No farm? No worries. How a Tipperary urbanite, ended up producing award-winning ciders.
Over 35 years ago, James O’Donoghue’s curiosity in farming was triggered during summer holidays, spent helping out on his grandparents’ farm. As a trainee farm manager, he graduated Student of the Year from agricultural college, going on to gain experience at home and abroad across a range of agricultural enterprises.
My pathway to farming
Surprisingly, I’m not actually from a farming background. Dad was a bank manager with Bank of Ireland, and it was my grandparents who had the farm. Every summer holiday, we were quickly out the door and down to the farm. It’s from that experience, my initial interest grew. In 1985 I qualified as a farm manager having been awarded a BoI Farm Start Award, for achieving first place in farm management. I then worked in Saudi Arabia for four years on a large dairy farm, before moving back to Ireland to manage a private co-op. Over the course of the next 15 years, I was employed as farm manager at O’Shea Brothers’ vegetable farm in Co. Kilkenny. At the time, they were farming over 3,000 acres with a staff of 110.
“We were getting a lot of calls for apples from craft cider-makers, but we couldn’t supply them, as we were contracted to C&C with our original 20-acre plantation.”
What inspired you to grow cider apples?
I always wanted to start my own business. I attended some ‘start your own business’ courses and one the main points emphasised, was to firstly focus on finding your market and then securing it. In 1998, I was lucky enough to be awarded a long-term cider-apple contract; to supply a specific ‘bitter-sweet’ type of apple to C&C (Bulmers) in Clonmel. To fulfill this contract, I purchased a 45-acre farm in 1998 and began
