Venison in the Golden Vale at Ballinwillin House

If there’s one thing that’s for sure, it’s that Pat Mulcahy has never been afraid to take a risk. Or make that, many risks. After all, the garda-turned-farmer – who started with just 16 acres and a few cattle at Ballinwillin House in Mitchelstown in the mid-1980s – is today one of Ireland’s leading venison and wild boar producers, supplying the country’s best hotels and restaurants, not to mention diversifying into hospitality, viticulture and even music festivals along the way.

(And we have not even mentioned the stint farming in Hungary yet. More anon.)

“There’s a lot of madness in the whole thing,” reflects Pat, before adding – without missing a beat – “I’d do it again.”

“Would he?” smiles his wife Miriam wryly, as she takes a seat at the kitchen table. “I suppose I’d have to join him!”

From Garda To Farmer

Raised on a 14-acre mixed farm in West Limerick, Pat had always wanted to be a garda like his uncle, who was the local sergeant, and so went to Templemore at 18, before being stationed in Dublin, where he was involved in pursuing high- profile criminals including “The General”.

Looking for a way to unwind from the intensity of the job, however, he used the time in between shifts to do a course in horticulture and ended up working as a greenkeeper by day, and on the beat by night.

It was in Dublin that he first met Miriam, then a civil servant, with the couple relocating to Mitchelstown after Pat was transferred.

He continued to work as a greenkeeper in his spare time, but after 12 years with the Gardí, decided to get out and make a go of his horticulture business: which was how he first came across Ballinwillin House, originally built in the 1700s for Sir Arthur Young, the world-famous agriculturist and land agent for the Earl of Kingston.

“At the very most, I was the gardener,” explains Pat of his introduction to the property, which they bought in 1985 using the proceeds from the sale of the family home that they had just built, along with support from “a wonderful bank manager in West Limerick”.

“I saw the potential in it,” says Pat, “so we bought the 16 acres here and then a few years later more came up and more came up and we farm 162 acres now all together.”

Venison In The Golden Vale

Situated smack bang in the heart of the Golden Vale, Pat might have been expected to go into dairying; but he had other plans.

After trying cattle the first year, with limited success, he read a report about how there was a shortage of venison on the continent after the Chernobyl disaster.

His research brought him to Hungary, where there was a farm part-owned by the state forestry company, the meat marketing board and a New Zealand company called Fletcher Challenge, who were looking to sell their stake in the business.

With the backing of his ever-supportive bank manager (“Jesus Christ, what are you doing now?” Pat recalls of his reaction), the deal was done.

“There were 1,012 acres there on the farm, and within 10 years we had extended to double that, we irrigated it, we reseeded it: we turned a kind of wilderness farm into a productive farm,” he explains of the project, which he was involved in for 13 years before selling his shares to an American company.

Pat’s vision, however, had always been to bring deer to Ballinwillin, handpicking the best of the stock to start his own herd, before later introducing wild boar to the farm.

Needless to say, it caused quite a stir in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “Busloads (of farmers) would come here to see us – not to see so much the animals, but to see me, to see what kind of an animal I was,” admits Pat.

“And they all would say: ‘You’re mad, it will never work in Ireland.’”

Specialising in Hungarian red deer, the Mulcahys could have 350 breeding hinds and 250 wild boar at Ballinwillin at any one time, with the herd rising to 700 or 800 during calving in May and June.

The deer are slow reared for 15 months and usually processed in the autumn, with a butchery on site to prepare the various cuts of venison for the market.

While the Mulcahys got their first “big break” from Sainsbury’s in the UK, followed by other multiples at home, when supermarket prices started to drop, they decided to target high-end hotels and restaurants at home.

Today, they supply Hayfield Manor and The Maryborough in Cork, The Mustard Seed in Limerick, The Marker, The Merrion and Mulligans in Dublin among many more, but staying at the top means going beyond the call of duty.

“I would have a personal relationship with all the chefs; I would work hard on that and I would meet them definitely once a month,” says Pat of the commitment involved, explaining that he and Miriam also like to bring front-of-house staff to the farm too.

“Because they understand it and they buy into it and then when somebody says: ‘What do you recommend?’, (they can say) ‘Well I’ve been there and I’ve seen the set-up.’”

The Mulcahys also sell directly to the public on their online farm shop, with the product range including everything from wild boar and venison salamis, sausages and burgers to shoulder and haunch roasts, steaks and casserole and stew mixes.

Hospitality At Ballinwillin

But that’s not the only business at Ballinwillin.

In the mid-1990s, Miriam started doing BnB on a small scale, but the couple have since renovated six rooms in the courtyard, which are popular for both tourists as well as corporate guests.

“Here in town you have Dairygold, you have Ornua, all the butter is made here, you have the big Aldi warehouse, so we get a lot from there and then we have another company which is Core Computers, they’ve really expanded,” says Miriam of their most regular customers.

They also host long-table dinners and special events like fulacht fia nights, which they complement with wine tastings, having invested in a vineyard and apart-hotel on Lake Balaton in Hungary after they sold their share in the deer farm.

Meanwhile, Ballinwillin plays host to the Indie-pendence Music Festival every summer, having first dipped a toe into the business themselves in 1992 with the Deer Festival.

“We had Boyzone here and we paid them £7,000 the first time they came here,” recalls Pat, who explains that it takes about six weeks to get the land ready for the festival and about the same time to restore things afterwards. “So you lose the farm then for that period of time – it’s about three months – and then, depending on the weather and the ground conditions, your job is to get it back.”

With so much going on at Ballinwillin, there are about 13 staff in total between full- and part-time workers, while Pat and Miriam’s children Sheena, John and Carol also help in their spare time.

Yet the couple are still very much driving the business forward; for instance working with the Visit Ballyhoura tourism group to really put the region on the map and initiatives like the Old Butter Roads Food Trail.

“We’d be up at four or five o’clock,” says Pat of their work ethic. “I’ve seen very brilliant people failing in business and the only thing that kept us going really was persistence and stubbornness – and probably madness.”

“Well, I think the fact that we had so many irons in the fire,” adds Miriam. “When one thing was on its knees, there was something else bringing in a bob.”

And as for what’s next?

“I think I’d nearly be afraid to give you an idea now,” laughs Miriam, turning to Pat. “Because he’s gone like a shot!” CL

www.ballinwillinhouse.com