Not long sitting down over coffee, Elizabeth McGuinness’s phone buzzes on the kitchen table. “This is Scotland now, watch this,” she exclaims as she answers the call with a bright welcome.

It is indeed Scotland, a Scottish farmer, calling with an enquiry about Elizabeth’s range of farmware. From her Co Monaghan home, Lynster House (also a guesthouse), Elizabeth runs Kiwi Country Clothing.

The pair chat for a couple of minutes. Elizabeth informs the farmer that he can see the whole range of clothes on her website and to ring back when he decides what he wants. “See,” she says, hanging up the phone, “I get people from everywhere.”

Elizabeth is a multi-tasker. As we chat about her life and business, she makes coffee, sears lamb and darts around getting various pieces of clothing and other assorted items to illustrate what she’s saying.

Like her house and garden, Elizabeth is full of colour. Her voice takes on various accents as she tells a story and she always stands up to do so. She speaks of growing up on a farm near the border, a love of music from a young age, teaching and moving hemispheres and back again to start a business.

Around the world

Elizabeth grew up on a dairy farm outside Monaghan town. Like many, she says it was a great upbringing, but admits there were some negatives, well one, she was all for an autumn-calving system.

“I remember even as a child saying, ‘Why do calves have to be born in the winter? Why can’t they be born in the summer? It’s so cold’. I’ve got four siblings, I think we all got a strong work ethic from the farm.

People around Monaghan would say we got our work ethic from our father,” she reflects.

Growing up music was a huge passion of Elizabeth’s. She plays the harp and went to University College Dublin (UCD) to study to become a music and Irish teacher. Now, alongside her business interests, she subs in a local secondary school from time to time.

In 1998 Elizabeth took a career break from teaching and went on a world trip. She ended up in New Zealand visiting a cousin and that’s where her love affair with the Kiwis’ use of possum fur (a key part of her business and this story) blossomed. Oh, and another love affair blossomed there too!

“I got to New Zealand in July having been in Bali, I thought I was going to die with the cold. The place I was staying in was called Palmerston North and the temperature was similar to Ireland. I ended up going to a knitting mills where they made possum merino. I couldn’t believe the warmth of it.

“I came home again and went back to school. This man Paddy Doyle had taken a big shine to me in New Zealand. He followed me home about three weeks later and he kept coming. Anyway, we got engaged and I moved to New Zealand in 1999. We got married – kept my name, didn’t want to be Mrs Doyle, no thanks.”

After many years living on New Zealand’s North Island, in 2012 Elizabeth decided to move back home and start Kiwi Country Clothing, which would bring the warmth of possum to Ireland. Kiwi Country Clothing uses both possum fur and merino, a fabric blend of possum fur and merino lambs’ wool. The clothes are imported from New Zealand. She and Paddy now split their time between the two countries.

Possums are non-native to New Zealand, so their introduction has greatly affected natural ecosystems there. The Department of Conservation has a culling programme to control the possum population and it’s from there the fur for the clothes comes.

On the road again

Initially, Kiwi Country Clothing started out with two main strands; a collection of fashionable knitwear for older and colder people and an outdoor range for those working in the elements, such as farmers.

The best place to reach these people, Elizabeth felt, was at agricultural shows.

So she bought a van, branded it and hit the road. She also attended some of the main agricultural shows in the UK, which helped expand her business overseas.

In 2016, Kiwi Country Clothing diversified considerably. Almost unknowingly, Elizabeth had been selling what could be considered medical garments. Annette O’Driscoll a senior occupational therapist at University Hospital Cork (UHC), bought a pair of Elizabeth’s leather mittens lined with possum fur at the Dublin Horse Show.

“She got in contact with me after and said, ‘We run a trauma unit here in Cork. I deal with people who have had an accident with their hands or feet. We’ve tried your mit on a number of patients. Every one of them said they’re fantastic for taking the pain away. It heats up their hands or feet when they have circulation issues post-surgery’.”

As possum fur is a good insulator, it improves circulation and this can ease pain. “My father, he’s long dead now, he always used to say, ‘Heat is great for taking away the pain’.

But I wasn’t focusing on that. To start with I was looking at dressing farmers and the older and colder. I knew for me, with my cold feet, that it really worked to warm up the body parts.”

Now much of Elizabeth’s business is on the medical side of things. Kiwi Country Clothing has diabetic socks and gloves used by people with Raynaud syndrome. People with arthritis also find possum fur soothing. Custom pieces are made for people who have had a limb amputated or diabetics who have lost a toe.

Just a year after this side of the business started, Elizabeth was diagnosed with scleroderma, an autoimmune, rheumatic and chronic disease. It affects the body by hardening connective tissue. One of the things scleroderma causes is cold fingers, as well as sores or ulcers on the fingers.

“I’m my own patient now,” says Elizabeth simply.

Farmers and royalty

Despite being her own patient, Elizabeth doesn’t dwell on her scleroderma very much. She has far too many other things to talk about. As she dishes up lamb and roast root vegetables for lunch, she tells me about her cooking channel on YouTube, simply called “Elizabeth McGuinness”. She wants to teach people how to make healthy, affordable and quick meals.

Another topic of conversation, and perhaps not the best over lunch but we both clearly have strong constitutions, is her range of farmware, particularly the socks. Kiwi Country Clothing sells jackets, hats, oilskins and more, but the most interesting element are by far the socks. The slogan for the possum socks is: “The sock you don’t wash: no smell, no sweat, no joke.”

Possum is antibacterial and regulates temperature. The possum socks have been known to heal cracked skin and chilblains.

“I usually tell people, wash them after the winter and after the summer, that’s it. You can put them in the machine, a 30° wash. Some people get a bit neurotic and want to wash them every week, but you’ll ruin them. Less is more.

“If you stand in pee or something, common sense is put them in a 30° wash or rinse them out in the kitchen sink. A lot of guys who live on their own don’t wash them at all and that’s fine. I say turn them inside out on a sunny day and hang them on the line.

“See this cardigan,” Elizabeth says, pulling at the cream ensemble she’s wearing, “it’s 16 years old. I washed it for the first time last year. You don’t have to wash possum.”

Very versatile garments indeed, but Elizabeth’s possum products aren’t cheap. Diplomatically, Irish Country Living enquires as to how the price point plays out with farming customers.

“I say to people, ‘Look it here, you’re driving €120,000 worth of a New Holland tractor, you’ve got a big four-wheel drive there, look at the lovely coat you’ve on and you wear terrible socks. You wonder then why your feet smell and you’re cold. Look after your feet, your feet are carrying you every day of your life’.”

As important as farmers are to Kiwi Country Clothing, those wearing Elizabeth’s products aren’t just working the land. After an accidental run in with the Queen of England’s goddaughter at the Highland Show in Scotland, Elizabeth sent a pair of gloves to the Queen with a letter. She received correspondence back not once, but twice.

See, plenty of stories recounted at the kitchen table. The rest though, won’t fit here, they’ll have to wait for the book.

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