where he has been dishing up home-made ice cream to happy looking tourists, who are now relaxing on benches enjoying their treat while basking in rare rays of Irish sunshine.

This is the home of Linnalla ice cream which has become a small but significant success story since Bríd and Roger decided to diversify their farming operation some four years ago.

The ice cream, in a wide variety of flavours, from rhubarb and custard, to wild berry to Burren hazelnut, is now on sale in various shops and restaurants in Galway, Clare and Limerick and the Fahys are planning a move eastwards shortly, seeking new markets.

Making and selling ice cream in our Irish climate mightn’t seem like an immediate recipe for success, but this unassuming, hard-working couple are certainly making a go of their contemporary cottage industry.

The motto ‘go with what you know’ is one they started out with and have continued to follow as their ice cream business has grown.
Their current enterprise is a significant change from five years ago, when they were farming intensively, milking nearly 70 cows twice a day and sending the milk to the local co-op.

The push towards intensive farming had gained momentum in the 1970s, when Roger was young, but experience taught them that it just wasn’t suitable for their West of Ireland holding.

The farm consists of about 140 acres, which sounds very impressive but its location on a narrow peninsula doesn’t suit intensive farming.
It’s very fragmented, they explain, with some of it on tiny islands off the mainland, which meant a lot of work moving cattle from pasture to pasture. Out of the 140 acres, about 30 are suitable for grazing.

“We were running out of grass in June and feeding valuable winter fodder to cattle in summer,” says Roger. Their farm income was supplemented by Bríd’s work as a nurse with the Galway Association for Mentally Handicapped Children (now Ability West) in Salthill.

But her work commute was becoming more difficult in the Celtic Tiger era. Bríd wanted a lifestyle that centred more on her home and her children. And significantly, both she and Roger wanted to create employment which would allow their children the option of living locally when the three grew up. Farming would not do that.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.